Craving Tori: White Timber Pack
J. J. Marstead
Prologue
Two years earlier…
I couldn’t wrap my head around what happened tonight. Steve was so pissed off about the outfit I wore to school today. I really didn’t think it was too revealing compared to what I usually wear. But he felt that I was on display and accused me of wanting to bait the guys at my school.
So we ended up having an argument, and what he did next shocked the crap out of me. He hit me, he hauled off and slapped me right in the face. The sting of his palm was heavily felt on my cheek and the ringing in my ears was deafening. Tears began soaking the corner of my eyes as the pain radiated through my skull. The slap echoed around the room and he stood there with a shocked look on his face, while I held my sore, redden cheek with my hand. The tears soaking my face while I looked at him through water-filled eyes.
“Oh baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he cooed, his arm reaching for me. His hand grabbing a hold of my free arm, and he pulled me against his chest, holding me tightly against him.
“I didn’t mean it. I won’t ever do that again, I love you,” he muttered placing a kiss against my head. I released a tiny sigh. It was just in the heat of the moment, that’s all it was. That’s what I kept telling myself. He loved me, he wouldn’t hurt me on purpose.
“I love you too.” I whispered softly against his chest.
On the drive home, he kept repeating himself. That he was sorry, that he never meant to hit me. That he’ll never hit me again. That he loved me.
When I arrived home and unlocked the door, my parents were out for supper with some friends of theirs. I went right up to my bedroom. I was grateful my parents weren’t there. If they got a good look at my face, I knew they wouldn’t let me see Steve ever again. My cheek was sore and throbbing. I cried because I was unsure what to do. I loved Steve, but his hand slapping me across the face hurt, not only physically but emotionally as well. I ended up crying for an hour before my tears dried up and I fell asleep.
The next morning when I woke up for school, I dreaded seeing my parents. When I saw myself in the mirror, my eyes widened in horror as I noticed my left eye had a reddish-purple mark around it.
I can’t believe I have a black eye! Oh my God, my parents are going to flip their lids when they see this.
I wouldn’t be able to see him again if they knew he did this to me. On top of that, to make it worse, they didn’t know his real age, and if they did, they would have for sure forbidden me from ever seeing his face again. They thought he was eighteen, when he was much older than that. He was twenty-three and I was only sixteen, seventeen in two months.
I couldn’t let anyone know about what happened last night. I didn’t know how to live without him, he was my escape away from home. I went to Elizabeth’s a lot, but he was the first guy who ever really showed any interest in me, and I loved how he made me feel, well most of the time.
Last night wasn’t really the first time he had hit me. Well, technically he’d always just pushed me around, but it was mostly playful. Last night when his hand hit my cheek, I was shocked right out of my mind. I never thought something like that would’ve happened to me, and it did.
I was going to have to come up with something to say to people if they asked about the black eye. I looked at the ugly bruise on my face and bit my lip. I needed to cover this up with some make-up and pray that it would work. I grabbed the handle of the drawer in the bathroom and took out my make-up. I placed it on the counter while I dug through it. I finally got my hands on the cover-up and opened it. I put a fair amount on the little sponge and spread it around my eye, blending it into my skin.
I sighed in relief when I noticed it’s covering the angry bruise. I’d just let people know that it was because of soccer practice yesterday after school.
Elizabeth would tear Steve a new one if she knew he was the one that did this to my eye. She didn’t like Steve to begin with. She didn’t really approve of my relationship with him. She told me when I had started dating him that there’s something not right about him. I just thought maybe she was jealous because she didn’t have anyone. I was spending most of my free time with Steve rather than Elizabeth. I felt for Elizabeth, I really did.
I remembered the first day Elizabeth was walking into school with her head down, closed off to everyone. I was drawn to her. I wanted to comfort her and be her friend, and the rest was history. We’ve been best friends since, she’s like the sister I never had.
Elizabeth was a wolf shifter. I knew it was crazy that she turned into a wolf. To say I was shocked as hell when I found out was an understatement of a lifetime. I saw a wolf coming towards me, then boom, there was Elizabeth stark naked in front of me. I was the jaw dropped kind of shocked, I really was. I couldn’t form a sentence when she started talking to me. But the shock of it faded after a while. Her being a shifter didn’t change who she was. She was still my best friend and she was always there when I needed her.
Elizabeth felt so out of place at school. I asked her why, and she told me it was because she was the only shifter attending school here. I asked her how she knew that and she told me she couldn’t sniff any other shifters out. I was a little weirded out by the fact that she could sniff people out at first. She told me humans had a certain smell to them and shifters had their own scent. Different breeds had certain smells; wolves, cats, bears. I learned something new every day with Elizabeth.