He opened his mouth to speak. Tried again. Unable to reach the words locked behind the lump growing in his throat. One last look at her tortured face, and he opened the door. He wasn’t even off the porch before he heard it slam behind him.
—
Time skipped in Stephen’s mind. His hand opening the cabin door. Kick-starting his motorcycle. He hadn’t gone home, just drove and drove, pushing the machine between his legs to the limit, peeling around turns and daring the pavement to touch him. Faster and faster like maybe he could get away, and if he flew right off the road, all the better.
He’d been here before. Desperate to block out another person’s suffering. Ready for death or whatever punishment God wanted to dole out and thinking, Bring it. For once in my fucking life let me be the one to feel the pain.
At some point, he ended up in his office, alone and in the dark. Maybe his subconscious slipping back to all the hours and days and years he’d medicated himself with work. The time he’d turned to Trace to save him, but now? Now he just sat, staring at nothing. Doing nothing.
Every word replayed until he was nauseous. Every image brought the liquidy acid up his throat. Hannah and his fiancée blended together in his mind until he thought he would go insane.
The graphic crime-scene photos of her dead body on their apartment floor. The light tan carpet soaked with her blood. The stabs and slashes that left her flesh gaping in too many places to survive.
Day after day, he’d sat in the courtroom and looked at all of it. Ingested it. Never letting his eyes waver for even a second. Listening to the prosecution lay out the case in gory detail.
He made himself look. Made himself hear every word like he owed it to her. Like that would somehow put him there with her, naked on the floor, swimming in blood. His punishment for not being there before.
Her ashen face swollen and disfigured where they’d beaten her. Her white-blond hair dark with dried blood. Her legs left spread to show where she’d been ravaged and torn. And the ring he’d given her, gone, along with the finger she’d worn it on. And she’d endured it all alone.
But Hannah had endured alone too, had been reliving it and breathing it right in front of him. And he’d done nothing. He’d left.
Everything he hated rushed back. The guilt. The loss of control. The drinking. And yeah, he wanted a fucking drink.
From the courtroom, to Hannah. Back and forth, over and over, the images crashed together like a horrific storm. Blood on both of them. The need to save both of them.
But he hadn’t saved either.
—
It was dark, Stephen had been gone for hours. And for hours she’d sat on the couch staring at nothing. She should eat. Shower. Trying hard not to feel anything, she pulled herself up and went into the bathroom, intent on washing off everything of that day. Everything of Stephen.
His scent lingered on her skin, and her stomach twisted with what she’d let happen. How close she’d gotten, everything she’d told him. She’d opened her mouth and it had all poured out like a vicious flood. So caught up in all that was him, she hadn’t been thinking at all. Had forgotten the bone-deep fear that he would look at her and reject her.
A whimper escaped and she pressed her hand over her mouth. The look on his face, the horror in his eyes, sickened and not wanting to hear it. She stripped off her clothes in front of the mirror and forced herself to look at the body staring back. It could have belonged to someone else, she felt so far removed from what she was seeing. She traced a finger over the lines on her stomach. A broken body no man would ever want to touch.
Sad, blank eyes stared back at her. So different from the bright eyes of a few weeks ago. Twelve years’ worth of pain and shame and embarrassment hit her like a fall from a skyscraper. That’s how it felt. Like falling from a great height with nothing to catch her but the unforgiving sidewalk. The bite of Stephen’s rejection was strong and sure. She wanted to break something, like her torturer had wanted to break her. Had broken her. With a primal scream, she grabbed the ceramic toothbrush holder and smashed it against the mirror, unleashing all her pain and fury and heartbreak.
A spiderweb of cracks appeared, mimicking the lines in her skin. She hit it again and again, until a sting and a line of blood sliding down her arm made her stop. The ceramic lay in pieces, bright red drops hit the white sink bowl. She stared a few seconds, then, naked and empty, she slid to the floor, the wall cool along her back, until she hit bottom. And without even bothering to wash off the blood, she cried.
Chapter 21
Hannah bolted awake Monday morning, heart racing, body shivering from a chill brought by clinging memories, not cold. She noted each and every object around her room, a trick she’d been taught to ground herself in reality. The horse figurine on the dresser. A farm print on the log wall above it.
She’d told Mia she didn’t remembered more. That was the truth. She couldn’t remember more when she remembered everything. Blessing or curse, it mostly only came to her in dreams. But dreams came at night, in the dark. Alone.
Sharp, defined, and in stark color. Unimaginable pain. The metallic scent of her own blood. The taste of it in her mouth and the sound of it dripping onto the floor along with the feeling her skin was being peeled from her bones. And the worst, the squeak of the door that told her he was coming. Not knowing what he would do next and the white-hot pain when she jerked away from his touch.
She shuddered, the past so vivid she could still feel it. Still hear her own screams. And the silence, when it was so bad she couldn’t even do that. When she prayed for it to end.