BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (28 page)

“No. I’m talking about when I came home for the graduation party,” he confessed. “I had a plan. I was going to exorcise all my demons. Including you.”

“How?” she whispered, although she thought she already knew.

It had been her worst fear, and she’d shoved it so far away on the back burner, she’d almost forgotten it was there. But whatever thick, gooey mess was inside the pot had burnt to the bottom and was now beginning to stink.

“I set you up.” He lowered his head again, his hair obscuring the expression on his face. “Jenny—I wanted to make you jealous. And Ryan. So I could play the hero. I wanted you to want me. I wanted you to love me—to fall so hard, that when I left, the weight of it would crush you.”

His words took her breath. Her chest felt as if it had been pierced by something sharp and fine, like a needle drawing all the blood from her beating heart.

“You son-of-a-bitch.” The words escaped her in rush of breath.

“I don’t have any excuses.” His voice was low, pained. “Except to say that... it was a mistake. I thought it would set me free, that it would stop the pain, but I was wrong.”

“Who are you?” she whispered, blinking at him in disbelief. “I don’t even know who you are. All of this... all of this has been a lie?”

“It only started out that way.” Ric lifted his face to look at her, and it was like looking at the ghost of the man she thought she knew. He looked haunted, pale, sick. “But the minute I saw you, when you came into the gym and threw your arms around me... fuck. It all flooded back in. I loved you so much. I knew then, I could never escape it, no matter what I did.”

“You knew then?” she choked. “But you still went through with your diabolical plan, didn’t you? Jenny... Ryan... My God, Ric. What kind of monster are you?”

“That’s the thing. I wasn’t being possessed by demons. I was the demon. Plot-twist.” That sad, awful smile again. “It was me the whole time.”

She stared at him in disbelief, trying hard not to let the tears fall.

“You wanted to crush me?” She felt her lip quivering and willed it to stop. “You succeeded. I’m shattered into a million fucking pieces. You win.”

“Leesa!” he called after her, but she was already up and running.

Instead of going deeper into the cave—she didn’t want to have anything to do with this place of death and rebirth ever again; he could rot in it for all she cared—she ran past the walrus skins and out into the cold. She ran through the snow, and it wasn’t until she was out of breath that she realized she was only wearing a t-shirt and panties.

Ric caught up with her when she stopped to clutch the stitch in her side.

“Get away from me!” she panted, trying to shove him away. “I don’t ever want to see you again!”

“You don’t have to.” His arms wrapped around her from behind and she struggled to free herself. “But I’m not letting you die of hypothermia out here. We’ll pack up and I’ll take you back.”

“Let me go!” she screamed, using her nails to rake his arms. Even her short nails could do damage. He hissed breath through his teeth when she did that, but he didn’t let her go. “I wish you really had died in that cave! Let me go!”

“I wish I had to.” His breath streamed beside her ear as he lifted her, kicking, off the ground, and started carrying her back.

“Fuck you!” She kicked hard—she was more fit now than ever, and she knew she was bruising his shins, but he didn’t seem to care. It certainly didn’t stop him. “Let me go!”

“Stop it! You’ll die out here, Leesa!” he growled.

“Let me die!” She elbowed him hard in the ribs and he gave a low grunt of pain, but he didn’t stop his forward motion back to the cave. “I want to die! I’d rather die out here than go back in there with you!”

Suddenly all the fight went out of her and she collapsed. Her body went limp and she slithered out of his arms and into the snow. It was cold, numbing, and that was good. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, the pain finally hitting her. This was no sharp sting—this was an all-over body ache. It hurt in every part of her. Every muscle, every organ. Her heart hurt, but so did her liver and her kidneys and her goddamned spleen. He’d invaded every cell of her body, and now all of those places that had been filled with light had gone dark. It was agony.

“Leesa.” He picked her up like she was a little bit of fluff, holding her to his chest. “Oh Leesa, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

She couldn’t get any words out. Instead, she just hid her face and cried as he carried her back into the cave. A wave of heat blasted her and she suddenly felt how cold her body really was and shivered.

“D-d-don’t!” She protested, teeth chattering, when he set her down on the mattress and started stripping her bare.

“I have to get you warm.” He stripped too, and then pulled the sheet over them both, scooping her up, her back against his front. “Let me make you warm.”

“Noooo!” she howled, trying to struggle out of his arms again. Her fingers and toes were tingling with cold. “Oh my God, Ric, what have you done?
What have you done?”

“I’m sorry,” he choked, keeping his big arms around her as he buried his face in her hair. “I love you, Leesa. I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

She stilled, miserable. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“I’ve never done this before.” His big arms were shaking as he held onto her so hard she could barely breathe. Not that she cared. “It’s no excuse. I was just... I was afraid of how much I loved you. How much... how much you could hurt me. Even after I knew how I really felt, I went ahead, because I thought... I needed to trust you. I thought if you could prove it to me, that I wouldn’t be so afraid...”

“Afraid of what?”

“Losing you.” His lips brushed her neck and he barely held back a sob. “And now I’ve lost you.”

“You haven’t lost me.” Her tears wouldn’t stop, but she didn’t care. She turned to face him, letting him see her torment, the sheer amount of pain he’d caused her. “The awful truth is… I’d rather die out there in a snowbank than be without you.”

“What are you saying?”

She kissed a tear that had slipped down into his stubble.

“Simply that I love you. You could break my heart a million times over and that wouldn’t ever change. I will always love you.” Her voice was thick with sorrow and she took a shaky breath. “But bloody hell, Ric, this better be the last test. And I hope to God I just passed it.”

“Not a test.” He grabbed her tight to him, tucking her head under his chin. His heart was beating so hard against her ear. “I just knew I had to tell you. I had to come clean and be honest with you, even though I was sure you would leave me. I couldn’t start our life out with lies, no matter what happened.”

“You hurt me,” she whispered and his arms tightened around her. “You hurt me so much. Please don’t do that again. No more, Ric.”

“I promise,” he said hoarsely, rocking her against him. “Oh God, baby, I promise you. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

They stayed that way a long time, listening to each other breathing. She didn’t know how long. Her body had warmed, and her heart had been broken, but she’d survived it. They both had. Part of her thought she was being stupid and weak—how could she be lying in the arms of a man who had planned, and succeeded, in hurting her beyond measure—but another part of her knew better.

She could leave him. She had that power. And so did he. But he was still here. He’d faced his fear, he’d told her the truth and admitted his mistakes, as grievous as they were. She could forgive him for falling in love with her—for being so afraid of losing her, he went to desperate measures to make her prove it to him.

Even if he hadn’t consciously meant his confession to be a test, it had been.

And she had stayed. In spite of her heartache. In spite of the pain.

She loved this man and she’d passed every test he’d thrown at her.

“Ric... can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything, Leesa.”

“Why did you build that wall around your heart?” She put her hand there, over his big, beating heart, feeling it stutter a little at her question.

“I told you. Fear.”

“Of being hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“...but who hurt you?”

He didn’t answer her for so long she lifted her head to look at him.

“Do you know?”

He nodded, but still didn’t say anything. The expression on his face was beyond pained.

“You don’t have to tell me.” She frowned, touching his cheek in the firelight. “It’s okay.”

She tucked her head back under his chin, feeling his chest rising and falling with his breath.

“God, Leesa, I was so little.” He swallowed. “I didn’t even remember my real mother. And she was nice to me. It... fuck.”

She held her breath, not even moving.

“It felt nice,” he whispered to the cave walls. “To make her feel good. It made me feel good.”

“Oh my God.” She knew instantly who he was talking about, although she couldn’t have said how she knew. A lightbulb just went off and she flashed back to what he’d said about his first stepmother, during the talk they’d had at the range—
she turned to the person closest to her, when she needed someone.

Goosebumps rose up on her arms. “Oh Ric. I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault.” He cleared his throat. “For a long time, I blocked it out. I thought my weight was the cause of my problems—but it was really just a solution to another problem.”

“A coping mechanism?”

“Sure. But it became more than that. When I was... big... it was my catch-all for not risking anything. I could blame feeling rejected on being repulsive.”

“You were
never
repulsive.” She lifted her head off his shoulder and took his face in her hand, pulling it towards her.

“You were never objective.” He stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “The thing is... it started so early, it was like it had always been a part of me. I didn’t know anything else, any other way of being. Then something happened that made me realize, while I’d succeeded in walling out anything that might hurt me—I’d also walled myself in.”

“What was that?” she asked. “You said something happened. What happened?”

He breathed out too long and too hard before replying. “Do you mind if I don’t answer that?”

His hesitation gave her the answer and she loved him for not wanting to hurt her by reminding her of her part in his need to strip away his past.

“Was it after we kissed? When our parents went missing?”

“Yeah.”

Annalesa held onto him hard. “I loved you then, Ric. I love you now. You did wall me out—pretty effectively sometimes. But you never lost me. You never lost my love. It was always there, ready for you to come accept it.”

“Jesus, Leesa.” He sighed. “I wish I hadn’t been so blind.”

“Objectivity fail,” she agreed with a nod and a smile. “The ‘real you’ has always been beautiful. Amazing, strong, beautiful and utterly flawed. And I love you. Not in spite of your flaws, Ric. I love those too. Even the way you have to constantly test me to make sure I’m not going anywhere.”

“You weren’t feeling the love earlier.”

“I think you were spot-on, when you said you were born here.” She traced her finger over the swirls of his ink. “That’s what we do, when we’re learning something new. We have to test the boundaries and make mistakes and fall down. And get back up.”