by M. G. Morgan
“I want a word with you.”
Aidan took a step forward and I moved in front of him.
“Don’t do this, let’s just go. Aidan I want to go?”
But he wasn’t listening anymore, and even if he had, I watched as the creeps friends fanned out around us, blocking all escape. There would be no leaving until this was finished.
I turned and put my hand out, a wobbly smile on my face.
“Please, guys, don’t do this. Let’s just forget about it.”
“Forget about it? You were my bitch, I put in the work, I deserved the reward. Not him.”
Anger prickled along my spine.
“Reward?”
I took another step forward, my anger making me bold.
“The only reward you were going to get was a drink in your lap. I told you then and I’m telling you now, I’m not interested, I was never interested in a whining good for nothing piece of trash.”
I knew I’d gone to far when the surprise in his eyes disappeared, replaced with anger. He moved towards me and suddenly Aidan was in the way. He pushed me behind him as he landed the first blow.
Aidan didn’t waste any time, he moved in on the taller man, his fists pummelling against his ribcage. Aidan might had been smaller, but he was certainly stronger and he was without doubt faster. The other man barely had a chance to recover when Aidan moved in on his again. The air was filled with grunts of pain.
The creep jabbed his elbow upwards into Aidan’s chin, knocking him backwards. I couldn’t stop the cry of surprise that left my lips as strong arms closed around on me. I tried to move forward towards Aidan, but I was held fast. The creep’s friends held onto me as I struggled. A shout of triumph went up and Aidan turned to see what was going on.
The moment he saw me his expression changed to one of fear and panic. The creep moved in behind Aidan, the blow of his fist buckling Aidan to the ground.
“You’re good, I’ll give you that but now it’s high time I taught you a lesson.”
The creep moved to punch Aidan again but he blocked the blow with his arm. Someone wrapped their hands into my hair, dragging my head back at an awkward angle as they pressed the cool blade against my skin. My whimpering cry was all it took to make Aidan give in.
I hated myself for my own weakness. Why couldn’t I be stronger? If I was stronger, if I could have shook them off then I could have helped Aidan. But I wasn’t. The creep laid into him, kicking and punching and Aidan took it all without so much as a murmur of pain.
“What the hell is going on?”
The bouncer’s voices drew the attention of the creep and his friends and they scattered. I was pushed to the ground, the asphalt digging into my hands but I didn’t care. I crawled towards Aidan. He lay on his side, blood trickled from the side of his mouth and there was a small cut across the side of his head.
Tentatively I reached out to him, my hand brushing against the side of his jaw.
“Aidan?”
My voice came out weaker than I wanted. I pressed my hand to his shoulder and shook him softly, my mind already going over the worst possible scenarios. The bouncers arrived and crouched down next to him. Aidan’s eyes opened and he grinned up at me. He winced as he dragged himself upright but he was alright. The bouncer stared down at him for a few minutes before shaking his head and wandering away in disgust.
“Are you ok? I was so worried when you didn’t move?”
Aidan shook his head and gingerly pressed his fingers against the bump that was forming on his head.
“I’m fine. If Andy hadn’t come over I don’t think I’d be quite so alright.”
He moved towards me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and drawing my body in a little closer.
“How are you? When I saw them holding you, I couldn’t… I can’t even explain it. I’d have let them kill me before they harmed a hair on your head.”
“Don’t be stupid, you shouldn’t have given in. I’d have been fine, I’ve been through worse, believe me.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. My stomach flipped uncomfortably and I glanced up at Aidan, watching his expression through my lashes. I knew he’d heard me and he knew what I meant by it. But he didn’t force me to explain myself and for that I was grateful.
“Bella, we need to talk, there are some things you need to know… Somethings you need to understand about me.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t want to talk, Aidan, I’m so fed up with talking, with always having to explain how I’m feeling or what’s going on inside my head. I don’t want any of that.”
“I need to tell you what happened with Sarah.”
His words cut me to the core and I did my best to shrug them off, to simply ignore them and move past it. But it was like having a band aid ripped off before the wound had healed.
“Don’t.”
The word dropped from my lips in a hushed whisper. I watched as he opened his mouth to protest and I took that opportunity to kiss him. My lips found his and I crushed my mouth to him. Gently I ran my tongue along the edge of his lip, the coppery taste of his blood forcing me to be more gentle than I wanted to be.
He growled, the sound vibrating up through his chest and in through my body. When he wrapped his arms around me tighter, I let him, it had been such a long time since I’d been kissed, really thoroughly kissed. And I wanted to savour every single moment of it.
Aidan broke the kiss first, his breathing ragged as he pressed his forehead to mine.
“Come home with me, Bella.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to come out with the words I wanted. This was important and the last thing I wanted to do was mess it up by saying something stupid.
We managed to control ourselves all the way back to his apartment. I held his hand, the feel of his skin against mine, sating my urge to press my body to his, for now at least. Soon I would have that, I would have it all… Even if it would be only for one night.
Aidan and I had reached a fork in the road. I had to let him go, I had to let him find someone perfect for him but I wanted one more night with him. Just one last night of bliss. The dream of spending just one night in Aidan’s arms had been the only thing that had helped keep me going. The only thing I’d clung to through all the suffering, and now I had the chance to taste happiness one last time, I planned to take it.
I was probably being selfish. I knew that Aidan wouldn’t understand in the beginning. He wouldn’t get that I couldn’t be with him. Perhaps when he saw the scars and marks Christopher had left on me he would understand it. Maybe he would reject me? I pushed that thought aside as he pushed the key into the lock and the door swung inwards.
Aidan hesitated, his hand partly outstretched to me. I went to him, crushing my body against his. He sighed, all of the tension leaving his body as he swept me up in his arms. Our lips met in a fiery embrace. He kicked the door shut and hoisted my body up into his arms, carrying me through the apartment to the bedroom.
Instantly I was transported, back to that first time. The feel of his hands on my body, the way he nibbled along my lip. The way his body felt against mine.
He pushed me down onto the bed and moved up over me, his mouth never leaving mine. With his knee between my legs he let his fingers move down across my ribcage to the edge of the my silk top. The moment his fingers skimmed the edge of my skin, pressing against my stomach, I froze. This wasn’t anything like the first time.
I pressed my hands against his chest as I broke the kiss.
“No, no, Aidan. I can’t…”
He rolled away from me instantly. I watched as he propped himself up on his arm and stared down at me. What was I supposed to say to him? I’d thought I could go through with it? Foolishly believed that I could simply expose myself to him, show him what Christopher had done to me and think nothing of it. But I couldn’t. I didn’t think I would ever be able to let him see the full extent of the damage. The brand on my hip tingled as th
ough to prove how right I was to push him away. I was damaged goods broken.
“Hey, where do you go?”
His voice pulled me back to the present and I stared up at him. I couldn’t stop my eyes from filling with tears. He was so amazing, utterly perfect, deep down I’d known he hadn’t made a move on Sarah but it gave me the perfect excuse to push him away.
“Nowhere…”
He moved towards me, his hand reaching out to me but I couldn’t help cringing away from him. If he touched me again I didn’t know if I would be strong enough to push him away. I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to hide the truth from him.
“Bella, you don’t need to hide from me. I’m here, I’ll always be right here. You’re the love of my life… There is nowhere I’d rather be.”
His words washed over me and all the did was cause the ache in my heart to worsen. How could I walk away from him when he said things like that? It made it seem almost possible that he would be able to accept me for what I was now. Could he still love me even though I was so broken?
“I can’t do this.”
I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed but Aidan’s hand on my arm halted my progress. He pulled me backwards and I let him. Even his touch was addictive, I wanted to give in to him so much. I wanted to be his.
“Talk to me. Tell me where you go in your head? Is it back to him?”
I gasped, his words knocked the air from my lungs. Tears stung my eyes and I struggled in his grip.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about it.”
He fought me, until he had me pinned in his arms, he wrapped his body around mine until I had nowhere left to go. He held me and I felt my hot tears streak down my cheeks.
“Don’t make me, Aidan, please?”
“Bella, I love you. I love every part of you. I don’t care about what happened, the only thing I care about is having you here with me. That’s all that matters.”
“It does, it matters! You don’t know what he did to me. You don’t know the truth.”
Aidan sighed and pressed his lips against my hair, his voice lowering to a whisper.
“I know everything, Bella. I know what he did to you. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know he tortured you every opportunity he got. I know he marked you, scarred you, branded you with his mark and still none of that matters to me.
“I would love you no matter what. Bella Brooks, I fell in love with you two years ago. I searched for you every single day, never once giving up hope that I would find you, even when it felt impossible. If I could change it for you then I would. If I could take away the pain and the nightmares, if I could carry that for you then I would do it in a heartbeat. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and nothing about you that I don’t find amazing and beautiful.”
“You can’t know it, you can’t know what he did to me?”
My voice was small and childlike. My heart had broken completely and Aidan was slowly putting it back together. How could he know? I’d kept it hidden, careful to never expose anything that might make him question me over what had happened.
“When I found you, when I found you strapped to the horse, Bella, you were naked. I saw what he had done to you. I’ve known all along.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“I wanted you to come to me in your own time. I didn’t think you’d try and keep it hidden from me. I didn’t think you’d use it to push me away.”
What could I say? I had used it to push him away. I’d been so convinced that he wouldn’t be able to accept me the way I was now. But maybe it wasn’t Aidan I was really worried about, perhaps deep down I couldn’t accept who I was now. I had changed. I’d allowed Christopher to get inside my head. I’d allowed him to bury his doubts within me and it had almost cost me the man I loved.
Even though Christopher was dead he was still haunting me, he still had a hold on me. A grip on me that I was allowing him to have. I would never beat him if I let him take the man I loved away. I wouldn’t win if he took the one thing I had fought to live for, from me. I needed to stop being a coward and face up to who I was.
“Bella, can you ever forgive me?”
Aidan’s words took me by surprise. I squirmed in his arms until I could tilt my face up to look into his.
“Forgive you? What for?”
“I let him take you. It was my fault he went after you, my fault that he got his hands on you. My fault that you had to suffer through so much. If I had been stronger then maybe it would have been different…”
Aidan’s voice was filled with so much pain, so much anguish. It hurt to hear him blame himself so much for what had happened. It wasn’t his fault, I would never blame him for what had happened.
“There was nothing you could do, Aidan. Christopher was twisted, he was sick, it wouldn’t have mattered what you did. He had a plan and he was going to stick to it no matter what anyone else did.”
Aidan shook his head and buried his face in my hair.
“No, Bella… There’s something I need to tell you. The day you disappeared I met Christopher, we had a bit of a stand off but his men were there and I didn’t stand a chance… Not really anyway.”
Aidan sucked in a deep breath before continuing. I could see from the expression he wore that it was a real struggle for him. He had blamed himself non-stop for my disappearance. For something that wasn’t his fault.
“He gave me a choice. If I buried his file then he would leave us alone. I couldn’t do that… I couldn’t just let him go. Not after he had killed Hunter. I imagined him being the man who had taken my sister, how was I supposed to look the victim’s families in the eye if I let him get away with it all. So I shot him, I aimed for his head but I was too badly beaten, I couldn’t even see straight, I winged him, caught him in the shoulder…
“And then when I came round, when I dragged myself back here to the apartment, you were gone and all he’d left was this.”
Aidan released me and crawled to the edge of the bed. He pulled the drawer on his nightstand open and pulled out something small, a pink ribbon held the lock of my hair together.
“He took you because I couldn’t let him go, I had to be a good cop and I lost you because of it.”
I crawled towards him and took his face in my hands, I pressed my forehead to his and stared into his eyes.
“Aidan, you did nothing wrong. You did the right thing. Christopher would never have left us alone. If he didn’t take me then he would have chosen some other time. But he would have taken me regardless. You cannot blame yourself for this. I don’t blame you.”
He wrapped his arms around me, his grip tightening on me as he broke down. His shoulders shook as I held him. He drew me down onto the bed and we lay in each others arms. I had almost given everything up. I had almost thrown him away for something I couldn’t cope with.
When he finally grew silent, I pressed my body in closer to him. The scent of his skin filled my head and I closed my eyes, revelling in the nearness of him. I finally had the thing I had spent the last two years dreaming about. I was back in the arms of the man I loved.
“There was something I didn’t understand about Christopher…”
I pressed my lips to Aidan’s throat as I spoke, muffling my voice. Hell I didn’t even know if I wanted to bring it up. After everything else it seemed so inconsequential.
“What was that?”
“I reminded him of someone, a woman he knew… He talked about her as though he loved her. I don’t think Christopher could ever truly love anyone but himself. But it was the way he spoke about her.”
“Who was she?”
“Rebecca… He never gave me her last name, he just always referred to her as Rebecca… When he would beat me, that was what he called me. It was almost as though he was using me as a way to exact his punishment on her.”
Aidan had frozen beside me.
“Are you sure he never mentioned her surname?”
I nodded.
/>
“Yeah, it was always just Rebecca. Why?”
“What did he do to her? Did he tell you?”
“Well the way he told it, he made it seem as though they slept together and then she took one of the cars and drove herself off the cliffs on Freedom Island. He seemed really confused about the entire situation.”
Aidan sucked in a deep breath and held me a little tighter.
“Bella, I have to ask you something and you might not want to answer and that’s ok too.”
I nodded, my body ran cold and I couldn’t stop the shiver that passed over me as he spoke.
“You reminded him of this Rebecca… Did he rape you?”
“No.”
The word fell between us into the silence of the room. I expected Aidan to doubt me, I knew what everyone thought. But Christopher had never seemed interested in me sexually. I was a toy, a way for him to release his violent frustrations. Each time he strapped me to the horse I was no longer Bella, I was Rebecca.
“When he took me to his room it was always for punishment, pain and torture. I was Rebecca for him. He’d scream at me, demanding to know why I would leave him, why I preferred death over him. Torture and pain was his way of getting off…”
Aidan didn’t move, didn’t speak as I explained what Christopher had done. It wasn’t until I fell silent that he finally moved. He drew my body to his and tilted my face up to look into his eyes.
I could see the pain reflected there, the guilt he carried over my ordeal.
“I love you.”
He whispered the words to me. I was right where I belonged and as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep I knew in Aidan’s arms was where I needed to stay.
Sunlight filtered across my face as I woke. I lifted my hand to cover my eyes but Aidan caught my wrist and pressed his lips to my palm. Laughing I wriggled in his grip but the laughter quickly died as I felt him press against me.
It had been so long since I’d felt him that it stole my breath. I closed my eyes as he moved over me, his mouth coming down on mine in an all consuming kiss. He pushed his body up and over mine and I quickly ripped his t-shirt off. I was immediately confronted with his solidly muscled chest. The faint purple tinge of bruising covered his ribs, marks the creep had left on him. But that wasn’t the only thing that was new. Aidan had scars. Marks that hadn’t existed the last time I looked at his naked chest.