Safe at Last

by Maya Banks

  you sit there and pretend you don’t know what happened? Does it satisfy you to see the results of your handiwork? Or was that not enough and you want to push the knife a little deeper?”

  He captured her other hand as it flew to her face in an effort to wipe away the signs of grief—and rage. Gathering them, his hands shaking violently as she had been shaking, he looked her in the eye, but God, it was hard. It was devastating to see the raw agony reflected in her gaze. He’d give anything in the world to go back. He would have never left her alone. If only he could have the last time he saw her back again. If only. There were so many regrets. So many mistakes. His greatest one had been not bringing her to college with him or him simply remaining at home with her until she finished school.

  “I would never hurt you, Gracie. Never. I loved you. I’ve loved you forever. Tell me what happened. We have to get this out in the open or things will never be resolved between us. And we will resolve them. I won’t accept any other alternative,” he said fiercely.

  She stared at him with obvious disbelief, her eyes flashing wildly. “Do you honestly think I could ever just get over you having me raped? That it’s something that can be resolved between us?”

  Her voice rose to a shrill almost-shriek. Color rose in her cheeks and her chest heaved with exertion.

  The words cut him like a knife. It brought to mind horrific images of Gracie. Helpless. Being savaged. And her thinking the entire time that he was responsible. His eyes burned as though he’d poured acid in them but he was determined not to lose it. She needed him to be strong right now. He had to be strong for both of them.

  Even having heard parts of the story already, hearing her say it, seeing the accusation and pain in her eyes, nearly brought him to his knees. Every drop of blood fled his face.

  He was still trembling, his hands clumsy and inept as he lifted her hands so they were solidly between him and her. Then once more he stared her directly in the eyes, praying she’d see sincerity—and truth—in his.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Gracie. But you listen to me and listen very close. You were my entire world. The very best part of it. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you. I’d lay waste to anyone who ever did. I have no goddamn idea where you got such a fucked-up idea like that. Jesus. Did you have so little faith in me then?” he asked, unable to keep the thread of hurt from his own voice.

  He tried. God, he tried so hard to keep the hurt and betrayal out of his voice. But he just couldn’t fathom why she’d ever believe for a minute that he was even capable of such an atrocity. She wasn’t the only one with a deep sense of betrayal in this whole fucked-up mess.

  “I believed in you more than anyone I’ve ever believed in,” she said, her voice trembling and raspy after her impassioned outburst. “If I hadn’t had irrefutable proof I would have never even considered that you were involved.”

  “Irrefutable proof?” he asked, incredulity evident in the echoed words. “What the hell kind of proof?”

  He was so goddamn tired of dancing around the issue. His frustration, which had simmered for days, was near its boiling point and he felt ready to explode.

  “Just tell me what happened. Who did this to you? And what kind of proof makes you believe that I would ever be a party to any woman being horribly violated? Much less a girl I loved. A girl I planned to marry. A girl who I planned to be the mother of my children. The girl I wanted forever with. I get that you hate me, Gracie. But for fuck’s sake, the least you can do is tell me what the hell happened. Who put their goddamn hands on you? Who hurt you? Who raped you?”

  His teeth were firmly clenched and his pulse was racing a mile a minute. Despite his best efforts to remain calm and keep his emotions in check, he was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.

  He hadn’t imagined anything could hurt more than when he’d come home to find Gracie gone. Disappeared as though she’d never been the most important part of his life. He hadn’t thought anything could feel worse than the desolation that had become rooted in his soul for the last twelve years when, despite his best attempts, he continued to come up empty-handed in his search for her.

  But this . . . This had the power to destroy him all over again. That she thought so little of him. That she had believed all this time that he’d turned on her. Hell, now the cryptic statement she’d made in the hospital about him finishing the job made sense. She thought he’d had her beaten in addition to having her raped twelve years ago. What kind of sick, twisted bastard did she think he was?

  “Don’t you act like the injured party!” she yelled, tears running fast and unimpeded down her cheeks. “You aren’t the victim here. Do you think I just came to the conclusion you orchestrated the rape? Your friends raped me, Zack. Your friends. And no, they didn’t tell me you had them do it. They didn’t say anything at all. They were too busy laughing while I cried. But their thoughts were broadcast like a neon light. It was like reading a transcript to some horror movie. All three had the exact same memory of you asking them to do you a small favor. Like I was some pesky little nuisance you wanted to be rid of. Couldn’t you have just broken up with me like normal people do? Couldn’t you just tell me you didn’t want me anymore?”

  Zack bolted to his feet, his hands dropping hers as he stared at her in shocked disbelief. The room was spinning around him in dizzying circles. Blood rushed to his ears and the roar nearly deafened him. He searched her features for some sign that he’d heard wrong. But no, every single word was branded into his mind with painful clarity. This was a nightmare. One he had no hope of waking up from. In that moment, he wanted to die.

  “What friends?” he asked in a horrified voice.

  He was barely able to choke out the words as his chest constricted to the point he couldn’t even squeeze air into his lungs. He was paralyzed, unable to move, to think, to process the terrible truth.

  She sagged back against the couch, and it was as if the life had seeped right out of her, leaving her drained and listless. There was such a look of despair and hopelessness that it gutted him to look at her.

  “Kevin, Stuart and Bryan,” she said dully.

  Zack went rigid with shock. No. Hell no. This had to be some sick joke. He couldn’t even coherently formulate his thoughts enough to question her further. Kevin, Stuart and Bryan? They weren’t just friends. They were his best friends. He’d known them since kindergarten. Hell, he still saw them once a year or so. He’d been to their houses. Met their wives and kids.

  And they not only terrorized and raped a girl they damn well knew he adored, but their thoughts implicated him? God, he was going to be sick. He’d cried on their fucking shoulders when Gracie had disappeared. They’d even helped him look for her. No one else gave a damn, and for that matter most of the people in his town didn’t even know who she was. His father had laughed when Zack had gone to him in panic and despair. He’d told Zack that she very likely ran off just like her mother had and that he was better off without her.

  Jesus Christ, no wonder they kept up with whether Zack had ever managed to find her. No wonder they so easily accepted that she was alive when most people would have gently suggested to their friend that Gracie was likely dead and that he’d never know what happened to her. Every time he got together with them in the ensuing years, they always asked if he’d ever found Gracie. They’d probably inwardly rejoiced in the fact he hadn’t, because then, surely the truth would have come out. Just as it was coming to light now. And then he’d know every detail of their foul deed. Especially that they’d implicated him in the crime.

  A terrible sound of anguish made him wince and then he realized that it had come from him.

  “No,” he whispered. “Oh God no. No. No. No!”

  He shut his eyes and curled his hands into tight balls at his sides. He was falling apart piece by piece and was on the verge of coming completely undone.

  He staggered, his legs no longer able to hold up. He fell to his knees, his hands cove
ring his face as raw sounds of despair welled in his chest and boiled out his throat. Tears blurred his vision and he scrubbed angrily at them, determined that he would keep it together. For Gracie. For them both. If they ever had a chance. If he ever had a chance to gain her trust again. He had to hold it together.

  Knowing he had zero chance of standing, he crawled the short distance to the couch where Gracie sat, eyes drenched with despair, her anguish mirroring his own.

  His chest was so tight he felt like he was about to explode. A knot formed in his throat, making breathing next to impossible. And yet this was important. The most important moment he’d ever face. This was his life. His love. His happiness. And the woman who held all three in her small, delicate hands thought he had done the unspeakable.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ANNA-GRACE was rigid with shock as she took in Zack’s grief-ravaged face. Her mind was a mass of seething confusion and she felt much as she had at the hospital just after being injected with pain medication. Was she having some drug-induced psychosis? Was this all some bizarre dream and she was really still in the hospital? Had she imagined the entire chain of events up to now?

  But no, this was real. His touch was real and he curled his hands so tightly around hers that it made her wince. She stifled her reaction, though, because she didn’t want him to know he’d hurt her. How messed up was that? Shouldn’t she want him to hurt? Bleed just as her heart had bled every time she thought back to happier times? When she was in love and thought she was loved in return?

  Numbly she stared as he shakily drew her hands up to his lips, and closing his eyes, he bowed his head slightly so that his mouth rested atop her knuckles. The gesture was so tender, so filled with aching emotion that her breath caught in her throat and just remained until she was forced to exhale because her chest protested the lack of oxygen.

  None of this made sense. She hadn’t made a mistake. Her attackers’ thoughts—memories—had all been identical. Zack telling them to fuck the bitch up and get rid of her. She was dead weight he no longer wanted to carry. Every single word, every single image had hurt her far worse than the physical pain and humiliation they’d meted out. She’d cried, not because of the pain. No, she’d been numb with shock and completely grief stricken, shutting out the horror of their violation. Her tears had been for Zack. And for what she knew then she’d lost. What she’d never had, because it had all been a lie.

  He’d never loved her. He didn’t know what love was. And maybe at sixteen she hadn’t known either, but she knew what it wasn’t. Love wasn’t shameful and degrading. Love wasn’t callously discarding her like trash after reducing her to that level.

  She could still feel how dirty she’d felt lying there on the ground, weeping brokenly and praying to die. How later, when she’d dragged herself into her tiny room at the motel, she’d scrubbed herself for hours in a shower that had long gone cold. But the chill of the water on her skin was nothing compared to the bone-deep cold that had settled to the depths of her soul.

  Never would she forget sitting on her bed, naked, trembling, skin red and raw from the endless scrubbing and considering—wanting—what only someone with no hope ever contemplated. And worse, in those darkest hours, very nearly giving in to the overwhelming temptation that whispered so insidiously through her shattered mind.

  And he was asking, not for her forgiveness—some things weren’t forgivable—but for her to believe something that contradicted what her gift had enabled her to see, to know.

  Zack’s reaction wasn’t one of shame, remorse or guilt or even distress over being found out. She saw someone who was completely . . . wrecked. Despair and utter heartbreak were evident in every line of his face. There was such overwhelming devastation in his eyes that it hurt to look at him.

  She began to tremble and it quickly progressed to shaking that spread through her body like wildfire. Her throat seemed to close in, until each breath was torturous to squeeze in and out. An odd wheezing noise echoed in her ears and it took her a moment to realize that it was the sound of her breathing—or rather her attempt at breathing.

  Zack opened his eyes and her wheeze became more pronounced. For a moment she simply stopped trying to get more air into her starved lungs as she tried to make sense of his reaction.

  His tears were readily visible and he made no effort to disguise his grief. Such terrible grief. Never had she seen such naked emotion reflected in another person’s eyes. It was gut-wrenching for her. It mirrored her own sorrow, was like a window into her soul and her own suffering. Suffering he was responsible for.

  “Gracie,” he said, his voice thick with all the emotion so visible in his features. “You have to believe me, baby. Please.”

  He eased her hands down to her lap and then leaned forward, his fingers shaking as badly as she was. He lifted his hands to her face, hesitating as if he feared she would recoil, and then carefully cupped her cheeks.

  “I don’t care what you read or think you read from those bastards’ sick, twisted minds. It doesn’t matter. I had nothing to do with them hurting you. I swear it on my life! I would never do anything to hurt you. I could kill them for what they did. So help me I will kill them if it’s the last thing I do.”

  His voice had gone hoarse, each word vehement and impassioned. Her eyes were wide with shock because he was begging. He’d never begged anyone for anything. He was too proud and too determined to go his own way. And she couldn’t even comprehend what he was begging for! He was denying it? Everything? Was he crazy? Or was he saying she was crazy?

  “I loved you. I have never and will never love anyone like I loved you. Do you know what it did to me to come home and find you gone?” he asked, his eyes blazing. “You simply vanished. No trace. No hint of where you’d gone. And I looked. God help me but I looked everywhere for you. I never stopped looking.”

  His expression grew fierce, more earnest. His gaze was piercing, as though he was willing her to understand—to believe him.

  “I don’t know what happened that day or why. But I will find out, Gracie. Because not only did those sons of bitches put their hands on you”—he broke off and shuddered visibly and then took several steadying breaths as if to compose himself again—“they violated you; they drove you away from me. They knew I loved you. They knew I planned to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  He stopped his impassioned plea and went silent, studying her face. She was sure what he saw wasn’t good. All the blood had long since fled her face. Her eyes were wide with shock. And she was still shaking like a leaf and struggling for every single breath.

  “Gracie?” he whispered tentatively.

  His gaze was imploring, silently begging with her to accept his emotional plea. His hands stroked lightly over her cheekbones, mindful of the bruises. Then his thumbs gently wiped away tears she hadn’t realized had fallen.

  “Please say you believe me.”

  She closed her eyes, and she felt herself slowly give way, her tenuous grip on her composure snapping. She tried to respond but couldn’t breathe, much less manage to articulate her shattered thoughts.

  Her eyes flew open in panic when her chest constricted to the point that she could no longer squeeze in the slight breaths she had before. Her arms flailed wildly, shoving at Zack’s hands, which still framed her face.

  She heard a distant, muffled curse but couldn’t make out anything else as the roaring in her ears escalated to the point that it sounded like a freight train bearing down on her.

  And then she did something she’d sworn she’d never do again.

  She looked frantically at Zack for help and she managed to gasp his name before the room faded to black around her.

  The last thing she registered was Zack’s grim, worried expression, and him enfolding her in his arms.

  His familiar scent, unchanged in twelve years, enveloped her. Being in his arms gave her a deep sense of . . . homecoming.

  And nothing had ever felt so sweet.

  TWENTY-THR
EE

  ZACK held Gracie in his arms, savoring the moments of quiet in the dimly lit bedroom. He’d made sure to leave the bathroom light on and the door open enough so that if she woke up, hopefully she wouldn’t panic to find herself nestled firmly against him. Something he’d dreamed about on more nights than he could count. And finally his prayers had been answered, even if the two of them had a very long way to go in their journey back to one another.

  He clung to hope, though. He had to or else the very thin strings holding him together would snap, leaving him clinging desperately to his last vestiges of sanity and plunging him into a dark world of despair.

  He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent, then ran his fingers through the strands. Memories of so many nights spent just like this were bright in his mind. Gracie in his arms, her small frame curled into his. Him looking forward to many more nights spent in the same manner once they were married and he’d made love to her for the first time.

  A fresh wave of grief rolled through him all over again at all she’d lost. What he had lost. Just a sixteen-year-old girl, brutally violated by men Zack had trusted. Had called friends. No, he didn’t have anything to do with their sick crime, but in a way he was guilty all the same because Gracie would have never been exposed to them if not for him.

  Her head was pillowed on his shoulder and she slept deeply, and he hoped dreamlessly, devoid of the memories of her past. In forcing her to relate all that she’d endured, she’d been taken back to that awful day all over again, thrust right back into the horror of her worst nightmare. And he’d lived it—envisioned it—right alongside her. It had taken a piece of his soul that he would never get back again. He’d live the rest of his life knowing she’d suffered the unimaginable, all the while believing that he had done this to her. He couldn’t even think about it without becoming completely undone.

  He wasn’t sure if having to relive her ordeal had instigated the panic attack that had left her unable to breathe to the point of passing out, or . . . if him protesting his innocence had finally sent her over the edge.

  He’d never felt such a lack of hope in his life. Except when he’d had to face the fact that Gracie was gone and wasn’t ever coming back. He couldn’t survive losing her a second time. If she refused to believe him, if she ran as far and as fast as she could, he would never be whole. He’d forever be a hollow shell of himself, wandering aimlessly through life with no purpose, no hope. None of the joy that only Gracie could bring him.

  But before he could even think about regaining the precious gift of her trust and acceptance, her belief in his fervent denial, there were other important matters to tend to.

  His jaw locked and his hand went still against her slim back. Hatred consumed him, clouded his mind and formed a red haze in his eyes. While his bastard friends enjoyed their lives, their wives, children, Gracie had been out there alone, damaged, carrying invisible scars—permanent scars. Zack had been denied the very things his friends took for granted. Because they had made certain that he and Gracie had nothing of the future Zack had planned.

  Why? Goddamn it, why? It was so bizarre and fucked-up that he couldn’t even wrap his mind around it. What purpose could they possibly have had in doing something so vile? Jealousy? Had they resented that his time was split between Gracie and school, with no time for anything else in between? And if that was the case, who the hell went to such extreme, criminal measures because they were fucking jealous? It was insane.

  No, he didn’t have the answers. Not yet.

  But he would.

  He hated to leave her. It was the very last thing he wanted. But until he confronted the men who’d destroyed an innocent girl, he and Gracie didn’t have a chance. Because she wouldn’t believe him by his word alone. He’d find out the truth, no matter what he had to do. He was going to make them bleed, just as they’d made Gracie bleed, make them hurt just like Gracie had hurt. They’d find out real damn quick how well they fared when up against a man their size instead of abusing a much smaller, delicate girl.

  It made him want to vomit. The men who raped Gracie had been twenty years old, four years older than her. They’d raped a minor, for God’s sake.

  His breath stuttered from his lips and caught, making a sound almost like a sob.

  He was supposed to be her first.

  They weren’t going to make love until their wedding night.

  Because more than anything he’d wanted to give Gracie the respect she was due and not precipitate his vows. He intended to make their first time together special. A night she’d remember the rest of her life. One he would as well.

  He’d wanted to give her time to grow and mature more, to fully bloom into the woman she was about to become. And as she was coming to their marriage never touched by another man, so too had he wanted to honor her by giving himself only to her.

  She was adorably shy when they spoke of making love, and they spoke of it often, sharing their hopes and dreams. He would whisper to her how glad he was that he would be the only man to ever make love to her and that he would honor her gift by giving her the same assurance. She would be the only woman he ever made love to.

  The night he’d lost his virginity, his first year in the pros, he’d lain there beside a woman whose name he didn’t even remember and he’d never felt so sick in his life. He’d stared up at the ceiling, his eyes burning like he’d wiped them with sandpaper, and grieved the loss of Gracie all over again. He’d rolled out of bed and barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up into the toilet.

  He hadn’t had sex again until after he’d quit football and was working as a cop. In time it got a little easier. He even managed to enjoy it eventually. In a physical sense. But never once had he been emotionally engaged. Never had he experienced the euphoria and mental satisfaction of making love with someone he cared about. Someone he loved.

  Had Gracie ever managed to have a healthy relationship with another man after such a traumatic experience? The idea of another man holding her, touching her, kissing her, loving her . . . sliding into her soft, sweet body. It made his chest tighten to the point of discomfort and filled him with envy for this hypothetical lover.

  He recognized the hypocrisy of his reaction and in truth, despite wishing with all his heart that he had been the one to comfort, love and pleasure her, and show her the beauty of making love to wipe away the ugly memories of pain, degradation and rape, he truly hoped she had found someone who cared enough about her to make the experience beautiful and pleasurable for her.

  The idea of her shutting herself off from any sort of intimacy, and living alone—afraid—unwilling to trust anyone because of his perceived betrayal, broke his heart.

  Despite his hope that she’d been able to overcome such a horrible life-altering incident at sixteen, such a fragile and impressionable time for any girl, he had the sinking feeling that she’d never allowed anyone close enough to establish the kind of trust necessary to allow such intimacy.

  Though he’d certainly not had a very favorable impression of Sterling from their first meeting, he’d been wrong. It appeared that Sterling was a good man and that he’d been good to Gracie. But Sterling had made it clear that he and Gracie were just friends. Nothing more. Not that Sterling hadn’t been interested. He’d admitted as much. But Gracie had shut him down, and yet they had become