Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Bad relationship.
There’d never been a greater understatement.
I felt so exposed right then, even though there was so much that remained hidden. This grief so big that there were some days it seemed impossible to put one foot in front of the other. Impossible to get out of bed. Impossible to keep moving.
But that moving was the only thing I’d been able to do.
The only thing I knew how to do.
Empathy and concern crawled through Raven’s features, and her pretty eyes dimmed in awareness. I could feel her care radiate from her, as if she could sense everything I felt.
Experience it.
Her nod was slow. “I think I knew you’d been hurt. Really hurt. Maybe even the first time I saw you.”
She paused, then pressed, “River is very protective.”
Okay, maybe that was the biggest understatement ever made.
“You think so?” I tried to frame it a joke, but completely failed.
She wavered, looking down at her mug, before she looked back up to meet my eyes. “It’s because of me that he’s that way. Because of the abuse I suffered as a child.”
My spirit clutched in the wash of pain that suddenly gushed from her.
Knives that impaled.
I’d felt hints of it before, had heard the implications from River, but I’d been so wrapped up in covering who I really was that I hadn’t allowed myself to look close enough to really see.
I was definitely not the best bestie around.
Sorrow billowed, and I eased forward and touched her knee. “I’m so sorry, Raven.”
She’d always been so confident and vivacious, but for a brief moment, insecurities flashed through her expression. “He saved me,” she murmured so low I thought maybe she was afraid of admitting it, too. “Against all odds. At the highest cost. He saved me.”
She pulled up her shirt a few inches, and a rasp of horror left my mouth when she exposed at least a hundred pockmarks and burns on her torso. Strategically placed so they wouldn’t be visible.
“You can say he gets a little ragey when someone he cares about is harmed.” Grief covered her words.
“Who?” I didn’t have the right to ask it because she hadn’t demanded those details of me, but I couldn’t contain the lash of pain that cut through me at seeing the torment she’d been inflicted.
“My father. His stepfather.”
“What happened?” For someone who was keeping secrets, I was asking her to reveal a whole lot of hers.
Her expression dimmed, and she reached out and squeezed the hand I’d had on her knee. “I think that’s probably a story for my brother to tell.”
Then she shook her head. “Anyway, this isn’t about me. I just wanted you to know that I understood you from the beginning, saw something that I recognized in myself, and I think there might be a chance that my brother did, too, and maybe he deserves the chance to prove it to you.”
She hesitated, then added, “He’s holed up behind his own walls, Charleigh. Hiding behind his fears and secrets and scars. But sometimes, our souls know our match, and they’re drawn to the only one who could really understand and accept everything we are.”
I wanted to believe that. Accept it. Fall into it.
But she didn’t understand that what I kept was greater than that.
“I don’t know if I can give him that part of myself.”
“River is strong enough to hold your burdens.”
Maybe that’s what I was worried about. He was too strong. Too ferocious. Too relentless.
And him seeking out that part of my life would destroy us both.
THIRTY-NINE
CHARLEIGH
TWENTY YEARS OLD
She tried to smile as she sat beside Frederick Winston at the big banquet table surrounded by the elite. The room was stuffy though filled with chatter, the clank of champagne flutes and the drone of camouflaged arrogance as the upper crust went on about their latest achievements.
She tried not to flinch when Frederick slung his arm around the back of her chair, the bare brush of him against her nearly sending her into panic. Her lower back burned with the lashes that he’d inflicted the previous night—punishment for her not texting him after she’d arrived at the store.
He had her so tangled in his web that she no longer knew who she was. His manipulation running deep. His perversion deeper.
Hooks embedded in her body and soul.
Nausea spun in her stomach as she sat listening to him go on about how great he was, in that deceitfully humble way that everyone bought into.
If they only knew…
Two years ago, he’d offered her one night in exchange for not turning in her father. Only he’d laughed when she’d tried to walk out, warning, “I’m only getting started with you.”
It was the beginning of a nightmare.
Years of abuse and exploitation.
He’d long squashed her dreams of medical school, and if she was being honest, he’d long squashed her dreams of anything.