Page 45 of Scapegoat

I grabbed at my temples then, feeling the steady thump of an impending headache, my eyes closing as I felt the tears slide down my cheeks. Then, just as I tried to centre myself, he reached out.

As he did, I realised I’d always know where Atlas was. It was the instinct that’d had me picking up stumps and moving onto another town to avoid them, so it beat hot and hard and true in my chest right now. But I was done running from this shit, so I forced my eyes open and stared at him.

“I know Mum tricked you. You didn’t have to bust in here, into my life to tell me that.” Another tear rolled down my face and his fingers twitched, like he wanted to reach out and catch it. “I know she fucked you over, just like she always did me, but…”

I knew this, knew everything I thought and felt about this, because I’d spent every spare moment thinking about it.

“I needed…” I sucked in a breath, trying again. “I needed…” Just get it the fuck out and then you can get away from this shit, I told myself. “I needed you to see through it all. To not fall for it. I needed someone, anyone, to fucking see through her bullshit. And more than that.”

My throat was closing up and I was struggling to breathe, because going over all of this? It just brought it all right back, that feeling of helplessness. My mother was brutal, abusive, cruel; and I hadn’t really realised that until I got free of her.

“To see me.”

And there it was, the thing that hurt me the most.

“I do. I always have—” he started to say, moving forward, but I held him off.

“No, you didn’t! You didn’t! I was in fur and I couldn’t get back into skin, so I barked and I howled for you, to try and get you to turn around and see me. I was your mate.” My voice, my heart, broke on that. “You claimed me.” My fist slammed into my chest. “And then you turned around and claimed her.”

I didn’t blame Anna. That had taken me a while to come to terms with, but in the end, she was as much a victim as I was. She was just the one Mum had built up unduly, all while pushing me down. So it wasn’t Anna that broke my fucking heart as she turned to face the crowd, wearing the mating marks that belonged to me. I’d seen Mum get what she wanted over and over and over, until it felt hopeless to want anything else.

But I had wanted more.

I’d wanted the boys in my secret little heart, a passion that felt like a candle’s flame in a stiff breeze, something I had to curl my whole self around to stop it from blowing out.

Until that day.

Because that’s what he didn’t get; what none of the boys would ever understand. Growing up with Jenny and their dads, they had hope and belief in a great and glorious future, where all I got was whatever my parents had left after loving my sister. To dare to think that I could become their mate was a terrible, terrible dream, but I’d dreamt it all the same, until the reality came crashing in.

“You gave Mum just what she wanted.” I shook my head then slowly. “You went along with her fucking plan.”

“Kaia, I’m sorry—”

“Not Kaia, Kai.” I spat that out. “I ran away from that place, because it was the only thing I could do. I couldn’t stop her, couldn’t scream at the top of my lungs what she was doing was wrong. That you belonged to me, not Anna. That you always had. The whole town would’ve just laughed. You gave my sister your mating marks. It just would’ve been seen as me being jealous—”

“No, Kai.” The cigarette was tossed aside and I was backed right up against the wall of the cottage, his body sheltering me from the breeze, the view, everything. But I shoved at him, trying to move him, dislodge him with a shove of my hands, but he went nowhere. “Never.”

“She took everything from me,” I croaked out, staring into his eyes. “And you let her. You let her.”

I don’t know what I expected him to say right then. Not nothing, that’s for sure. He went perfectly still, his body crowding mine and that musky, woody scent of him filled my nose, reminding me of… I tried to keep the thought back, but it came anyway. Reminding me of home.

Not my parents’ house, or Stanthorpe, but him, them, and that’s when the tears fell in earnest. The kind of silent, useless fucking tears I used to cry all the time, back at Mum’s place.

“I fucked up.” I barely looked up at that and when I did, my view of him was blurry, hazy. “I fell for her bullshit and I shoulda known Abby would try and pull something. I... I’m sorry, Kai. Every fucking day I wake up I’m sorry for my part in what happened, that I didn’t stop, that I didn’t…” He took a shuddering breath in, then let it out. “That I didn’t put that kid out of our way, pushing Anna back into her mother’s loving arms and then jump off that stage to run to you.”

He nosed my head to one side; the bite mark he’d left on my neck aching just like my heart. But when his lips trailed across it, I wondered if Anna’s did the same, growing so exquisitely sensitive that my whole body shivered.

“I bit Anna like a dog would.” I stiffened at that, jerked out of this moment and right back into our history. “I left a scar, but not a mating mark. A bite is just a bite, if your heart isn’t in it and I couldn’t give it to your sister, not when…” He grabbed my hand then, shoving it into the open neck of his flannelette shirt, until it came to rest over his chest. I felt his heart thudding hard and fast beneath my fingertips. “Not when I’d already given my heart to you.”

He darted closer, his breath fanning over my skin. I smelled nicotine and mint and him, wild and musky, and I was sent right back in time. Not to my mother and all the shit she tried to put on me, but them. All those stolen kisses, sidelong looks and small brushes of our hands. The way we seemed to be performing a slow dance around each other, getting closer with each revolution. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, whose only view of the world was coloured by what I’d grown up with around Stanthorpe. I’d lived all over different parts of Australia and I knew I didn’t want this. I ducked under his arm, stepping free.

“I can’t,” I told him bluntly. “I can’t go back to pretending it’s the same as it was when we were kids and, more than that, I won’t. I’m not that girl anymore and you’re not that guy, so…” My hands made vague warding off gestures in the air, even though he didn’t move any closer. “I think we’re done here.”

I felt like I was packing myself back up. Not closing up the yawning wounds inside me, because that would never happen, but slapping enough filler over them that I could continue to ignore them like usual.

“But Kai…”

Didn’t he get how hard this was for me? To see him was a gut punch, but to see the pain in his eyes? That was even worse, making me long to step forward, smooth his hair back, then run my hands over his forehead, force that frown to go away. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore than he wanted to hurt me, but that was Stanthorpe. I just wanted to forget the whole damn place existed and everyone in it. Because when I did, I could pretend… That the world outside the pack wasn’t so big, so empty, yet so full of people that didn’t give a damn about me.

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