She slowly sat up as he said he should go, and she tugged down her bra and shirt, at least recovering that small trace of dignity. “You wanted to know what happened to me.” Her voice trembled, and the shaking of her limbs hadn’t quite ceased. Her voice sounded sad, too. “I guess you have a right to know since I dug up your past.” She wrapped her arms around her legs. Technically, his violating her without her permission would have voided all rights, but she was beginning to suspect that despite how very far he’d been going, he had never meant to really go through with it. “I trusted the wrong person, and when I rejected him, he tried to destroy my tree even though he knew it would destroy me in the process. The only reason I’m alive right now is because someone saw him and stopped him.”
Jia Li hadn’t understood what was happening at first, when her leg had started to burn like she was holding it against a flame. It had begun at her ankle and had move upward, toward her thigh. Then she’d understood. She could feel the agony that her tree felt at the fire, but she hadn’t known why there was a fire or who had started it. She only knew that she had simultaneously felt her own pain and her tree’s, and she had had no idea how to stop it.
Even after she’d been rushed to the emergency room, the doctors had been unable to help. Her skin had just melted away like candle wax, but suddenly, it had stopped. The wound had stopped spreading or worsening though the pain remained, and they’d been able to patch her up, but not without permanent scarring.
The dryad hadn’t known what had been the cause until her father had received the phone call from the police that had detailed what had happened. If her ex-boyfriend hadn’t been stopped, she would have burned alive with her tree, powerless to stop any of it. It was kind of ironic that her life had been saved once from someone who had claimed to care about her, and once from a guy who had told her from the beginning he could care less about her. He had definitely proved it today.
“What would you have done if it wasn’t there?” Jia Li asked him before he could leave. She was clearly referring the scar, but she didn’t move to motion toward it. He could see it if he just looked over. It was like a giant, purple elephant sitting in the corner of a tiny room. It may as well have been a neon sign in darkness. However, the question was important to her. She had to know if he really intended to go through with raping her or not. Most rapists wouldn’t have stopped even with something that disgusting. They could just ignore it, but Jack… Gabriel hadn’t. It had affected him, and she had seen the guilt in his eyes when he’d realized what it was. The dryad needed to know that she’d read it correctly.