Show Me the Way (Fight for Me #1)(78)

The past was the past.

But he’d shared his, and I needed him to know mine.

“I won’t pretend what happened to me comes anywhere close to what you went through. To what you and Ollie and Kale lost that day. But I lost a piece of myself when I left. More than one piece,” I admitted in a hurried whisper. “I left behind my dreams and my innocence and my hopes. I left behind my grandmother. My only family.”

The loss of her drummed through me. A woeful ache.

He threaded his fingers through my hair and cupped the side of my head. “You don’t have to minimize what you went through, Rynna. Yeah, what happened with Sydney was brutal. So goddamned brutal. But I know I’m not the only person in this world who’s suffered.”

Rex wavered for a moment, before his words dropped low. “What happened, Rynna? What sent you running?”

Blinking into the distance, I let my thoughts slip back to that time. “There was this girl . . . we were friends.” I shook my head, my voice going even quieter. “But really, we weren’t. I told you before how I never quite fit in. I was always on the outside. Lonely. Looking back now, I see how she took advantage of that. That I was willing to take any abuse if it meant I had friends.”

I could feel the flinch of his fingers he held against the side of my head. “It got worse as I got older. Much worse. I found out she’d been stealing, and maybe it was stupid, but I was actually worried about her.” Regretfully, I looked at him. “So I told her mom.”

My head shook. “She was so angry. So angry. I should have known when she warned me I was going to pay for it that she meant it. But I was na?ve that way. I never suspected cruelty because it was so far out of the realm of anything I’d ever wish against someone.”

“What happened?” His voice was a low rumble, and I could feel his unease. I could feel anger sifting through him, shaking out and taking hold.

I eased down onto his chest and laid my ear against the soothing thrum of his heart. I wasn’t sure I could look him in the eyes when I made this confession. Distractedly, I traced over the tattoo on his arm and shoulder, whispering the words into the dense air.

“I’d had a crush on this boy for as long as I could remember . . . middle school at least.” It was almost sorrow that formed on my mouth, though it was brittle with hurt. “I never thought he’d look my way, then one day . . . one day he asked me out.”

“You want to grab a bite Friday night?”

I stood behind the long counter at my gramma’s diner, looking behind me, around me. Was Aaron really talking to me? Every one of the butterflies in my stomach held their breath. My heart shook so hard I was sure everyone in the diner could hear it.

“Rynna?” he prodded.

Mouth dropping open, I stared blankly at him, my tongue not cooperating. “You . . . you want to go out with . . . me?” I finally managed to stutter around the shock.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” He shrugged a muscular shoulder, and my wide-eyed gaze got transfixed on the motion. This had to be a dream, right?

“So what do you think?” He angled his face down to capture my attention. “Don’t break my heart, Rynna.”

Don’t break his heart? Oh God. Oh God. This was really happening. “Um . . . yeah . . . yes. Definitely. I definitely want to go out with you.” I nodded frantically.

He grinned and those butterflies scattered, a frenzy in my belly. He smacked the counter before pointing at me. “Pick you up at seven.”

I tried to keep the tears out of my voice while I let the story bleed free. “God, I was so excited, Rex, that this boy actually liked me.”

A growl stalked his throat. I could feel it, hear it all the way to my soul. He tightened his hold on me. As if he didn’t want to hear it but needed to, the same way I needed to tell him.

“I was on cloud nine. He picked me up and took me out. He kissed me right across the street in front of my gramma’s door. It went on like that for three weeks. The two of us together. Kissing and touching and me feeling like I finally was important.” A sob threatened at the base of my throat, words hitching as I forced the last out. “That I wasn’t invisible.”

“Rynna.” It was a shaky breath that blew between Rex’s lips.

I angled up so I could look down at his face. “I was so tired of being invisible, Rex. Of feeling stupid and unattractive and unlovable. So tired of being alone. But I should have known. God, I should have seen it coming a mile away.”

I stood at my full-length mirror, twisting this way and that, looking at myself from every angle, trying to convince myself that the dress I wore looked good. That my rolls didn’t show. That Aaron liked what I looked like, and it didn’t matter if they showed, anyway.

It was my birthday.

My eighteenth birthday, and I was so finished being scared. Finished with all the doubts and insecurities that threatened to explode and send me cowering under the covers of my bed. I was going to live this life, and live it to its fullest.

That was what Gramma had always taught me to do.

It was time to start embracing it.

Hurrying out of my room and downstairs, I bounced into the kitchen.

Gramma turned away from the new recipe she was testing by the stove. “My, my, look at you, child. All grown up.”

In the center of the old kitchen, I spun around in my dress. “Thank you for buying it for me, Gramma.”