“Fucking enough,” I mumbled. And I went off in search of Tate.
I didn’t care if she was Ben’s date.
She was leaving with me.
I trudged through the dirt and wet leaves, keeping my ears peeled for any sound. After I’d run into a tipsy Ben—who admitted he’d lost his date—I’d darted into the woods, towards the parking lot, looking for Tate.
She wasn’t around the bonfire, and it’s not like she had many friends there.
Or anywhere, dickhead.
A loud, guttural moan echoed in the woods, and I twisted my head towards the wail.
What? Shit.
I started running, jumping over logs with my heart pounding so hard that it hurt to breath.
“Why are the guys at our school such dicks?” I heard a voice growl.
Tate.
I turned left and bounded through a mess of fallen branches and wet foliage.
“Shit!” I heard a male voice spout. “You fucking bitch!”
I peeled through the trees and came into a clearing of fallen trees and sawed off tree trunks. My chest heaved with every hard breath as I took in the scene before me.
Tate stood over the crumpled mess of Nate Dietrich as he lay in visible agony on the ground. He had one hand covering his eyes and one holding his crotch.
Motherfucker.
“Tatum!” I barked, more out of the sting of fear than the heat of anger.
If she’d attacked him, it was because she’d been threatened.
He’s dead.
She spun around, and I struggled to keep myself in check. Nate was already subdued, but I caught sight of her ripped tank top strap, and every muscle tensed.
“Did he hurt you?” I asked through nearly clenched teeth.
She placed a hand over her shoulder and torn shirt. “He tried. I’m fine.” She would barely look at me.
I slipped off my shirt and tossed it to her.
“Put this on,” I ordered. “Now.”
She didn’t rush to obey, not that I had expected her to, but my temper was up and God help her if she didn’t do what she was told.
Alone, in the woods. In the dark.
I wanted to throttle her for being so careless.
I walked to Nate, who still lay on the ground. “You have a poor, fucking memory, Dietrich. What did I tell you?” I bent down and got in his face.
My warning to him that day in class clearly hadn’t sunk in.
I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hauled him up before slamming my fist into his stomach. He caved, hunching over, as all of the air was forced out of his body.
And I didn’t stop.
I punched and slammed, hit and gutted Nate Dietrich, pounding on his body and face until he was too done to do anything but take the abuse.
The ache in my hand vibrated through my bones and traveled up my arm as the full force of my temper descended on him.
Lowlife piece of shit!
He was bad news, but I wasn’t, I kept telling myself. There was a difference between Nate and me.
Nate had touched her.
I’d never done that.
He’d sexually harassed her.
My locker room thing was just to mess with her.
She’d told him time after time to stop.
I’d seen her cry, wanting me to stop.
And the more I hit Nate, the more I didn’t see his face anymore, but my own.
“Stop.” I heard Tate yell behind me. “Jared, stop!”
I didn’t want to stop until he was done breathing, but I was getting Tate the hell out of here. Now.
I yanked Nate by the bend of his elbow and threw him to the ground. “This isn’t over,” I promised, not feeling the slightest bit guilty about his bloodied eye, nose, and mouth. Blood lined the inside of his lips, and he lay crumpled on the ground, panting and groaning.
I looked over to Tate, whose eyes looked scared and chest rose and fell in fear.
A fear she didn’t have when I first found her here.
“I’m taking you home.” It wasn’t open for discussion.
“No thanks. I have a ride,” she argued, tipping her chin up.
She has a ride? I wanted to laugh and growl at the same time.
God, I was going to enjoy shutting her up.
“Your ride,” I turned to look at her, “is drunk. Now, unless you’d like to wake up your poor grandmother to come out into the middle of nowhere to get you after your date gets drunk, and you almost get raped—which I’m sure will do wonders for your father trusting you to be alone, by the way—then you’ll get in the goddamn car, Tate.”
I turned to walk towards my car, fully prepared to throw her over my shoulder if I had to.
Chapter 22
“What’s your problem?” she blurted out as soon as we were racing down the highway, headed back to town.
“My problem?” I was pissed, and she could tell. “You come to the bonfire with that idiot Ben Jamison, who can’t stay sober enough to drive you home, and then you traipse off into the woods, in the dark, and get groped by Dietrich. Maybe you’re the one with the problem.”
Reel it in, asshole.
When I thought about what Nate could’ve done to her—would’ve done to her—I wanted to kill. Tate was too headstrong. Too independent.
She misjudged her own capabilities and put herself in danger.
“If you recall, I had the situation under control,” she sneered. “Whatever favor you think you were doing me only satisfied your own anger. Leave me out of it.”
I sucked in my cheeks, breathing in the thick air and zoning in on the road.
The car roared under me, propelling us faster as my hands strangled the steering wheel.
“Slow down,” she commanded, but I ignored her.
“There’s going to be situations you can’t handle, Tate.” I was trying to reason with her, but even I didn’t know where I was going with this. She couldn’t exist in the closed box I’d created for the rest of her life, and I couldn’t protect her from everything. Sooner or later, she’d leave.
“Nate Dietrich wasn’t going to take too kindly to what you did to him tonight,” I continued. “Did you think that was going to be the end of it? He would’ve come after you again. Do you know how badly Madoc wanted to do something after you broke his nose? He didn’t want to hurt you, but he wanted to retaliate.”
She overestimated herself. Some guys didn’t care about victimizing women.
Obviously.
“You need to slow down.”
“No, I don’t think so, Tate,” I laughed out. “You wanted the full high school experience, didn’t you? Football player boyfriend, casual sex, reckless behavior?”
So I switched off my headlights before she got a chance to respond.
The road before us went black, and Tate let out a small gasp as she pressed herself back in the seat.
The adrenaline of fear and excitement shot through my veins. It was the type of feeling I had lived for while she was away. It made me feel alive.
The dull, pathetic light from the moon poured in through the trees, but it illuminated very little.
“Jared, stop it. Turn on the lights!” Her voice cracked, and she was scared. I wasn’t looking at her, but I could still see her, and she was bracing for a crash with one hand on the dashboard.
“Jared, stop the car now!” she pleaded, and I hated the sound. “Please!”
“Why? This isn’t fun?” I goaded and already knew the answer. “Do you know how many squealing airheads I’ve had sitting in that seat? They loved it.”