Saving Rain(51)

The sound of her voice …

It was reluctant and regretful, and that wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear. Not when I was ready to bare my soul for her to steal and use at her will.

I swallowed in preparation as I stood up straight and took a step back, moving my hands from her waist to her shoulders. I didn’t say anything; I just waited for what suddenly seemed like the end of the world to come tumbling down around me.

Life always did have a way of taking away the good things the very moment I’d gotten a taste.

Ray moved her hands to my chest and pressed them over my thundering heart, now more alive than ever. She stared ahead, watching every rise and fall of my chest, before asking, “Do you remember that night we first met?”

“Of course.”

“You made me promise I would never go back to The Pit.”

“I know.”

“And I kept that promise”—she dragged her eyes from my chest to pin me with her tormented gaze—“but you forgot that I still lived in that town.”

If she couldn’t hear my heart before, there was no way she didn’t now. My jaw clenched tightly against my grinding teeth as I looked down at her, immediately terrified of whatever was going to come next in this part of her life’s story.

“I think it probably pissed them off—”

“Who’s them?” I managed to mutter.

“Seth, his friends … you know, Levi—”

The sound that rumbled from deep within my chest rivaled a growl as I tore my eyes from hers to stare at the ceiling. “Fucking Levi …”

“Yeah, um … they didn’t like you, Soldier.”

“No shit.”

“No,” she said, harsh and frantic. “They really didn’t like you. They didn’t like you getting in the way, stealing their business, interfering with the stuff that didn’t concern you, and when you stopped Seth from, um”—her breath shuddered—“doing what he was going to do …”

I could still hear her screams. I could still see her struggling against that tree. The look of panic and blind desperation in her eyes. The way she had feared me, even after I got her away from him, the way she thought I wanted her for myself. Like something to own and break.

I saw that fear alive in her eyes now. But it wasn’t aimed at me despite the way she looked ahead at her hands against my chest.

“He knew where I lived, and he took what he wanted,” she whispered.

And just like that, the girl I had saved became the girl I had failed.

Just another name to add to the list.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. Not wanting to believe it was true.

I didn’t want to hear what had happened, yet I wanted every last detail. I wanted her to pierce my skin with whatever torture had been inflicted on her. I wanted it stitched into my heart. I wanted it to be the end of me, just to keep it from being the end of her.

“It was just the one time,” she was quick to say even with how much her hands shook against my shirt.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t really, was it?” I sounded mad, but I hadn’t meant to. My anger wasn’t meant for her.

Her breath came in quivering huffs as she hesitated before quickly shaking her head.

Then, I uttered the words she didn’t want to say, “And he’s Noah’s dad.”

I hoped she’d say I was wrong. I hoped she’d tell me I’d misunderstood and that Noah was the son of someone bad, but not that kind of bad. But Ray couldn’t give me that satisfaction because it would’ve been a lie.

Her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip, her fingers barely twitching against my chest, and my stomach bottomed out. The need to vomit rolled over me like a freight train, and I looked away, sucking in breath after breath, hoping to quell the rise of my fury before I destroyed something important.

“I thought I had saved you,” I whispered, knowing how stupid and pathetic it sounded now.

God, what kind of idiot had I been to believe that I had somehow stopped every bad thing from happening in her life by protecting her once? Thirteen years. Thirteen fucking years had passed since that night, and while maybe my life had been a monotonous cycle of nothing much occurring for nearly ten of those years, hers hadn't. Shit had happened. Lots of it, apparently.

And it had been my fault.

Would things have been different if I had just stayed out of it? Would I have been able to live with myself if I'd just stood by and let it happen while I ignored her, like every other asshole there that night?

“Soldier, no,” Ray said, reaching for my face with her hand, bringing my eyes back to hers. “You did save me. You were there for me that night when nobody else would even look. You were my hero. You showed me there were good guys in this world, and I never ever forgot about that. I never forgot you.”

I stared into her eyes, unwilling to understand how this woman could have suffered so much hurt and still look at me with such hope. How was she not broken after all this time? And how could she continue to face that man time and time again? How could she face her son, the product of her continued torment?

God, shame on me.

“So, when he was last here, he”—I pinched my eyes shut, unable to believe I was about to speak the words—“hurt your wrist, and …”