“So you’re saying you treated me like that because of your parents?” I ask.
“No,” Torin says with a firmness that surprises me. “People have had worse things happen to them, but they don’t call their scent match a whore, humiliate her, or send her to a heat clinic.”
He holds my gaze even though I want to look away. They all hurt me so badly, I don’t know that I can forget or forgive. Some wounds are soul-deep.
Torin continues, “Everything we told you just now were the things happening in the background. Thereasonwe reacted the way we did. We wanted to hurt you because we didn’t trust you. It’s no excuse for having treated you the way we did because thereisno excuse. We should have asked you when you met William. Better yet, we should have told you about our parents before I slept with you.”
“But you still want me to forgive you?” I ask him, frowning.
He nods. “Yeah.”
I hug my knees. “I don’t know if I can do that. The way you all treated me…” My voice trails off when I remember a year that stretched out forever and felt like it aged me ten years. “You all left scars inside me. I can never forget that.”
He gives me a resigned smile, his eyes swimming with regret. “I know that too.”
Chapter 28
Torin
Ipull a blanket over Juniper, but she still shivers.
I feel the draught coming from the window next to the bed with a too-thin comforter, and it’s not good enough.
Noneof this is good enough for her.
“We can’t leave her here,” I say, studying her beautiful face, relaxed in sleep.
I want to think she fell asleep on her couch because she felt safe with us here, but she looked tired and scared when she opened the door to us an hour before. Her fear and exhaustion had grown the longer we talked, and then later, when she told us what had happened with Wilkes Booth, AKA Oscar Michaels.
Her instincts had warned her she couldn’t trust him, so she called us.
“She listened,” Callum says. “That doesn’t mean she forgives us.”
“Her lock is a piece of shit,” Archer mutters from behind me. “One kick and that chain would come right off the door.”
I’m not surprised Archer picked up on it. I caught the way he kept glancing at her door and scowling, even if June missed it. Peering over my shoulder, I find him standing in front of it now, no longer leaning on the wall beside it.
“Her refrigerator is nearly empty,” Callum says.
I didn’t hear him cross the room, but he’s frowning into it. “Just milk, juice, and a chopped salad kit.”
We all look at each other, then at the sleeping woman curled up under a too-thin blanket in an apartment with so many problems I wouldn’t know where to start making it good enough for her.
Knock it down and start over, probably. That’s what a building like this needs. But Juniper has decided that this place is her home, so knocking it down and starting over isn’t an option.
The floral arrangement wasn’t good enough. The bouquet of roses was a pathetic attempt by a desperate man who didn’t know the first thing about showing he was sorry. I still don’t know how to do that, but I would do anything to prove to her that I will never hurt her again.
The pads of my fingers itch to touch her satiny cheek. Her blueberry and brown sugar scent wraps around me, and I keep wanting to pull her into my arms and keep her there. She cut the bond, but it’s still there, a living, breathing live wire inside of me.
I reach out to touch.
Archer’s hand is a vice around my wrist.
Growling softly so I don’t wake her, I turn to glare at him. “What?”
His eyes are on her, not me. “She wouldn’t want any of us to touch her if she were awake.Don’ttouch her while she sleeps.”
I know that. He says that like I don’t know what I did to her. But he’s right to have grabbed me. Iwasn’tthinking, and around her, I always need to be thinking so I don’t fuck up again.
