by Casey Hagen
She took a step back. “No, thanks.”
“If you’re not comfortable with Lucas, I’ll walk you,” Zane offered.
Her lips pressed into a tight thin line. When she finally spoke, anger and frustration spilled from her mouth. “I live two houses down, no thanks to you; I think I can manage to get there all by myself.”
Zane reached for her elbow. “Chloe—”
“What?” she snapped, tucking her arm behind her.
Zane’s jaw hardened, the muscle jumping as he gnashed his teeth together in frustration.
“I’ll make sure she gets home,” Lucas said.
“Was my no not clear?” she asked, turning her venom on him.
“If you’re afraid…just say so,” Zane said, his voice hard, but with an edge of worry lacing his tone.
“What’s there to be afraid of anymore? Really, Zane, is there anything? I’ve been beaten, abused, humiliated, kidnapped, drugged, and now kept. Really, is there anything else really that can be worse than any of those things?”
Chloe’s mouth snapped shut, and she scanned the yard. The chatter had all but died and all eyes landed on her. Thankfully, Tyler and Brielle hadn’t even noticed as they roasted marshmallows over a firepit along the rock wall separating the yard from the woods.
“Chloe,” Zane said, her name nothing more than a rasp filled with pity, making Lucas cringe.
People like Chloe, like Lucas, they didn’t want pity. They wanted to live life without feeling they had a defect label stamped across their foreheads for everyone to see. They needed space. They prayed for a day when they’d be more than just damaged goods in the eyes on others.
“I’m ready. Are you ready?” Chloe demanded locking her gaze on Lucas, her arms crossed.
“Let’s go.” Lucas held the door for her and waited as she stomped through. Raising his hand in a gesture to let Zane know he’d give him a call, he followed her through the house and out the front door.
Halfway down the walk, she spun on her heel and pointed at him. “I’m really not afraid, you know.”
“Not afraid. Got it,” he said, sliding his hands in his pockets and nodding.
“You don’t believe me?” she said with a sneer.
He shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”
Her eyes shot wide open with surprise. “So, you do?”
He clucked his tongue. “I didn’t say that either.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Well, great!” She stomped down the rest of the walkway and turned onto the sidewalk.
Breaking into a jog, he caught up to her. “I think you’re searching for the missing pieces of the time you were kidnapped.”
“They don’t understand. None of you do,” she said, not looking at him; instead, she funneled all of her anger into powerwalking the short distance to her door.
“Try me.”
“They violated me,” she bit out.
Her words knocked the air straight out of his lungs. So much so it took him a few gulps of air to respond. “You were never raped.”
“That’s not the only way to violate a person,” she said digging at the inside of her elbow with her thumb. “They injected me with that garbage, and my fate was sealed. I can’t scrub it away. This was in my veins. My blood. I never did a single drug in my life, and they made me an addict.”
“I understand,” he said quietly.
She snorted. “Don’t patronize me.”
He reached for the words, words he’d never uttered outside of meetings with others like him. “I was undercover and had to prove my loyalty. I told myself it was a small sacrifice if it took drug dealers off the streets. Like you, I didn’t want my addiction. I had a job to do. I’ve been sober for a year and a month now. Before that, I had been sober for just over two years.”
She skidded to a stop. “But that means you—”
Turning, he nodded. “I used while undercover on the case that led me to you.”
“But why?”
His hands curled into fists in his pockets, but he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, hoping she’d follow so he could just get her home and get the hell out of there.
“They grew suspicious of the time I was spending watching over you. Sorelli’s personal guards brought me before him to prove my loyalty. I could either shoot up to prove I’m on the team and they’d let me stick close to you, assuming I wanted to use you to scratch an itch. Or I’d get a bullet between the eyes, and Sorelli’s thugs would head straight to where you were tied up and have their way with you.”
A thrum of tension sizzled between them as she approached her door. Her fingers turned white with the force she used to hold her key in her hand as she studied him.
He shifted on his feet while heat crept up his neck under her inspection.
She finally had mercy on him and glanced away. With a twist of the lock and a turn of the handle, she stepped inside.
Lucas stopped at the welcome mat and rocked on his heels.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked, her hand going to her throat, her fingertips fluttering over her skin there.
“Not sure that’s a good idea.”
Her gaze darted about the street over his shoulder.
“What is it?” he asked, following her gaze.
“Paranoia.”
“You’re sure?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Yes.”
He took a step back and nodded. “Make sure you lock up.”
“Lucas?”
“Yeah?”
“Why me?” she asked.
“I’ve never been on a case where they brought in a hostage before,” he said clearing his throat. “I—it became personal. Watching innocents die wasn’t what I signed up for.”
“But you relapsed, for someone you didn’t even know.”
“I knew enough. You love your kids. You cried for them. Not just to hold them, but terrified you hadn’t managed to protect them; you worried that they were being hurt and tortured. Even high out of your mind, you cried out for them.”
Tears welled in her eyes and rolled hot tracks over her cheeks on their way to her wobbling chin.
He had to walk away because everything inside him screamed for him to do the exact opposite. Going against his instincts, he forced his feet to move and turned to leave even as his gut shredded.
“Where did I sleep?” she asked, her voice thick with tears.
He froze and took a shaky breath. He didn’t want to answer, afraid his honesty might just propel him across a line, changing their trajectory forever. “In my arms,” he said, the truth tumbling free despite his intentions.
Her answering whimper proved to be his undoing, and he spun on his heel. Marching right through her door, he slid his hands into her soft, dark waves. Words, explanations, wishes, they all died in his throat. He hadn’t touched her in well over a year. Hadn’t smelled the sweet scent of her warm skin. Hadn’t been close enough to see that light sprinkle of freckles hovering over the curve of her cheeks.
Her eyes widened, and she gulped. The muscles of her neck tightened.
He pressed his lips to her forehead and held her there under the warmth of his hands. Her heart beat hard against his palm, and her muscles relaxed as she let out a sigh of relief. There wasn’t a single sexual thing about the gesture, and it was everything he had needed from the very first moment he’d decided she was his to protect. Finally clean, as clean as they’d ever be, and both firmly rooted in the reality of the present, his lips slid to her temple.
Those delicate fingers wrapped around his forearms and held on with incredible strength. So very alive and powerful.
“I remember you holding me. I thought I had to have been imagining it. But your smell, your heat—I remember.”
Her words hooked into his almost-dead heart, the barbs sinking into the flesh and holding there.
Time to go.
He dropped his forehead to hers and gently pried her hands from his forearms. �
With one last look, she closed the door in his face, the locks engaging giving him a sense of sweet relief as she locked out danger.
And him.
Perhaps the most dangerous of all.
Chapter 2
The minute the kids were off to school, Chloe filled the bathtub, the water almost too hot to stand filling the generous size bathroom with steam that could rival the best sauna.
Tossing her damp, but once sweat-soaked pajamas in the hamper, she eased herself in the scalding water with a hiss as it burned against her sensitive skin. She didn’t need her therapist to tell her the habit wasn’t healthy. She knew. Despite the progress she’d made, this was the one thing she couldn’t shake entirely.
Actually, it had gotten worse in the past three months since her last session.
Coating the loofah with bodywash loaded with fine walnut shell to exfoliate, she scrubbed at her skin where they’d injected her over and over again. They’d always sunk the needle into the same spot leaving a permanent discolor in the bend of her elbow that time had not been able to erase.
Tears welled in the back of her eyes as she dug furiously at the spot. Her heart thundered behind her ribs; the thick humidity of the air choked her, and her ordinarily pale skin, now bright pink, swam in her vision as those tears fell.
Deep racking sobs shook her. Embarrassed her.
How long would she feel like they were still inside her? Still controlling her? How long would they rule her every waking moment, tarnishing the memories she made even a year later?
A scream tore from her throat, and she threw the loofah as hard as she could against the far wall where it splattered suds on the wall before falling to the tile next to the toilet.
Lungs heaving, she curled her knees to her chest, hugging them to her until the water turned tepid and her skin wrinkled. With a ragged sigh, she pushed to her feet and stepped out, wrapping her chilled body in soft terrycloth.
Her cell blinked with a missed call—no doubt from Zane—but she ignored it and instead brought up the number of the therapist she had shunned from New Hope.
She needed to stop this. She needed a direction instead of wandering around the house all day, peeking out windows, reliving the moment she was grabbed from Zane’s yard and counting the minutes until the kids got home.
The one bright spot. The reason she needed to make the call and eat a little crow.
“Good morning. You’ve reached Isabella Maynard’s office. How can I help you today?”
Chloe recognized Margaret Dale’s voice right away. Around the age of her parents, the woman reminded her of the mother she wished she had had.
Jesus. That wasn’t right. And it was a shitty thing to think. She loved her parents. She really did. But sometimes, she just wished her mother had been more nurturing, more into bonding with her only daughter. Less ready to go where the wind took her the minute her kids became adults in the eyes of the law.
Despite what her mother might have believed, there’d been no enlightenment or switch that had all of a sudden made her not need her mother as of her eighteenth birthday.
“Hi Margaret, it’s Chloe Crew. I know it’s a long shot, but I was kind of hoping to squeeze in a session with Isabella. I know I haven’t been in regularly, and she probably doesn’t want—”
“You hush now, Chloe. She would love to see you, and it just so happens she had a last-minute cancellation. Can you make it in for ten thirty?”
“Yes,” Chloe said on a sigh of relief, not realizing she had been holding her breath from the minute Margaret began to speak.
“Great! We’ll see you soon,” Margaret said.
“Thank you, Margaret,” she said quietly, the tension clutching her chest easing.
She wouldn’t fix this today, but making the call was the right thing to do. For her kids.
For herself.
Her eyelids sank shut. Two simple words and her mind knew the wisdom and truth of them. Someone just needed to tell them to her heart because after years of missteps and putting her kids through hell, she just couldn’t believe that she deserved happiness and success.
Lucas’ face rose in her mind. An addict just like her. Dangerous to her peace of mind with his quiet understanding that lacked judgment, the way he held her as if he’d never hurt her or let her go, and that intimate kiss that opened a window straight into his heart.
Thank God he’d walked out when he did because she didn’t trust herself. She tumbled in the storm of turmoil, hurt, and loneliness for so long she didn’t trust herself to be strong when it came to him.
To them.
The one guy she shouldn’t want might be the only man she’d ever come across completely capable of understanding her. With more clarity, the reasons to hold him at bay crumbled. She could no longer put him on the same level with the men that snatched her from her brother’s porch. Apparently, nowhere near that level.
Her fear fled with the knowledge and she’d been counting on that fear since Zane rescued her to keep her from doing something stupid in the here and now.
Did he struggle too, the way she did? Did he scour his skin, hoping to wash away the mistakes and violations of the past? Did he wrap himself in a sodden blanket of regret the way she did? Or maybe he possessed some sort of wisdom from his profession that made it easier for him to bounce back. To blend into society without feeling like his mistakes marred his skin for all the world to see.
The way he stood apart from Zane and his crew, she had to wonder. Was he a loner? Or did he struggle to feel worthy the way she did?
He moved with such a quiet confidence. She shook her head. Nope, there was no way he struggled with worthiness.
Maybe they didn’t have all that much in common after all, and really, it was probably better that way, because whatever flaw she possessed that gave her shitty taste in men might just be controlling the little bit of libido she had left.
With a growl of frustration, she yanked open the closet door and grabbed the nearest sweater. She’d been cold ever since she’d been rescued, and even if it hit eighty outside, she chose a thin sweater over capris leggings.
She’d yet to wear a pair of jeans after being held captive in a pair for days on end. Something in her mind associated that sensation of denim against her skin with the hard, cold metal that had become her home in confinement. The love of a good pair of Levi’s was just one more thing stolen from her. The first time she’d pulled on a pair after being rescued, she’d broken out in a cold sweat and battled the bile rolling in her stomach.
Would she ever stop going back to that moment in time?
She washed her face, the one thing she didn’t clean in the tub, brushed her teeth, and secured her hair in a ponytail. Grabbing her purse, she stepped out the front door. After locking the deadbolt, she turned and spotted a gray sedan pulling away from the curb in front of her house.
Her heart shot into her throat, and she swayed on her feet, grabbing the doorknob for support. It could have been anyone, a neighbor or someone pulling over for directions, but her mind went right back to the car that pulled up behind her while she waited for Zane to answer his door. That same terror gripped her as she shielded her babies who shook in the shrubs, the twigs and branches digging at their tear-streaked cheeks.
A nondescript sedan parked in front of her house took her right back to the desperation that filled her as she pushed against her children’s bodies, desperate to tuck them away anywhere, even with her brother, so they weren’t tortured, or worse.
If anything, this only went to prove just how much she needed therapy. She needed to work her way out of this endless cloud of fear and self-loathing before it ate away at her completely. What was the point of fighting her way back to her kids if she let nightmares live in her present and devour her until there was nothing left?
By the time she sat in Isabella’s office forty minutes later, her resolve had begun to disintegrate like ashes in the wind.
The door opened behind her, and she gripped the handles of the chair that much tighter.
“Chloe, it’s good to see you again,” Isabella said, coming to a stop next to her and laying her small palm on Chloe’s shoulder.
Chloe had missed that. The easy affection, comfort, without it being accompanied by fear.
“I’m sorry it’s been so long…” she began.
“Nonsense. I’m not surprised. You didn’t like what I had to say at our last session.” Isabella took a seat in her chair, her soft blonde waves framing her face, the strands like silk. She reminded Chloe of a young fairy godmother, soft spoken, wise, and eternally youthful.
She smiled and folded her hands on her desk. “And I’m glad you’ve come back. So tell me, did you follow any of my advice?”
Chloe squirmed in her chair and gulped. “Well, I—I guess—you know life is just so—no. No, I didn’t follow your advice.”
Isabella smiled. Not an I-Told-You-So smile, but more of a mischievous grin. “So, how did your way work out for you?”
“Well, I’m here,” Chloe said, rubbing her palms over her thighs.
Isabella nodded. “You are.”
Chloe glanced up and away, the words easier to admit if she started on the wall, the desk, something inanimate that wouldn’t judge her. “And I’m not doing great.”
“I suspected not,” Isabella said, leaning forward.
“I need to get back on track.”
“Yes, you do. Are you ready to listen to me?” she asked, with a total lack of judgment in her voice.
This, this is what she needed. In just a matter of minutes, the tension eased as she took the first step toward regaining control. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Isabella said on a laugh. “And you were here before. That didn’t mean you were ready.”
Visions of her kids running around, squealing, smiling filled her head. The one thing missing from the picture, her running with them, squealing, and smiling, too. “I am. Something needs to change.”
Isabella lifted a blond brow and pursed her lips.
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