by Ranae Rose
Which meant that she was back at the drawing board, with fresh scars.
She glanced sidelong at Grey, who was quickly putting distance between them and the hospital, the little town where her nightmares had briefly become reality. She’d kept him at an arm’s length for so long, and now, she couldn’t help but think it would’ve been kindest and smartest to have continued, to have spared him all of this.
But where would she be now, if she’d done that? She’d have Sasha, sure. And she appreciated her just as much as she did Grey. But her heart longed for something more than friendship, no matter how profound. For someone like Grey. Even after all she’d been through, and the way she’d endangered him.
Was that wrong? Did she deserve a chance like this, even if Grey knew the risks and was unafraid?
* * * * *
Little pieces of glass clinked together like bloody wind chimes as they were dropped into the metal bowl.
“I’m almost done,” said Tanya, Michael’s wife. “Just a couple more to go now.”
Brad clenched his teeth as she dug at his face with the pink-handled tweezers again. Damn, having the bottle pieces removed from his face hurt like a son of a bitch – like she was pulling out his teeth, straight through his face.
He had to hold a kitchen towel under his jaw to catch the blood that streamed from his cheeks, lips and chin.
“This is a little’un.” Tanya’s hand trembled, and it felt like she was cutting him open all over again.
“God damn it!” Brad said through clenched teeth. His ass was going numb against one of her kitchen chairs, but his face seemed to have no maximum capacity for pain.
“Easy, Tanya,” said Brad’s brother. “It’s his damn face you’re butchering. Use your head.”
“Sorry.” She pursed her lips. “I’m being as careful as I can. I’m almost done.”
A part of Brad itched to give her a sharp smack across the face, a little taste of her own medicine. But he didn’t dare go to the hospital, and he couldn’t just walk around with a face full of glass.
“We have Aspirin in the medicine cabinet,” she said when she’d finally extracted the almost microscopic shard of glass. “Have you taken any yet, Brad?”
“Of course I fuckin’ have. I’ve got a broken whiskey bottle sticking out of my face, don’t I?” He could speak freely now that she wasn’t jamming those damned tweezers in his face.
She frowned. “Hold still now, and we’ll be done soon.”
He clenched his jaw and let her get back to work, hating her. By the time she finished, a creeping blackness was giving him tunnel vision and blood was dripping from the towel. He lost track of time and recoiled when Tanya pressed a wet towel against his face.
“We don’t want your cuts to get infected,” she said. “This is the most important part.”
She used a cotton ball to slather his face in some generic drug store goo after that, leaving him with a sticky mask. His face hurt so badly in some places that he couldn’t believe she’d gotten all the glass out. “You sure you didn’t leave any behind?”
“I don’t think so. I did my best. Does it still hurt?”
“Yeah, it fuckin’ hurts!” He stood up and threw the bloody towel down on the kitchen floor.
Instantly, he was dizzy.
Tanya grabbed his arm, scratching him with her long, fake nails.
He shook her off and fell back into the seat.
“Here.” Michael pressed something cold and wet into his hand – a beer. “Tanya, go make up a bed for Brad on the couch.”
It hurt to drink, but Brad did it anyway.
“It true you found Kerry, after all these years?” Michael asked as Tanya scuttled off.
Condensation from the beer can ran over Brad’s fingers like the blood trickling down his neck. “Yeah, I found her.”
Michael stared for a while at Brad’s face. “Looks like she wasn’t worth looking for, if you ask me.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brad jerked his head in the direction Tanya had gone and immediately regretted it. “Would you let her go if she’d done this to you?”
“She wouldn’t,” Michael said. “She knows better.”
“Yeah well, Kerry will know better by the time I’m done with her.”
“You still want her back?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I? She’s my damn wife. I’m not gonna let her run around on me, no matter how worthless of a bitch she is. She’s gonna give me what she owes me.”
Michael cracked the tab on a beer of his own. “She just doesn’t seem worth it is all. Especially not if you might get harassed by the law. There are plenty of other women.”
“Fuck the law. I don’t care what the police in West Virginia are doing. I’m bringing her here, and I’ll make sure she never presses any charges on me.”
Tanya came back into the room, carrying a fresh towel. “Your bed’s all made up, Brad. I’ll have dinner ready in a few. We’re having pork chops. You let me know if you want me to grab you another beer.”
Tanya really wasn’t that bad. She’d gotten fat over the years and she definitely wasn’t getting any younger, but she knew her place and Brad had never seen her give Michael any lip. Why the hell couldn’t Kerry be like that? Why did she make life so hard for him, and for herself?
He didn’t want to spend his time chasing her around and teaching her lessons, he really didn’t. But she made him. Everything she’d ever had the nerve to complain about, she’d done to herself.
* * * * *
By the time Grey got Kerry home, it seemed like he’d lived an entire extra lifetime within the past 24 hours. Her house was familiar, but things had changed.
He double-locked the door behind them as she watched. “Have a seat on the couch. I’ll go look around – check all the windows. You just relax.”
She sank onto the couch, and though she sat up straight against the cushions, squarely in the middle, he could see how tired she was.
The drive had been long, and they’d dropped Sasha off before coming here. No one had slept well the night before, and he knew Kerry wouldn’t sleep well now unless she felt safe. It wouldn’t be easy – for obvious reasons – but he’d try to give her a feeling of security.
One by one, he checked every window, making sure they were securely locked, their panes uncracked. There was nothing amiss.
“Thank you,” she said when he walked back into the living room. “For checking, and for coming to get me. For everything.”
“Hey, I owed you, remember? This is me making up for when you babysat me after Bigfoot attacked.”
That won him a small smile. “Somehow, it feels like you’ve gone above and beyond repaying me for that. Besides, you know what?”
“What?”
“I was secretly glad to have you here.”
“I’m going to need you to put that in writing. Or maybe make a recorded statement.”
Her smile flickered back into place.
“Do you want me to stay now, Kerry?”
“I do, but I feel guilty. After—”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door. She nearly leapt off the couch, and even he twitched.
“I’ll see who it is.”
He hurried to the door before she could get up.
“It’s Jeremy,” he said after checking through the peep hole.
“Oh.” She sounded relieved, but her expression was nervous – it was obvious she was biting her inner lip. “I wonder if he has news. Maybe Brad’s been caught.”
Grey opened the door. “Hey, man.”
“Come in,” Kerry called from behind him, a slight tremor to her voice.
Jeremy nodded and stepped inside, looking dead serious. The grim expression had settled onto his face over the summer and seemed stuck.
“Kerry. Grey.” He nodded at both of them. “I’m glad to see you back in Riley County. It’s a hell of a thing, what happened, and I’m sorry you had to go through it. Anyway,
I’ve got news.”
Kerry had risen from the couch. Now, she sat back down. “Is it about Brad?”
“It’s about the crash. We towed your car from the site and had a mechanic look it over. Someone damaged your brake lines.”
Grey thought he was done being mad, if for no other reason than he’d exhausted his capacity for anger over the past 24 hours. But hearing Jeremy’s news gave him a second wind, set his jaw on edge and made his spine prickle with anger.
“Do you remember what it was like driving your car yesterday morning? Did you have any problems with stopping? Was your brake light on?”
Kerry shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing the light. I did hydroplane shortly after I started my drive, though. It took me a while to stop, but I thought it was because of the rain. As for the crash… I’m sorry, I don’t remember it very well.”
Jeremy nodded.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here,” Grey said, “and say that the person who messed with her brakes was the same asshole who abducted her.”
It all made sense now – how Brad had conveniently been at the scene of the crash, ready to swoop down on Kerry and take her away. Meanwhile, she’d probably been too disoriented and injured by the crash to realize what was happening, let alone escape.
What a fucking coward. Everything Grey learned about the man and the way he operated made him hate him more.
“If the brake line had been completely severed, your light would’ve come on and you probably would’ve noticed something was off almost immediately,” Jeremy said. “But there are ways of damaging the line so that you don’t lose all braking power immediately. Does your ex-husband know much about cars?”
Kerry shrugged. “He was a bit of a shade tree mechanic. Just about all the men where we lived were. He was no professional, though.”
“Anyone could look up how to mess with a brake line on the internet,” Grey said. “It’s not rocket science.”
“I realize that,” Jeremy said. “And I realize you must be exhausted, Kerry, but I’m going to have to ask some more questions in the morning. I’ll leave you to rest right now. I just wanted to let you know.”
After Jeremy left, Grey extended a hand to Kerry and helped her rise from the couch. “You ready to get some sleep?”
“I don’t know if I can. Knowing that Brad messed with my brakes… It doesn’t surprise me, but it makes everything seem real, somehow.” She raised her bandaged hand to the side of her head, where the six stitches she’d received to her scalp were covered by a square of white gauze. “That must sound stupid after everything else that’s happened, but that’s how it feels.”
“I hate that he did it, but I’m grateful as hell that Jeremy thought to check,” Grey said. “This is just more evidence against your ex. With every evil thing he does, he’s building a solid case against himself. No court will throw this out, Kerry.”
“Maybe you’re right. But what if he kills someone before it gets that far? The things he’s doing are potentially deadly. I didn’t really think I was going to make it out of that motel room alive. Anything could happen.”
“No. We’ll be careful. I won’t let anything else happen to you.”
“I don’t like the thought of you throwing yourself under the bus for me. I’m a grown woman – I made my own bed, and the only person who should have to lie in it is me. I hate that I’ve dragged you into Brad’s sights.”
“He knows about me. If I have any idea what kind of person he is – and I believe I do – he’s mad as hell at me for daring to so much as look at you. What’s done is done, and we might as well stick together.”
CHAPTER 20
Kerry looked up, her gaze locking with Grey’s. “You make everything sound so rational. So good. I mean, the situation is bad, but… This is so different than dealing with this on my own. I can’t believe you’re willing to go through it with me.”
She bit her inner lip again, causing a dent to appear as she continued to hold his gaze. “I don’t know why you’d want to. The only thing I can figure is that you’re a better person than I’m capable of understanding.”
“I’m not exactly a saint,” he said. “I have a considerable, very selfish interest in keeping you alive. Especially now that you admitted you like having me around.”
“I love having you around. I just can’t comprehend why you’d want to deal with the shit storm I brought from Kentucky.”
“I like you enough to deal with so much more than this,” he said. “It’s true. And look – I know what it’s like to live with a tyrannical asshole who treats you like his own punching bag. Part of this is personal.”
She was silent for just a moment. “Your dad – it wasn’t just your mom who he hurt?”
Grey shook his head. “It was both of us. I had to back down then, because I was a kid. But it killed me. I felt so guilty for letting him hurt my mom like that. Looking back, that’s what I remember most: the guilt. And the fear.”
“How old were you?”
“I was 9 when she left him.”
“You were way too young to have done anything about it.”
“Yeah, but she took the worst of it – I realized that, even then. And I know I was too young, but that didn’t stop the guilt. But I’ve put on twenty years and one hundred pounds since then. I won’t watch anyone else be abused by someone like him. Not ever again. Especially not you.”
“I feel stupid now,” she said, “for assuming you could never imagine what it was like. I guess the only part you can’t imagine is why I ever chose to be with him. It’s not like I was a helpless child, like you were.”
“It’s not like that. No one deserves to be treated the way he treated you. It’s no one’s fault but his. Besides, I saw my mother go through the same thing, and I know how hard it was for her to leave. I had all the respect in the world for her.”
“Had – she’s gone now?”
Fear flashed in her eyes, a muted spark of light.
“Yeah, but it didn’t have anything to do with my father,” he said, sorry he’d put that fear in her heart. “She got sick a few years after she left him. It doesn’t seem fair – she moved heaven and earth to be free from his bullshit, and she only got to enjoy it for a little while.”
“I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
For a while, neither of them said anything.
“Why don’t we go to bed?” he finally asked.
They did just that, stripping down to their underwear and climbing into her bed. The mattress was only a full, and the quarters were close. Grey had welcomed the limited space during the times they’d had sex there, but now that she needed rest, he felt bad for cramming her against the wall.
“I’d be glad to take the couch,” he said. “This is kind of ridiculous.”
“No.” She shot an arm across his chest and held onto him, her grip surprisingly fierce. “Please stay here. Unless you’re too uncomfortable…”
“I’m fine,” he said, and felt her breath rush against his shoulder in what seemed like a sigh of relief.
She was still and silent against him after that, her body molded to his side. Long after he figured she’d fallen asleep, her voice rose out of the darkness.
“I didn’t want to marry him,” she said, “even in the beginning. I got pressured into it by my family because he got me pregnant. I found out right before I graduated high school, and we got married a month later. It was stupid. I should’ve refused.”
The image of Kerry – looking so young – in her white dress rose up in Grey’s mind. He tried to imagine what it must’ve been like for her.
“You were only what, 18 when that happened? It’s hard to stand up for what you want at that age. Hell, it’s hard to know what you want.”
“I was afraid. It was the kind of place, and I lived in the kind of family, where having sex was basically the worst thing I could’ve possibly done. I felt so ashamed, it seemed like I didn’t have a choice. Everyone made it out like marr
ying the father was the only decent thing I could possibly do, and I was naïve enough to believe it.”
“So you married him. And you had the baby?”
“Yes and no. I miscarried just nine days after the wedding.”
“Did he—”
“It wasn’t his fault. It just happened. I was only two and a half months pregnant at the time. I felt like such an idiot then, chained to him because of something that wasn’t even real anymore.”
“Sorry.” He hurt for her, though what she’d gone through wasn’t something he could really understand.
“I was upset, but when I look back on it, I’m relieved. Maybe that sounds bad, but I know if I had a child, I’d still be with Brad. And I can’t stand the thought of a kid growing up with a monster like that for a father. I’m glad there was no baby.”
Grey didn’t feel qualified to comment. He thought of his own childhood and what a hell it’d been for his mom to leave his dad. Now that he thought of it, he’d surely made it harder for her.
Silence reigned, and the rhythm of Kerry’s breathing changed. She was asleep, and she hadn’t moved, hadn’t stopped holding onto him.
Thinking about what she’d said kept him awake for a while, but he didn’t mind. She clearly felt safe enough to sleep, and he was glad to be able to give that to her.
* * * * *
There was no alarm clock, no noise. There was a dull ache behind Kerry’s skull and in her left hand, but those sensations were muted by the intense comfort of her warm bed and a long, deep sleep. She wasn’t sure why she’d woken up.
Now that she had, though, she was aware that it was late in the morning and she was lying against Grey.
“Wow,” she said, raising her head from the pillow beside his shoulder, “have you not moved all night?”