Until she had decided to get married.
Now, she was just glad she’d gotten a chance to wear them before flying back to California.
When the Titanic sound track finished, the DJ switched to Braveheart. She wondered if it was some inside joke that the only music for such a festive occasion came from sad-ending movies.
People greeted Thea and Caleb as they moved through the auditorium. There were several men Thea was surprised to see dressed up, including Toothless Jim. Caleb placed his coat on a chair at one table, and Thea did the same, not worrying the least as she laid down her handbag on the tabletop. Caleb took her hand and led her to the dance floor, gathering her close to his body as he enfolded her into his warmth.
She leaned on him, and eventually the gradual movement of their swaying bodies had her eyes closing. If only it had been Caleb’s touch that had sparkled on her nerves, bringing her to life. Things would have been a lot easier. But immediately she thought of Paden, saw him in her mind’s eye, and remembered his hard body pressed against hers. She’d had several days away from him, and she had wanted to hate him, to fear him. But the more she didn’t want to think of him, the more her mind kept straying back. The sound of his voice, the fear in his eyes, the shame on his face, all tore at her heart.
The question she couldn’t seem to answer, however, was why. She didn’t think it was love, at least not the fairy-tale, happily-ever-after-type of love, the one that banished the bad guys and made everything seem like roses. Thea didn’t know if that type of love really existed in the real world where everything was so complicated. It was hard to live just as it was hard to keep on living in sadness.
She inhaled sharply, opened her eyes, and immediately locked gazes with Paden. He had dressed for the dance, his hair slicked back, hanging a little long over his collar. He wore a suit with no tie, keeping his dress smart and casual at the same time. He outshone every man there, and he made her heart thump with excitement. She stopped dancing, forcing Caleb to look down at her. She could feel his confusion as he glanced from her to Paden and back again.
“Excuse me, Caleb,” she murmured, breaking eye contact with Paden to look up at her date. “Do you mind if we sit down for a bit?”
“Of course not,” he said and walked her to the table. “Would you like a drink?”
“Um, yes,” she answered. “Water, please.”
He left her alone at the table, and just as she thought, Paden immediately came over to her.
“Thea.”
She looked up at him. His tone had been low, bleak, much like the darkness in his eyes. She didn’t want to see him, to look upon him, but her heart wasn’t about to let her go so easily.
“Paden,” she whispered.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a wise—”
“Please, Thea,” he interrupted. The word was thick in his throat. “I would never hurt you.”
Against her own better judgment, she found herself nodding. “Where?”
“We don’t have to leave the dance,” he assured her. “There are a few offices in the back where we can have a few minutes of privacy.”
She rose just as Caleb returned to the table.
“Hey, Paden,” Caleb said, holding out his hand.
Paden shook it. “If you don’t mind, there’s something I need to discuss with Thea. I’ll have her back as soon as possible.”
Caleb frowned. “Can’t it wait?”
“I promise it’ll just be a few minutes.”
Caleb looked at Thea. “Well, it’s up to her, of course.”
Thea touched Caleb’s arm. “I’ll be right back.”
As he nodded, Paden pointed the way out a side door and followed after her, taking her hand as they exited the auditorium into a dark hallway. He led her to a door and opened it, leading her in. She waited in darkness until he turned on the desk lamp.
He didn’t turn fully around right away, only ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Thank you, I know it can’t have been easy to trust me.”
“Cutters don’t hurt others, though, do they?”
Startled, he turned to look at her. “How did—”
“It wasn’t hard to figure out,” she answered quickly, interrupting him.
He sighed. “Doctors diagnosed me as having a borderline personality disorder with self-harming tendencies when I was sixteen. It’s listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
He looked down and shuffled his feet. She could see he was struggling with something. Embarrassment perhaps?
“Why do you cut yourself?”
He shrugged but said nothing. There was something utterly bleak in his stark profile. Something was hurting him, something he was too proud to admit. And then it all clicked into place and her heart wept for him.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” she said softly. His body jerked in response, and his mouth compressed into a thin line. “The man who took you, he did something to you. Did he…did he hurt you?’
“He never raped me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he finally said. “That’s not how he…” He fell silent.
“How he…?”
“Got his pleasure,” he finished in a low, rough voice. “I don’t really want to talk about this.” He tried to turn away from her.
She grabbed his shoulders and yanked him back. “You may not want to talk about it, but I need to understand. Please, Paden.”
“Every night,” he finally started, “for ten months I slept handcuffed to a support beam in his room.” He stopped talking for a minute, thought about something, and then started again. “He liked using whips, had different kinds for different…procedures…but he never drew blood. He said he didn’t want any scars on my body.”
Her hand drifted over the healed lacerations on his arm. He grabbed it and brought it to rest upon his chest.
“Those I did to myself,” he told her, very simply. “He didn’t like scars, so I made sure that I gave myself plenty.”
She saw the blood again, the knife coming down and slicing through his skin. The pain wasn’t a pleasant thought. It was a horrible, nauseating picture.
She could see he strained against telling her more. His confession went against everything he was, every strong piece of fiber that ran through his body. And yet, for her, he was willing to bare his tortured soul.
“I started cutting myself when I first started getting aroused by girls,” he continued, clearing his throat. “I was fifteen when I went on my first date with a girl. I don’t remember her name now, but I remember we were kissing, that awkward stage where braces got in the way and acne was developing. I got hard, and that’s when I first heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“The monster inside, telling me to cut it out, all I had to do was slice the skin open.”
Thea shivered at the monotone admission.
“I thought I was possessed. That God had abandoned me. This monster talked to me every time I got a hard-on. It got so bad I finally told my parents who took me to every shrink and doctor in the world who treated this condition. For years I was in and out of institutions, on medications, trying every new magical potion that popped up. Finally, when I turned twenty-five I was done with it. I had read a new approach to self-harming that described a life devoid of the trigger which turned on the monster.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s why I moved to Alaska. Why I turned my back on my parents, my life, everything! I had my house built and started my own comic book so I could live and be autonomous.”
“Did it work?”
He nodded. “Yes! For ten years I had silence. I got rid of my bandages. I bought a knife set. And every time I had a thought about sex I would distract myself with writing, or hiking, or any other outdoor activity. I learned to not be aroused.” He looked at her with eyes bloodshot red. “Until I saw you. Until I saw the pain in your eyes. And the monster r
oared to life.”
“Then it’s my fault.”
He shook his head. “Of course it isn’t, Thea. I’m the sick fuck, not you.”
“Don’t say that! You’re not sick!” she said sharply. She blinked and gave a self-depreciating snort. “Some pain can’t be healed by grief. Listen, Paden, everybody has an issue or two to deal with. Look at me. I get hysterical at the sight of blood.”
“From the accident?”
“I was in that wreck, the one that killed my mother and father, sister and brother.” A sarcastic little laugh escaped her throat. “You know what I got? A superficial cut on my knee. My brother’s blood dripped into my mouth, and I had a scrape. So issues? Yeah, I have a few myself.”
They lapsed into silence, not sure what to say next.
“Wait a minute,” she finally said. “I wasn’t your first, was I?”
He shook his head. “The meds helped for a while, long enough for me to go to college. But no matter what relationship I had, I could never climax without cutting myself. The meds helped control the monster in my head, but it could never control the need to hurt myself.”
She shivered, not in the least bit cold. He talked so casually about his problem, about the fact that he deliberately hurt himself, and that was something she couldn’t fully comprehend.
“Thea,” he finally said. “I care about you. I really…care about you.”
She had a feeling that wasn’t what he wanted to say at all. But she was too much of a coward to press him about it. She caressed his cheek, and he closed his eyes as if savoring her touch.
“I wish I could help you,” she whispered. “I wish I could go back in time and prevent that man from hurting you.”
His eyes opened, his jaw hardened and his shoulders stiffened. Without another word, he turned and left the office, leaving her behind.
Chapter Seventeen
Paden didn’t leave her mind all night, though she hid it well as she laughed and danced with various men, and even once with Miki. She felt proud that not one person could tell how torn she was inside as Paden’s words kept replaying through her mind.
Caleb took her home at midnight, and she gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek. He thanked her for not only being his date, but for having the courage to tell him that it was okay for Claire to always be somewhere in his heart.
Thea undressed and folded up her pretty blue dress, burying it back in the bottom of her luggage. The shoes she carefully placed on the dresser. She performed her nightly ablutions and slipped on her flannel pajamas, but as she pulled the blankets up to her chin and closed her eyes, she still couldn’t get Paden out of her mind.
She kept seeing a little boy, chained, having a depraved man doing horrible things in front of him. She then pictured herself taking Paden’s place. What would she have done? What horrendous nightmare would she have had to live through the rest of her life?
She had lost her family in an accident, and it almost destroyed her through grief and depression, but Paden…he lost even his sanity. Thea sat up in bed as a thought suddenly popped into her head.
She rose, slipped on a robe, and went into Miki’s study, turning on the computer. It took only a moment to find what she was looking for, the website on Paden’s family’s company. The webpages described the proud heritage of Navires Yachts in detail and displayed photos of their most luxurious boats. Surprisingly, it was harder to find information about his kidnapping. She only found a few websites, mostly forensic and crime sites, and of course on Wikipedia which reported the name of the man who had taken him. Reading the cold hard facts of what a ten-year-old little boy had gone through was even more abhorrent than hearing about them.
What was it she had thought earlier? It was hard to live just as it was hard to keep on living in sadness. Paden had found a way to survive, but he hadn’t found a way to heal. His parents had treated the voice inside his head, his “monster,” as the disease. They had thrown medication at him, therapy, but perhaps they were only treating the symptom instead of the root of the problem.
And what if the problem wasn’t even inside him at all?
Thea turned off the computer and rushed to her room, dressing quickly. As she hurried to the door that led down to the garage that housed the snowmobiles, Miki called out to her.
“Where are you going, Thea?”
Thea turned, her heart racing at being startled. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
“Sorry,” Miki mumbled as she pulled her robe around herself. “Where are you headed?”
“Can the snowmobile go on the slushy mud piles the snow left behind?”
“Yeah, sure,” Miki answered. “Why haven’t you answered my question?”
Thea hesitated for a moment more before answering. “Paden’s. I have to tell him something.”
Miki sighed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Thea.”
“He won’t hurt me, Miki,” Thea said softly. “He doesn’t even want to hurt himself.”
“And what? You think you can help him?”
Thea took a deep breath and then shrugged. “I don’t know. But he’s dying inside. How can I walk away when he needs something? Someone.”
“You’re too nice for your own good.”
Thea smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
“Well, all right. But if you need me again, you call me.”
“Will do.”
* * * *
It was plain to see he’d been asleep when he opened the door to her pounding. The suit was gone, and he wore flannel pajama bottoms with a tight T-shirt. His hair stood up in all directions as if he couldn’t keep his fingers out of it. There were no lights on, only the glow of the fire that had been banked for the night.
He stood back and allowed her to come in. “What are you doing here, Thea?” he asked, and the weariness in his tone almost broke her heart.
“Have you ever visited Cale Kritchkofen?”
He blinked. “Who?”
“The man who took you. Didn’t you even know his name?”
He shook his head. “No, my parents never discussed that with me. I only talked about what happened to my therapists, and they sure didn’t bring up his name. Besides I never…I never wanted to know anything about him.”
“His name is Cale Kritchkofen, and he’s still in the Florida State Prison. He’s sixty-two years old and has been denied parole each time he’s been up because your father makes sure to appear at the hearings and gives testament about what he did to you.”
“How do you know this?” he whispered.
“I’ve been on the Internet this evening.”
“And this is on the Web?”
She shrugged. “It’s not hard to find information if you search hard enough. A couple of your fans actually reported about your father.”
“I didn’t know my dad did that for me.”
“Why wouldn’t he? If my child had been taken, I would do everything in my power to make sure the person responsible paid for the rest of his life.”
Paden shook his head, as if hardly able to believe it. She could see the wheels turning in his mind. He walked into the kitchen to grab a beer. When he offered her one, she actually accepted it.
They sat at the counter, facing each other.
“I guess I never gave it much thought if he was still alive or not,” Paden murmured. “To me he was this...”
“Monster?”
He nodded.
“He’s your monster, you know,” she continued. “The monster in your head, telling you to cut him out. I think everything got all jumbled in there, trying to forget and heal at the same time.”
“So you’re a shrink now?” he asked sarcastically. “What about you, Thea? Wasn’t it only two weeks ago that you were ready to marry a stranger?”
She took a deep breath. “Of course, when you psychoanalyze someone, it’s not that much of a stretch to start thinking of your own decisions. I admit, I came out here to try to find a replacement for the family I
lost. And you know what? I did find a new family. Miki, Toothless Jim, Caleb. You. But you know what else I learned? My family is still there, in my heart, and yes, sometimes I miss them so much it’s hard to breathe. But my soul didn’t die with them.”
That shut him up. He stared at her with watchful, carefully blank eyes.
“Paden,” she continued. “I think it’s clear that you’ve been treated for a symptom, instead of being treated for the cause.”
“Of course I know my captivity is the cause of my cutting—”
“No. Not the captivity. The man.”
He frowned. “Is there a difference?”
She sighed and leaned into him. She placed her hand directly on the spot where he had sliced. His breath hitched in his throat.
“Kiss me,” she ordered.
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
Hesitantly, slowly, he leaned into her. Their lips touched, melted, and her tongue touched the seam of his lips. It didn’t take much for him to capitulate, opening under her pressure and sweeping inside. He reached for her, pulling their bodies together as the haze of desire swept over them.
She started backing away, holding onto him and pulling him along with her. She swept kisses over his mouth, enticing him to follow her up the stairs into his bedroom. When she finally broke the kisses it was so she could undress. He watched her, green fire burning up his gaze even in the dim light.
“Are you sure, Thea?” he asked, need burning in his voice.
Love Story for a Snow Princess (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 9