Marks and Scars

Baggage

When I looked back up at Jeremy, he was wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, his teeth quickly returned back to normal. His stormy expression was fierce.

“Mine,” he growled, and grabbed my face, pulling me into another kiss.

I had to force myself to put up a struggle, pushing with all my might against his chest. He leaned back, giving into my protest. “Something wrong, love?”

“What the hell did you just do?” I shrieked at him, still trying to push him farther away.

“I marked you.” He said it so simply, as if it were completely normal, nothing to be upset at.

My heart thundered against my chest, my hands trembled with anger. So many thoughts were raging in my mind. I wanted to scream at him, cuss at him. But my lips only trembled. No words would come out and allow me to convey my anger in a dignified manner. Instead, I felt my eyes welling up with tears and I cursed at myself internally. Why did I have to cry when I was angry?

I fought the tears, forcing them back down. I closed my eyes, squeezing my eyelids tightly. “A little warning would have been nice,” I finally spat.

“Why would you need warning?” he asked me slowly.

“So I could have prepared myself! You should have explained it, I still have questions.”

“If you have questions, Kara, then ask them. How am I supposed to know you have questions until you speak your mind? Marking is the normal thing to do when you find your mate. In normal circumstances, this would have been done before we even said our first hellos.”

Normal? Who the hell does he think he is talking to?

“I am human, Jeremy,” I yelled with a strained voice, still forcing tears down. ‘Humans don’t have mates like this and they sure as hell don’t mark their partners like that!” I shoved my blood stained hand into his face, and he instinctively took a step back.

I took advantage of the extra space between us and slipped out from in between the wall and his chest. I took a few steps toward the couch, before turning back around to face him.

“I’m not human,” Jeremy stated unapologetically. “I tried to do things the human way, but it just wouldn’t have worked.”

“You gave it all of half a day!” I bit back as a retort. “And now you just decide to give up because it’s too different for you?”

“I couldn’t wait another cold, damned minute for you to be mine,” Jeremy thundered. “For the whole world to know that you are mine.”

He reached into his back pocket, pulling out a rolled up manilla envelope. He threw it onto the floor between us. I stared at it, then looked back up to Jeremy.

“The human way, as you call it, is too dirty,” Jeremy spat. “It’s messy. There are too many factors, too much secrecy.”

“We just met!” I cried, shaking my head. “Secrecy? If there is something you don’t know about me, then that’s because you have to actually put in effort to get to know someone!”

“Not if we are mated,” Jeremy responded matter-of-factly. “When were you going to get around to telling me about that?” He was pointing at the envelope on the ground between us.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

I bent down, snatching up the envelope. The top of it was already torn open, so I stuck my hand in. I grabbed what felt like a few pieces of paper and pulled, producing the singular source of all my misery in the last several years.

My heart stopped as I stared down at my wedding certificate. My fingers trembled, and I took a shaky breath. Along with my wedding certificate were wedding photos. And of course, there were several photographs that painted a picture of my brief bout of infidelity.

My face spread into a bitter smile and I gave in to the tears.

“Where did you get this?” I asked him, my voice surprisingly steady and light despite the tears running down my cheeks, falling onto my neck.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeremy dismissed.

“No…” I started. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter. After all, you have it all right here in front of you. It tells you the whole story. Who cares where it came from.”

The papers fell, fluttering in the air before finally hitting the floor. I hadn’t meant to let go of them, but my hands had gone slack. “The only thing you're missing is the note.”

“Note?” Jeremy questioned, impatient.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “The note. I don’t see it here. He posted it on social media, for the world to see, outlining in vulgar details my affair, and how I was the reason. It was all my fault.”

Jeremy actually seemed a little thrown off, like he didn’t know what I was talking about now. Maybe he didn’t know everything after all.

I just moved my head up and down in a mechanical nod, my tears still free falling. “Yeah. The reason that he decided to jump off an overpass onto the interstate, right in front of a tr-”

My voice broke and at the same time, my knees gave out. I sat quickly on the floor, in an effort to cover up my fall, and hugged my knees to my chest. I could feel the early signs of a panic attack creeping up on me. It wouldn’t be long before I was hyperventilating.

Jeremy moved forward and crouched down in front of me, his arms resting on his knees.

“He killed himself?”

I looked down at the floor, trying to focus as the room had started to spin. “Yeah.”

“Because you had an affair?”

I rubbed my sweater sleeve across my face, trying to stop the flow of tears. That was the reason he had given all of his friends and family. Only I knew that there was so much more going on that led up to his death. But those were just excuses I told myself to escape the guilt. If I hadn’t tried to get even with him, he would at least still be alive.

“Kara?” Jeremy was still waiting for an answer.

“Why did you mark me before confronting me with this?” I asked him quietly, mentally sidestepping the question.

“A rogue had this information delivered to the pack house,” Jeremy’s tone was flat. “An outsider is trying to manipulate me into rejecting you. And I come back to find that at the same time, another rogue is trying to convince you to reject me?” he shook his head. “Someone is trying to separate us, and I will not be manipulated by anyone.”

“So you marked me to prove a point?”

Jeremy nodded once. I couldn’t figure out why, but that hurt almost as much as…

I dug my fingernails into my palms and lowered my knees so that I was sitting crisscrossed.

“But…” Jeremy continued, reaching out and taking my hand in his. He uncurled my fingers, rubbing his thumb in circles over the crescent shaped indents in my palm. “Marking you should have also strengthened the connection. It should have bridged the gap between our minds. I should be able to see your thoughts. And I’m inpatient, I know. But I wanted to know the truth.”

I froze, holding my breath.

“But I guess since you’re human, there is no mind link to give me the answers. I need you to do that.”

I exhaled sharply.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that you had been married?” he asked me.

“That’s not something you bring up on a first date,” I mumbled dejectedly.

“And this isn’t a normal relationship, remember?” His words were gentle this time.

“I was afraid too,” I admitted. “I was afraid if you knew the truth, you’d never come back and… I’ve never felt anything like when I’m with you. I didn’t want to lose that.”

Jeremy reached out and pulled me against his chest roughly. I tensed up out of instinct, caught off guard. Jeremy just held me, his arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked, my voice a little squeaky due to how tightly I was being squeezed.

“I might not be able to know your thoughts. But I can tell when you are being honest or when you are hiding something. Kara, I don’t ever want you to be afraid of losing me.”

My heart clenched and tears fell for a whole new reason. Jeremy just held me tighter.

The sun slowly began to set and the light coming through the windows dimmed considerably. Jeremy picked me up, carried me to the couch, and set me down on the plush leather cushion.I watched him walk over to the fire. Within minutes, there was a small fire going. Jeremy sat with his back against the arm of the couch, and I was between his legs, laying on his chest.

I had my fingers on my neck, gently prodding the spot on my neck where Jeremy had bit me. I could feel raised lines that had begun to scab over. “Does this just look like a giant hickey?” I asked, after hours of silence had long past.

“Yeah,” Jeremy answered, his hand petting the back of my head, smoothing out my hair. “Did you love him?”

I brought my hand away from my neck and tucked it under my cheek, inhaling deeply before opening my mouth to answer. “No.”

Jeremy was silent for another long minute before he asked, “Then why did you marry him?”

I had asked myself that question a million times. The answer was easy. “I was using him as an escape. And it wasn’t that I absolutely hated him. I liked him, at the time. But he was a horrible partner.”

“How?”

I bit my lip, wondering if I should tell him all the excuses I told myself over the years for why I didn’t love him, why I’d tried to leave him.

“Just tell me, Kara,” Jeremy soothed. “Nothing you say is going to make me change my mind about this.” He placed his hand gently on my neck, near the mark. I started talking before I could stop myself.

“For the one affair that I had, Robert had dozens. He had some kind of problem. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of other women. He couldn’t keep it in his pants. Any time I tried to confront him, he would threaten to kill himself if I didn’t immediately forgive him and beg him not to. I was alone in that marriage long before I decided to do anything about it.”

Jeremy’s hand had stilled in my hair.

“He was always gone, and when he was home, he ignored me. It hurt, but since I never loved him, it just made me angry more than anything. I was angry and I resented him, and I let that stew for a long time. Eventually, I decided to get back at him, I thought I would hurt him the way he hurt me. I sought out a man and I had that affair, and I didn’t even try to hide it. Robert lost it. I had never taken his threats to kill himself seriously, since he used them as a bargaining chip so often. But evidently…”

I trailed off, figuring I’d said all I needed to.

“What were you trying to escape that you would marry someone like that?”

“My family. My parents. They were controlling. I had to get away or I’d be under their thumb my whole life. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but I was 19 at the time.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t spoken to me since Robert’s funeral. Before he died, Robert posted his suicide letter online, painting me as nothing but an unfaithful harlot. Everyone that I’d ever known saw it. I embarrassed my family. I haven’t heard from them in years.”

Jeremy let out a hum and continued to stroke my hair.

“Jeremy?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I felt weak. Defeated.

Jeremy agreed silently.

“You know what makes me feel worse, even now?” I asked suddenly, propping myself up so I could look at him.

Jeremy just looked at me, an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t even feel sad that he’s gone, now. I feel guilty when I think about it, yes. The ideas of how I could have handled it differently haunt me. If I could somehow go back and time and stop him now, I wouldn’t even think twice, I would do it. But now that he’s gone, I’m relieved.”

A weak grin lifted the corner of Jeremy’s mouth and he tucked my hair behind my ear. “I understand, love. You aren’t a bad person for that.”

I returned his grin, mine just as weak, before laying back down on his chest.