“I should have done that, I would have, but I had to protect you. And Warren. And the club. I couldn’t let him do anything like that. I told him I was going to go back to the compound and tell you what he’d done, but I… I felt weird and… I couldn’t think straight.”
She looked up at me, her eyes glistening with tears.
“He’d already slipped something in my drink. When he showed me the pictures, I was so angry, I threw the cup and spilled it, without even realizing.”
My eyes started burning as I remembered standing there by my bike, watching him lead her to that car. Thinking back on it, seeing it through fresh eyes, he wasleadingher. She wasn’t holding his hand, smiling, nothing.
He had hold of her and he was pulling her along with him.
“I don’t remember going to his car...” She was staring at her bare feet. “But I hadn’t drunk enough to knock me out, I guess… I remember him telling me if I did this he would give me the pictures. He wouldn’t go to the police and… I was confused...”
I put my head in my hands. He drugged her. That fucker drugged her and...
“He raped you?” I struggled to get the words out.
“I let him do it. To protect the cl-”
“You didn’t have a fucking choice,” I shouted over her as I struggled to my feet. “He preyed on you, convinced you while you were half out of it that the only way to protect us was to let him... He took you against your will.”
Rage and torment built up inside of me. I knew it was about to burst out of me. The complete and total anger at what happened to her was consuming me. That asshole attacked her. He’d been here at the compound over the years and although I’d avoided him, I had done nothing about him working for us. I’d seen him laughing with War and King, shaking hands with Cassie, and drinking in the bar with my brothers.
Everything around me went black. My vision narrowed. I was going to pass out. Her words were repeating through my mind. All I could hear was air rushing through my ears.
I walked away, jealousy and anger consuming me. I’d not been able to see what was happening to her, to know Waverley would never do something like that. And I left her there with that fucking monster, then came back to the compound and fucked that girl, making sure she saw us.
I stumbled and dropped on one knee. My breath shuddered out of me as the burning in my eyes and nose grew harder to fight back. All this time, for years, I’d hated her for what she did to me. I hated myself for what I did to get back at her. Over something that neither of us had any control over. He had taken that away from me. Away from her.
I turned around and looked at her. She had gotten to her feet and was cupping her elbows in her palms, trembling and pale. Clearly coming to the same realization I was. She stared at me, and her heartbreak matched mine. We destroyed each other that night and that fucking asshole orchestrated it.
My vision narrowed once again, but this time I was seeing red. I clenched my fists at my side, felt the cut on my palm split open again.
“Hudson,” she took a step towards me.
Her soft voice stopped me, only for a moment. She stood in front of me, tears tracking her cheeks. I touched her chin and tilted her face up to mine, seeing the pain and humiliation and anger swirling in the dark depths of her eyes.
I felt sick to my stomach. Waverley might not think she was blameless in this situation, but I could see it for what it was.
That fucking animal had intended to drug her all along. She’d been angry enough not to believe his bullshit, but it wasn’t enough to prevent her from drinking what he had given her.
She was talking, her lips moving, concern etched her features, but I couldn’t hear a word. I could barely see her through the rage taking over me. There was only one person I wanted to see right now, and I knew where the fucker was.
I charged past her, but her hand snagged my arm, and she pulled me hard, screwing up the sleeve of my top in her hands, forcing me to stop. I looked at her clinging to my arm, her eyes still wet with tears, but there was a fierce look in them now.
“You can’t go down there, you’ll kill him.”
“Let me go,” I growled out.
“Hudson, don’t do this,” she put her other hand on my chest, stepping in front of me, like she could stop me if I wanted to get by her. “Please, listen to me.”
“He won’t be the first man I’ve killed, Waverley,” I growled out. “I’m going to put a fucking bullet through his dick before I beat the shit out of him. He’ll wish he never set foot on this compound. I’m going to fuck him up and I’m going to bury him where no one will ever find his mutilated body.”
“No,” she tugged on me again as I moved.
I grabbed her arms and lifted her, intending to move her aside so I could go find that prick, but she winced and cried out.
“Shit,” I set her down. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
She was rubbing at her arm. I looked down at it at the same time she did. Her eyes widened as she looked at me. There was no fucking way those bruises could have come up that fast, bruises in the shape of fucking fingers.
