Tamed (Torn #5)(53)

“Why the f*ck does that matter?” I couldn’t help but remember the last time we’d fought over this. He’d thought I was a whore. Back then, I hadn’t been. Now, I wasn’t sure.

“It just does,” he said, his voice tinged with so much anger that I wanted to hide from him.

“I don’t know how many,” I finally said. “I’ve lost count. I lost count a long time ago.”

Rage flashed in his eyes, but I didn’t look away from him.

“Don’t sit there and pretend you haven’t been with other women.”

His eyes narrowed. “I have.”

“And that’s okay, but it’s not okay for me to have sex? Talk about a f*cking hypocrite.”

“You’re different. No one can touch you.”

I snorted. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“The thought of someone else touching you and moving inside you makes me want to rip that f*cker’s head off. You’re mine.”

“I’m not yours,” I spit out. “You made sure that I understood that. Repeatedly. The thought of me loving you sends you running across the room, yet you don’t want me to be with anyone else. What the hell do you expect from me?”

“I…I don’t know.” He looked so broken in that moment.

I had no idea what had happened to him to cause him so much pain.

“What am I to you?” I asked finally. My voice was soft as if I was afraid my question would make him run away.

He stared at me.

A minute ticked by and then another.

“You’re everything to me,” he said.

Those four words stole my breath away. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.

“But it doesn’t matter. It never has, and it never will.”

I felt like a weight had crushed me. “What happened to you?” I blurted out. “What could have possibly happened to make you so cold that you won’t even acknowledge your own feelings?” I demanded.

I was so tired of going back and forth like this. Adam had hurt me more times than I could count, and I was tired of it. I wanted answers.

His eyes locked with mine. They were so dark that they looked almost black. “I loved someone once, and she destroyed me.”

“What?” I whispered, shock filling my voice. Adam loved someone? Was it before or after me? Who was she? What could she have done to utterly destroy him this way, to make him want nothing to do with me or any other woman?

“I loved Hilary the moment I saw her,” he said. His gaze stayed on me, but he looked like he was a million miles away. “She was everything to me.”

“When was this?” I asked.

He grinned, but it held no amusement. “The first time I saw her was my junior year of high school. She was a new student. For a year, I watched her, talked to her, but I never let on how I felt. Finally, I grew a pair our senior year and told her everything. Instead of running away, she threw her arms around me and kissed me senseless. After that, we spent every day together. We did everything together.”

The emotion in his voice was almost more than I could bear. I hated Hilary. He spoke of her in a way that I knew he’d never speak of me. She’d ruined him before I even had a chance to be with him.

“I wanted to marry her. I was seventeen, and I knew I wanted to be with her forever.” He swallowed roughly. “Then, she got pregnant.”

The world fell out from underneath me. Pregnant? That means…oh God, Adam is a father. He has a child.

“Her parents freaked, as did mine. They demanded that we get rid of it.” His features turned hard. “We refused. They kicked us both out. My uncle helped us though. He gave me a job at the store and found us a place to live. It was cheap and dirty, but it was all I could afford. I worked my ass off, trying to save money before the baby came. Even though things were bad, it was probably the happiest seven months of my life.”

Whoa, wait a minute. “Seven months?” Last time I checked, pregnancy took nine months.

Pure hatred flashed in his eyes. “Hilary broke down and told me the truth two months before our baby girl was due. She didn’t think the baby was mine.”

“What?” I gasped.

“She’d been sleeping with a guy we went to school with—Brandon. Apparently, she’d been sleeping with him a hell of a lot more than she had been with me. She was almost positive that it was his. She’d gone to him before she told me, but he hadn’t wanted anything to do with the baby or her. He’d told her to stay away from him, so she came to me. She knew I would take care of her.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“I don’t think she would have ever told me, except Brandon’s skin tone is a bit darker than mine, so there would be no way for her to hide if it wasn’t mine.”

My eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I was so angry with her, but I couldn’t leave her. I knew she didn’t love me, but there was a chance that the child was mine, so I stayed until she had the baby.” He paused, obviously lost in a thousand memories. “When Hilary went into labor, I prayed that the baby would be mine. I didn’t care if Hilary wanted me or not. If that baby were mine, I wanted to keep her. I’d give her everything in the world.” A tear slid down his cheek. “Abigail was the most beautiful little baby I had ever seen, but she was definitely her father’s child. She had the darkest skin I’d ever seen on an infant. It was as if God wanted me to know in that very first moment that she wasn’t mine.”