by Dee Tenorio
Never let him find you… The last words her father-in-law had ever said to her. Not because he cared about her. She knew that too well. Christopher Hall had simply known there were some limits to what he could get his son out of. Murder charges were fifty-fifty. The night the maid saved her, there were witnesses to deal with. People who could turn the tide of a jury if they felt strongly enough about the truth. Out here, on her own, she had no such guarantees.
You’re not alone here.
How many times had Locke said that to her? How many times had she scoffed in return, but deep down, she knew it was true. She wasn’t like him, knowing every face in the town as if they were all part of his immediate family, but she knew a lot of them. They’d welcomed her. Accepted her, even grumpy as she was. Unlike all the places she’d been before, she was going to miss this town. These people.
Locke.
Why couldn’t the right answer and the safe answer be the same thing?
Did she even know what either of them were?
The better question, even if she somehow managed to extricate herself from her apartment—with or without all the things that almost made this place a home—could she truly bring herself to drive away? Could she honestly take Locke’s child from him, as if she had the right? That had never been the kind of person she thought herself to be. But fear made fools of everyone, didn’t it?
The knock on her front door startled a yelp from her. She rolled her eyes at her own cowardice. Talk about not being who she thought she was. She’d come here hoping to fashion herself into someone with strength. With backbone. Now she stood on shaking knees, feeling more like a jellyfish.
She knew who was on the other side of that door. Wished she wasn’t pleased underneath her confusion. She should have known he wasn’t going to stand idly by while she disappeared. Honestly, an hour without his persistence was kind of a miracle.
Or it was an indication of how much she’d hurt him with her accusation.
Arms held tight around her body, gripping the quilt she’d draped over her shoulders in white-fisted hands, she stopped just in front of the painted wood of the door.
A second knock, quieter than usual, but no less insistent.
“Why are you here, Locke?” Why was she feeling so much expectation when she asked? Did she truly think he’d come up with a solution in the last fifty minutes?
“Let me in, Susie.” His deep timbre lost none of its gravel being muffled by the door.
She bit her lip. If she let him in, she’d let him back in her life, solution or not. God, if she let him in…she’d be putting her life in his hands, because there was no way she could leave him twice.
“Please, baby.” The sound of something smoothing over the wood from the other side made her hurt. His hand. Touching it, reaching futilely for her. She sighed, eyes stinging for them both. You’d think she’d cried enough in the last few months, the last few hours, but clearly, she had more. She just didn’t know if they were for herself or for him.
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” But she still found herself a step closer to the door.
“Then take me with you.”
“What?” Was he out of his mind? “You can’t leave… Your family, your friends.” Most of which were his family, but she didn’t want to point that out right now.
“You’re my family now. You and the baby. Wherever you are, that’s where I’m going.”
Damn this man. Was he trying to break her heart into shards?
“You can’t give up everything for me.” He’d hate her for it someday. When he realized how very much he’d thrown away and gotten so little in return.
“Ahhh, baby. Don’t you know? I’d give up breathing for you.”
She stared at the door, unable to even gasp. He meant that. How could he possibly mean that? But instead of asking him, she was at the door, scrabbling at the locks. It took forever to get them open, and once they were cleared, he pushed inside. She heard the door slam behind him, but she didn’t care because he was already lifting her up, his mouth fused to hers, swallowing any words she could have said.
The blanket fell off her shoulders, her legs wrapped tight around his waist while he walked them both to her couch. They fell in an inexplicable tangle onto the cushions, his body taking the brunt beneath hers. Still she clung, feeling like a melodramatic mess for crying all over him as she kissed him as hard as she could.
“I’m sorry,” he said against her lips. Over and over again. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
That just made her cry harder. And hold him tighter. But it didn’t change anything. The situation was just tangled even more. “It’s hopeless.”
Both Locke’s big hands cupped the sides of her face, lifting her from him so he could make her look him in the eye. “Nothing is hopeless. You hear me? Nothing.”
She couldn’t really move her head with him holding her like that, but her expression must have given her dubiousness away.
“We stay together, we think it through, we find a way. It’s not hopeless.” His conviction would have convinced her, if the price wasn’t so high for him to pay.
“I can’t ask you to leave your entire world behind. I can’t let you—”
“You’re not asking.” The pads of his thumbs smoothed away her tears. “I’m begging.”
She shook her head, covering his lips with her fingertips. “Don’t say that. You were never a man meant to beg. I don’t want to be the reason you do.”
A caress before he moved her hand away. “Then what are we are we arguing about?”
“Same thing we always argue about.” She laughed wetly, trying to mop up her face with her sleeve. “Me making sense and you saying impossible things.”
“We’ve done pretty good with the impossible so far, haven’t we?”
Now how was she supposed to argue with that? “It’s still a mess.”
It had to be bad when he didn’t argue that point, but something inside her, a small ember that had begun to glow when he’d knocked…it refused to let her worry. Not in this moment. Not when he held her and offered her absolutely everything. In this moment, it didn’t matter if she could take it or not.
She settled over him, laying her head on his chest. His heartbeat thudded in her ears. Strong. Steady. The kind of beat she could set her own to…
No, she realized, as she closed her eyes and let free the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. It was the beat she had already set her own to.
That’s when she knew her decision was made. Undeniably. Irrevocably. Whatever came next, she wouldn’t face it alone. Whether he knew it or not, this man had her trust and her heart. Forever.
Locke’s hand stroked her hair. Carefully slipping though her curls. Lulling her. Seeming to need this contact, this sense of safety as much as she did. So she didn’t see it coming when he softly asked, “When were you going to tell me about Kayla McCormick?”
Chapter Eleven
She lurched up out of his hold, but Locke kept a firm grip on her hips. Demanding, maybe, but the only inches he had left to give her were the ones she was currently sitting above. And he had a feeling she wasn’t in the mood to take them anytime soon.
“Where did you— Never mind.” He could pretty much hear her coming to the obvious conclusion. Despite the intimacy of her perch, she turned more distant than he’d ever felt her. She stared down at her hands on his chest, her fingers knotting the fabric of his shirt. “I wasn’t. Ever.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t matter.”
“She matters to me.” He reached up to tip her chin so she would look him in the eye. “She matters a lot.”
The anger on her face wasn’t very surprising, and it would have been a relief not to have it directed solely at him if he didn’t know where she was pointing it instead. “Kayla never mattered to anyone except as a support check or a punching bag.”
“Susie—”
“That’s right. Susie. Not Kayla.
Kayla doesn’t exist anymore.” She got off him, and this once, he knew he had to let her. She stalked the short length of the room in a few paces, turning back and dragging her hands over her hair. Agitation sparked off her like electricity. “Kayla died like the coward she was and I’m what’s left. I’m all that’s left.”
Locke sat up slowly, planting his elbows on his knees and waiting. There wasn’t much else he could do at this point. Her secrets had become poison in her and the only relief she’d find was letting them bleed out. But God, it was hard to listen to the self-hatred in her voice.
“You’re everything that’s left,” he corrected softly. “There’s a difference.”
“Yeah?” She kept pacing, a tiger in a cage. “What difference is that?”
“The difference is, you’re not trash. You’re not dead. You’re still here, fighting to keep going. Do you think he would be, if the tables were turned? That a man like him would be able to pick himself up and start over with nothing and no one to help him? Not a chance in hell. You survived the only way you could. You have nothing to be ashamed of. He does.”
She kept shaking her head, her gaze slipping to the corner of the room. She did that every time she didn’t have a response for him. Look away and pretend he didn’t say it. But she was going to hear him on this.
He spoke as softly as he could, refusing to play the aggressor in this challenge. “You didn’t have to hide this from me.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was forgetting. Or doing my damnedest to. But no matter what I do, I can’t forget. It’s always right there in the back of my mind exactly how Kayla died on that floor in Chicago, and you know what? She deserved to. She deserved it for every time she didn’t fight back. For every lie she told herself and everyone else, just so she could pretend to sleep at night. For every time she didn’t leave when she had a chance. For being such a goddamned victim her entire. Fucking. Life.”
He sat still on her couch, wanting to grab her and drag her into his hold. He wanted with everything in him to take the shame from her, but it wasn’t in his power. She had to do it on her own. Until then, all he could do was be there for her.
So he listened to her rage. Watched her pace and call herself names. All the while she tore at her hair and struggled to bottle it back inside. She didn’t seem to understand why she couldn’t force it all back in.
Then, like a thunderclap, she stopped trying.
“You want to know about Kayla?” she demanded, stomping into her room briefly before coming back with an old yellow suitcase. She dragged it over, kicking it onto its side at his feet. Her shaking fingers fumbled with the latches before she tossed it open. “I’ll show you Kayla.”
The messy contents inside weren’t what he expected. Money, in thick stacks, rubber-banded together, some of it singed and curled at the edges. Clothes, stuffed inside what appeared to be haphazardly. A package of toothbrushes and travel-size toiletries. Loose-packaged lollipops, of all things, Handi Wipes and a leather-bound sheaf of papers several inches thick. She grabbed the last, dumping it onto his lap. “Open it.”
“Susie…” He didn’t want to look in this thing. The weight of it was slight compared to the terrible sense of its importance.
“Open it.” Her face was set in grim lines, and he knew she wasn’t going to budge.
He also knew what she was doing. Making him look at whatever was in the satchel was supposed to make him think less of her. Make him see her the way she saw herself. “Nothing in this thing is going to change anything about us, Susie.”
“Say that after you’ve seen it.”
He pushed his breath out, shaking his head as he tugged at the elastic string tying the flap to the front clasp. Inside, he could see a series of manila folders, some thicker than others, all of them wedged within the packet. He pulled at them, and after a few grinding seconds, they spilled out onto his lap.
The first things he noticed were the legal documents. A birth certificate with the name Kayla Anne McCormick on it. A matching social-security card and an Illinois state driver’s license. There was also a sheaf of papers—a decree of dissolution. Her divorce papers. He was about to inspect those more closely when he noticed the duplicates beneath. Only now, the name said Susanne Elizabeth Packard and the driver’s license was from Alabama.
He frowned at them. “Are these legal?”
Her deadpan stare answered that.
He went back to the rest of the papers. Or medical records, he realized, if the stickers and charts on the outsides of the folders were correct. Originals.
He glanced up at her again. “How did you get these?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “You get to know a lot of nurses when you spend as much time in the hospital as I did. I asked for some favors when Christopher made his offer to me. I knew how he worked, that he’d destroy any evidence that might trace his son to my death. These are just the records they could find. There were more. Many, many more.”
He opened one file, just as quickly closing his eyes at what he saw.
“My nose was broken in two places that time,” she narrated flatly. “We told people I’d been in a car accident. At first, the doctor thought my jaw might have been broken, but believe it or not, it was just sprained.”
Locke looked down again, determined to do this for her. Even if his gut churned with rage he couldn’t show and his heart wasn’t sure he could take it. He bit back the bile and did what she asked. She’d lived it. All he had to do was look at a few pictures. Unflinchingly clear pictures…
Her face was unrecognizable. Not just as the woman he knew, but almost as a person’s altogether. One eye was purple, swollen shut and almost twice the size of the other. The same side of her face had dried blood still smeared across it, the skin discolored and misshapen. How her jaw wasn’t broken, he didn’t know. He’d seen boxers who didn’t look as destroyed.
The next picture wasn’t any better, and the notes in the file were worse. Bruises that weren’t consistent with the stated causes but were signed off nonetheless. His anger grew with every notation. Falling off a horse didn’t leave marks like fingers around wrists and throats. Miscarriages didn’t cause vaginal tears. Ribs didn’t break from pneumonia and shoulders didn’t dislocate from simple workouts. But the signatures were all there. Hers, the doctor’s, her husband’s. Neat and tidy, in a way he wouldn’t have believed if he didn’t have the proof in his hands. He studied each folder, making sure she saw him inspect every horrible page. So many injuries, wrongs that couldn’t be undone. Couldn’t be erased.
But he had to hope they could be healed.
As he’d told her, he had his scars too. Both of them had made room for their pain. Together, if she could take the chance, maybe they could make room for happiness. So he read the last of her secrets, and reminded himself that hope hadn’t given up on him yet. Not yet…
He didn’t know how long they sat there, but the shadows of evening were crawling through her windows by the time he was done. He arranged the files and papers back as he found them, fitting them into their satchel and tying the string once more. He tossed it back into the suitcase before shoving it all away with his foot. He hoped to God he never had to see the fucking thing again.
He fixed his gaze back on her face, keeping his voice as even as he could. “And?”
She blinked slowly, taking long seconds before lifting her dark lashes again. “You can’t—” She stopped, as if her throat closed on her. “You can’t brush that under the rug, Locke. It’s not something you can ignore.”
“I’m not the one ignoring it.”
Her jaw worked, the tendons twitching at the side the only evidence of the way she ground her teeth together.
“This doesn’t change who you are to me. It doesn’t change what I think of you.” He reached for her hand, tugging her back to the space between his open knees.
She came, warily. That was okay, so long as she was in the circle of his arms. As long as she never feared being there.
“Unless you count me thanking God from now to eternity that you were strong enough to have survived.”
She rejected that, as he knew she would. “Sometimes I don’t think I did.”
“Yes, you did. You’re here with me, right now, far from that nightmare.”
“Pieces of me are here.” She still frowned, but the long silence seemed to have sapped the heat of her defensiveness. “Sometimes it feels like I’m just a figment of my own imagination. Someone I made up who was courageous, spirited.” She touched his cheek, staring at him as if he were something special. “Brave enough to risk everything for a man like you.”
He cupped her fingers against his face.
“But in the end, underneath it all, I’m still hiding. Still lying to everybody. Still completely terrified of my own life.”
“Everyone’s terrified, baby.” He certainly was. So far beyond scared he didn’t have words. “No one wants to lose what’s important to them. There’s nothing wrong with that. When I think about what you’ve been through, how close I came to never knowing you…” He bowed his forehead to hers, breathing her in. She was here, she was real. She’d survived. He clutched that knowledge as tightly as he could, because anything less than that was simply a concept he couldn’t accept. “What matters is that you’re here now. That you’re not shutting me out anymore.”
Her attempt to smile hurt his heart. “I had to. I had to put Kayla in a box. I had to forget her.”
He understood that. She did what she had to in order to move on. But the past never let go as easily as people wanted. “That’s fine, but you can’t cut her out like she never existed. That’s how we end up with ghosts. Ghosts haunt.”
Her voice was almost soundless. “But I’m not her anymore. I don’t want to be her anymore.”
“So don’t be.” Simplest solution he could think of. “We decide who we are, who we want to be. You chose to make something more of your life than what that bastard tried to force you into, and you did it. If that’s not something to be proud of, I don’t know what is.”