It wasn’t until we were outside and in his truck that we spoke again. “I’m sorry, Vic. What I said about the rape…. God, it was wrong, and I didn’t mean it. You didn’t deserve that. I was angry and hurt that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about the police station and then the birthdays…. My Yoda.”
He wrapped his hands around the steering wheel as the engine rumbled, the heat blowing from the vents. “You had every right to be angry. I should’ve told you, Macayla. I should’ve told you I was that boy. Fuck, I should’ve told you about the birthdays, but… I didn’t want….” The leather crackled as his grip tightened. “I didn’t want you to see me as that kid. That angry, worthless kid who didn’t deserve any kindness from a girl who held his hand.”
Oh my God. “Vic.”
He stared out the windshield. “That day in the station…. It was the day my brother drowned in the sewer.”
I’d only been five, and that day was a distant memory. I didn’t remember everything, but I still recalled snippets, like the boy in the hoodie who had been soaking wet and so angry and sad.
“I don’t know what it was about you. Maybe how persistent you were. Or how you made sure I had a pop too. Or that you weren’t scared of me. Maybe all of it. Yeah, it was all of it. I don’t know, but somehow it felt as if you saw past who I was. You saw past the anger and destruction, and you held my hand because….”
“You needed it.”
Oh God, he’d thought he was worthless. No kid deserved to grow up feeling worthless. But that’s what Vic had seen in Jackson. Why he’d understood what he’d been going through. Because he’d felt it too.
“Yeah. And when you did, the anger, the pain…. It eased and nothing hurt anymore. I felt as if I could breathe. That I wasn’t drowning in the suffocating darkness.” He sighed. “I snuck into the officer’s desk who had been talking to your mom and found out where you lived. On your birthday, I sat up in the old oak tree and watched you and your mom make that cake and put green gummy bears all over it.
“I needed the pain to go away, Rainbird. The hurt. To not feel as if I was dying inside. I wanted to feel free like you. And for a little while, I did. But then it would fade, and I couldn’t stop chasing it. I convinced myself that if I saw you once a year, that was all I needed to survive.”
I don’t know what hurt more, hearing the pain he carried with him, or that he thought he’d been undeserving. Worthless. A kid. He’d just been a kid. Just like I’d been.
“But you stopped. You said you stopped coming.”
He shifted in the bucket seat, his hands dropping to the bottom of the steering wheel. “Your brother caught me watching you on your sixteenth birthday.”
I didn’t have to think back to my sixteenth birthday because I remembered it clearly. It was right before Mom died. Ethan hadn’t lived with us for years, but the doctors had only given her a few more weeks, so he’d taken time off from hockey and was staying with us.
“We had a fight, and he told me to stay away from you.”
My breath hitched. “That’s why you wanted to talk to him about us. To explain.”
“Yeah.”
I shifted in my seat and reached across, settling my hand on his arm. “You’re not worthless, Vic. You weren’t worthless to me then, either. If I had thought you were, I wouldn’t have left you my Yoda.”
He looked at me, scowling. “I thought you forgot it.”
I shook my head. “And I thought you needed it more than I did.”
He closed his eyes a second, chin dipping. “Fuck, I don’t deserve you.”
I couldn’t wait any longer. I crawled across the center console and into his lap, my back against the steering wheel, and my bent knees on either side of him. “You’re the most deserving man I know, Vic Gate.”
“My five second Rainbird,” he whispered just before he yanked me into him and kissed me.
Macayla
“Vic, I have to go,” I smacked his shoulder and pulled from his embrace.
“Call in sick,” he said, latching onto my hand before I managed to get off the bed and to my feet. With one tug, he yanked me back down on top of him.
“I can’t. It’s too late. I need to be there in fifteen minutes.” I wiggled against him, and he groaned, then released me.
We were in the cabin, and Jackson was at school. Vic had been back just over a week, and Jackson and I pretty much lived at his house except for sleeping, but Vic was trying to change that. He had been working on finishing the downstairs bedroom and bathroom for Jackson in order to try to convince me to stay the night with him.
I stood up and shimmied into my panties and jeans. I grabbed my bra off the back of a chair and put it on before pulling the black, long-sleeved V-neck shirt over my head.
I hurried into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and twisted my hair into a knot. When I came back out, Vic was on his back, hands behind his head, one knee bent, and the sheets kicked off. His cock was hard and throbbing beneath his briefs.