My mother would hate that more than anything. It was only a matter of time before she came for me.
Chapter Seventeen
Jesse
I climbed out of my truck, glad to finally be out of it. I’d been gone four nights and had come straight here when I hit Rocktown. All I wanted was Lila.
Unfortunately, my girl was trying to avoid me.
The lights were on inside. So she wasn’t “busy working” like she’d said. I wasn’t cool with that. I thought we’d finally had some kind of breakthrough, and now she was pulling away. Fuck that.
We’d planned to spend the night together before I left, but she’d canceled on me—Addie had needed her due to some drama. Had that been all bullshit?
I’d been gone longer than I’d planned, tying up the last of the loose ends left by Trip, and the texts, and one call she’d actually answered, hadn’t cut it. Not when all I wanted was to kiss her, touch her, slide inside her and forget all the bullshit I’d had to deal with because of my useless brother.
I knocked on the door.
The relief when it finally opened and she was standing there hit me with force.
Christ, she was beautiful. Lila took my breath away, had from the moment I first saw her.
Her head tilted back, looking up at me, and she pushed her glasses up higher on her nose. “You’re back.”
I walked straight in, kicked the door shut behind me, and backed her up until she was pressed against the wall. “What’s going on, Lila?”
She looked up at me, those gorgeous eyes making my damned heart skip a beat. “What do you mean?”
“The whole time I was away, all I could think about was getting back here to you. I sure as shit didn’t get the goodbye I’d planned. Then I’m finally coming home and you’re busy. Work? Seriously? You telling me there’s some kind of fucking book emergency?”
She blushed.
“You’re avoiding me.”
“I’m not.”
“Bambi, you are.” Her breath hitched when I leaned closer, my lips brushing hers. I gripped her hip, soft and round, and tugged her closer. “Talk to me.”
Her eyes slid shut for a moment, then lifted back to mine. I couldn’t read what I saw in them, but I didn’t like it. “Fine,” she burst out. “You’re right, I have been.”
“Talk to me,” I said again. What the hell was going on?
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
Because I wouldn’t like it. She was worried how I’d react to whatever this was. “Fucking talk to me, Lila.”
She released a shuddery breath. “Fine. The day you left, after you stopped by for lunch…Jarod, my ah, ex-boyfriend, came into the library.”
I froze, my fingers digging deeper. “What did he want?”
“He said he came on my mother’s behalf, but he…” Her gaze slid away. “I…I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.” My heart sped up. She was going to dump my ass. She wanted to be with this Jarod asshole and not me. I was going to throw-the-fuck-up.
“Jarod used to say things, he wasn’t always…nice to me.”
Every muscle in my body clenched tight. “He hurt you?”
She shook her head quickly. “Not like that, not the way you’re thinking. But when I saw him, the things he said, what he tried to do, it brought a lot of it back up that I’d tried to bury…”
I gripped her shoulders. “What did he try to do?”
“He called me some names, wanted me to…”
“Tell me.”
“Have sex with him, and I thought for a moment that he might force me.”
The rage that fired through me made it hard to speak, to open my mouth and not lose my shit completely, and the way Lila’s eyes widened, she saw it too. I clenched my jaw tight, trying to breathe through it. What was inside me scared her. And I never wanted to scare her. I’d rather die.
“H-he didn’t touch me, I promise. I threatened him, told him you’d beat him up if he did anything, and he obviously believed me because he left.”
“Give me his name, Lila. His address.”
She jolted. “Why?”
“Why the fuck do you think?”
She shook her head again, almost desperately. “No. It’s over. This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d go after him and then you’d get into trouble. And I knew as soon as I talked to you, saw you, you’d know something was wrong. That I wouldn’t be able to hide it.”
“You don’t need to worry about me; whatever happens, my club has my back. He won’t get away with fucking with you. I plan on teaching that motherfucker a lesson.”
“No,” she said more forcefully. “I mean it. I just want to forget about it.”
I wasn’t letting this go, no fucking way, but she was upset, so I wasn’t leaving her, even to beat the shit out of her ex-boyfriend. Not yet, anyway. I forced myself to calm down, outwardly anyway, and tucked her hair behind her ear. “That’s the reason you were avoiding me?”
She nodded, her face darkening. “I was shaken up after seeing him, and I…I got all in my head. After that guy at the party…the way you went after him…” She looked up at me. “I’m not used to being around…seeing things like that. Your world is so different from mine, and I knew you’d react like you did just now, that you’d want to hit Jarod, too. I got scared. I didn’t want you to do something and get in trouble.”
“You get scared, you talk to me. You don’t hide from me.” I led her to the couch and sat down, lifting her into my lap. “You want this, Bambi? Us?”
Her pretty lashes fluttered. “Yes, of course I do.”
If I hadn’t been sitting, my knees would have given out with relief. She could do a lot better than me, and I kept expecting her to figure that out and dump my ass.
She curled into me, her head on my chest, and I rubbed her back. “Jarod comes from a strict, religious family. My family met his at a church in Spring Haven.”
The prick lived here in Spring Haven. Good to know. I kissed the top of her head, encouraging her to keep talking.
“He was controlling, jealous, but it was always my fault. He…he didn’t believe in sex before marriage. A lot of the youth at the church wore purity rings. We’d done…stuff, of course. But he’d always get angry afterwards. Blame me for tempting him. One night, it went too far. I asked him if he wanted to have sex. He pushed inside me before I was ready, no foreplay, and came instantly. It was painful, and humiliating, and he’d been so furious that he’d succumbed to temptation, that I’d made him sin, he lost his temper…”
“He hurt you?” I had to work to control my temper.
“He shoved me away,” she whispered. “I fell over, and he called me a lot of horrible names.”
I was going to end him. “What’s he doing in Rocktown?”
“My parents still go to the same church, are friends with his family. And since I’m not on speaking terms with my parents, he volunteered to come and check up on me.”