Page 60 of Lilacs and Leather
“The Christmas of our senior year. We met up with my family, my pack I guess, at this big lodge to have a massive holiday get together. On Christmas Eve, he got down on one knee during dinner and, in front of God and everyone, proclaimed his undying love for me and asked me to be his wife.”
Rhett snorts incredulously at that.
“I know. This wasn’t long after the hotel incident. I’d healed enough, but taking a knot still made me really sore afterwards.”
“For fuck’s sake—”
“I know. Trust me, I know,” I cut in, placing a soothing hand on his chest.
He lets out an angry sigh, and I can practically hear his teeth grinding. I wait until he relaxes before I continue.
“Like I was saying, this wasn’t long after that, and things were… okay. We still fought, but he made it a point to walk away from the arguments before it escalated. He seemed like he was really trying. But at no point did we ever talk about our future. We were both set to graduate at the end of spring semester, but we never talked about what came next after that. I thought nothing of it at the time, but I can look back now and realize that, to him, our future was a foregone conclusion, and therefore didn’t need to be discussed.
“So, when he proposed, it absolutely blindsided me. I remember looking around the table, at all the faces of these people with whom I share blood, but who were no better than strangers, and seeing howhungrytheir eyes were. Our pack was big, but it wasn’t influential. Darren’s father is a successful evangelical pastor with his own call-in TV program. To my hyper-Christian family, I’d basically bagged a celebrity. They wanted the money and power that being connected with a person like Pastor McLaughlin would bring.”
“I thought I recognized that name. He’s one of those faith healers, right?” Rhett asks.
I nod. “He claims to be a man of God, but he’s just a con artist. And his son learned every trick in his book.”
“What happened when you rejected the proposal?”
I sigh, closing my eyes for a moment to brace myself. “I didn’t so much reject him as just run. I left the lodge, and Jason found me a few miles away, hyperventilating in my car. After he got me to calm down, I told him everything that Darren had done to me. He wanted me to take off right then and there and never look back, but then my mom found us.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Rhett exhales.
“And all the saints, too. She was livid in a way I hadn’t seen before. She called me every name in the book, and to top it all off, she told me that if I didn’t go back and beg for Darren’s forgiveness, I’d be cut off. My tuition would stop being paid, my bank account would be closed, my car would be repossessed. Anything they’d given me would be taken back.”
“Your mother is a real piece of fucking work,” Rhett grumbles.
“That’s not even the half of it,” I reply.
Rhett pulls me closer, and I stretch my legs out a little, letting them fall over his knee. He lets me sit in silence for a long moment, and I gather my will.
“I found out later that she’d spoken with Darren before she found me and Jason. He wanted me, and she wanted another alpha son. She knew what was going to happen but said nothing to warn me. She let me go back, knowing what sort of mindset Darren was in, made me think it was the only way. I thought I might be able to convince him to agree to a long engagement, maybe get us settled somewhere after graduation and start our careers before the wedding. But he wasn’t interested in talking.”
My voice fades out in a hoarse whisper, and I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. I twist my hands in my lap, tucking my chin and closing my eyes. Rhett tenses, arms tightening around me. He kisses the top of my head, and I let the dark chocolate scent of him calm me a little.
“When I got back to the lodge, he tried to use his bark to force my body into heat.”
Rhett’s snarl tears through the silence, and I feel my hands start to shake.
“He needed me to be in heat for the mating bond to actually fall into place. But it didn’t work. Maybe I was too scared, or my body was rejecting the order as a defense mechanism because I wasn’t fully healed, but whatever it was, I didn’t react to his bark or the pheromones. But he did it anyway.”
My voice dies in a choking cough, tears returning. My shoulder throbs against the feel of phantom teeth in my flesh, tearing me apart. Rhett’s fingers slide into my hair as he presses the side of my face to his chest. His grip isn’t hard, and I let myself relax into the safety of his embrace. His hands are large enough to cover half of my head, allowing his thumb to gently stroke my cheek, catching my tears.
“The bond didn’t take,” Rhett whispers, more a statement than a question.
I shake my head. “Jason found me after we’d…. just after. He made the call; I was getting out, consequences be damned. I left Louisiana on Christmas Day four years ago with only what was already in my car and would fit in a backpack. I found a bank on my way through Alabama and cashed out my savings before they could cut me off, but I lost the trust fund my paternal grandparents had left me, and I had to drop out of college. Jason has friends from his community college days who live in Everton, and one of them let me stay on her couch while I recovered from… everything. She introduced me to Gabby, and the rest is history.”
Rhett is quiet for a long moment, fingers gently playing with my hair. I wipe my face as my tears run dry, feeling a little calmer. Rhett doesn’t speak for a long time, the silence in the room only interrupted occasionally by traffic noise from the street far below.
“McLaughlin does not know where you are, I take it.”
Rhett’s hoarse whisper makes me jump a little, but I shake my head. “I’ve abandoned social media almost entirely, and I trust Jason with my life. That my family knows about Wila’s was a complete accident.”
“But he’s going to be at the wedding?”
I nod. “Darren’s one of my brother’s groomsmen.”