Текст книги "Pretty When You Cry "

Автор книги: Skye Warren

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

The circumstances may be strange, but I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. In fact, as the seconds ticked by, instead of calming down, adrenaline flooded my system.

“I’m Evie. What’re your names?”

The one with dreadlocks said, “I’m Trevor. That’s Rob.”

“Nice to meet you.” I laughed, still a little lightheaded from the lack of food or water or sleep. “Well, T-T-Trevor, I’m going to t-tell you something. I’ve had a really bad d-day, but that’s over now.”

“Yeah, because you’re here now. You can stay with us.”

“Actually I probably need t-to find a town.” And a police station.

I didn’t relish the thought of turning him in, but I didn’t have a way of getting back my stuff without him. My car, my camera—my book. Some days I wondered if the book meant more to me than the place.

“It’s a hike up that way.” Trevor waved down the river. “We’re going back tomorrow morning if you want us to show you.”

Relief flooded me. “That would be great.”

Rob popped open a beer from their cooler and held it out. “Thirsty?”

*     *     *

“Hold her down.”

I woke up without air. Someone was on top of my chest, holding me down. Something else was clamped over my mouth, blocking my breath. I struggled, managing to dislodge the hand long enough to suck in precious lungfuls, but by the time I could focus again, my arms were bent backward, trapped in the sand by two heavy knees pressing down, cutting off circulation.

Trevor straddled my chest, mauling my breasts. My dress was pushed up, the thin fabric bunched around my neck, making me feel even more trapped. My breathing came faster. Dark spots danced in front of my eyes. I was going to black out. Maybe that would be best. Then I wouldn’t have to feel what came next. But I might not wake up. Already I struggled to breathe, jerking and flailing for unblocked access to the crisp night air.

Slowly, I stilled. Around me, there was motion. The men were moving over me, around me. Hurting me. I stared up at the stars. They were so bright out here. There were never so many at home. Was this the price to see them?

A sharp pain stabbed at my center. My entire body recoiled from his penetration, writhing in the sand with nowhere to go. The night sky blurred as tears filled my eyes, and the twinkling lights melted and swirled. It reminded me of a painting I’d seen in a book, swirls of blue and yellow. Maybe the artist had cried and painted what he’d seen. Maybe he had been hurt too while looking up at the sky.

How had this happened? I’d agreed to stay the night in their camp. They were hiking back to the nearest town in the morning and they’d take me with them. Oh God, oh God. Had it been a lie to keep me there? Or I’d just been too convenient.

The world was exactly as awful as my mother had said it was, but I didn’t even wish to be home. Like the girl in the story, the true story, I wanted to take a canoe onto the river, to let it slip over the waterfall and never have to worry again.

This time, Hunter wasn’t here to catch me. No god of thunder to keep me safe.

I was alone, though I’d lost something precious, something important along my harrowing trip through the trees. I’d lost fear. So let me die, let me hurt. I didn’t care, and the detachment lent me strength.

With a force unknown, I snapped my head forward. My forehead cracked against the man on top of me. I shoved him off me and started to get up. Other hands dragged me down, but I kicked and screamed. I bit down on fingers until I tasted blood and felt my teeth grind against bone.

Blows rained down on my head, my stomach. I fell to the ground, gasping for air but taking in sand. Pain blossomed all over my body as they closed in on me. They huddled around me and kicked, and I stared up at the sky, my body jostled about by their currents, tipping over the edge of the waterfalls and falling, tumbling to a welcomed conclusion.

A crack rang out and one of the men fell over my body. There was shuffling and shouting, then another crack and a thud beside me.

Hunter, Hunter, is that you?

Someone came to stand over me, blocking the stars. Not Hunter, I realized. Never Hunter because I’d left him. Just an ordinary man, and I understood what had sent the girl out into the canoe. Why did you catch me from falling? I wanted to die.

Chapter Thirteen

At the current rate of erosion, scientists predict the Niagara Falls will be gone in around 50,000 years.

I woke up bound to a bed, my arms held immobile beside me, my whole body weighted down and sweating. No, not again. I fought, kicking and punching my way out of the restraints. A man appeared over me and held me down, shouting something I couldn’t make out.

“Hunter!” I screamed his name, though I didn’t know whether it was in anger or a call for help. My heart beat against my chest like a drum. God, he’d made me this way. If he was going to domesticate me, he had to damn well keep me from running away.

Resigned, I slumped down on the bed, sobbing quietly. I was the crazy one.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” a voice said.

He sounded relieved, I thought.

I opened my eyes to see an older man blink at me with worried eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

With a sigh, I said, “Just do what you’re going to do.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Oh sure, like I’d believe that. Then again, Hunter had never really lied about his intentions. That was just the warped way he saw the world.

This man didn’t seem like he would hurt me. I had to doubt my ability to read people considering my lack of experience and my general state of confusion where Hunter was concerned, but I didn’t feel threatened.

He was old, with wrinkles falling over rheumy gray eyes and more hair in his eyebrows than on his head. His plaid shirt was faded and worn but clean, buttoned all the way up.

“Who are you?” I croaked.

“You don’t remember?”

I closed my eyes. The memories were slowly coming back, even though I didn’t really want them to. Running through the woods, meeting those boys. Fighting them off.

I met his gaze. “You shot them.”

He nodded. “They brought it on themselves.”

I looked down and saw that the sheets had been tucked around me—not tying me down but keeping me warm. My skin was clammy. I struggled to sit, and the old man kept his distance, probably having learned his lesson after struggling with me earlier.

“You asked me not to call the police, so I brought you back here to heal. The fever broke last night, I think.”

“How long?”

He looked up, a little uncertain. “Oh, maybe three days. Sorry, not entirely sure. Time passes a little different when you’re used to being alone.”

Yeah, I could sympathize with that.

I finally glanced around the cabin, taking in the small bookcase with pulp thriller novels, the open shelf with blackened pots and pans, the small, ancient-looking television.

And only one bed.

He caught my line of thought. “I slept on a roll in the corner.”

I’d put him out of his bed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you worry. It was just like camping again. But now that you’re awake, maybe you want to reconsider calling the police. Or at least let me take you to a hospital. They can check you out better than I can.”

I shook my head. “No cops.”

My heart had gone from twisted to torn right in half when I’d run from Hunter. But however much I might rage against him on the inside, I didn’t want him behind bars.

Unfortunately, waking up didn’t mean I was fully healed. Though I had no broken bones that we could tell, there were enough bruises that my body wanted to rest all day long. The man’s name turned out to be Jeremiah, and he was generous with his space, his food, and his stories.

True to his word, he never laid a finger on me. In fact, he was exceedingly careful of my personal space in such cramped quarters. He knew what had happened to me from how he’d found me. He told me the first day I woke up that “those boys” wouldn’t bother me again, and I couldn’t summon enough compassion to ask if they had lived or died.

Instead Jeremiah shared with me stories of a young man in the Wyoming wilderness, tales of hunting bear and running from geese that I wasn’t sure whether to believe but I enjoyed all the same.

Three days after I’d arrived, I was sitting at his kitchen table eating scrambled eggs and hotcakes for breakfast. He began telling me a story of how he and his friends had gone up to “the falls” for a buddy’s bachelor party. There was something about smuggling a stripper over the Canadian border, but I had to interrupt.

“Niagara Falls?”

“One in the same, darlin’. You ever been?”

“No, but I want to.”

“Oh, it’ll blow you away. Right beautiful it is. ’Course nothing’s as beautiful as what Candy had to show us—”

“How far away is it?”

He scratched his forehead. “About five hours or thereabouts.”

My spirits sank. That was a long way away for someone with no transportation. Or money. I toyed with my eggs, but I could feel Jeremiah’s curious gaze on me.

“You know,” he said. “There was a time I had dreams about those falls, even if I knew they wouldn’t come to nothing.”

“Really?”

I figured he was just saying that to make me feel better. How many other people hung their hopes on a waterfall? But I appreciated the gesture.

“Well, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a hermit. But even us hermits, we have people we look up to. Something to work toward. And ain’t no hermit better than the Niagara Falls hermit.”

I made a face. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“Nuh-uh. He was a real guy back in the eighteen hundreds. Francis something-or-other. He lived on an island right in the falls. He’d climb over some wooden planks and sit on the end like he was on a dock somewhere. People would scream, thinking he was going to fall.”

Despite myself, I was intrigued. This hadn’t been in my book.

“Did he fall?”

“Nope. Lived there happy as you please for years. Then one day he was gone into a shallow portion to take a bath like he always did. Went under and never came back up. Just goes to show.”

“Uh. What does it go to show?”

“Goes to show people think what they want to think. The man was highly-educated, well-traveled. Been to all these countries. Famous for his music. But he goes to live in the falls and everyone assumed he was crazy.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“Nah, he just knew a good thing when he found it. The falls is beautiful, so why should he leave?”

I couldn’t stop thinking about that man. The hermit. He knew a good thing when he found it. Was that Hunter, living isolated in his truck? Or was I trying to romanticize something so it would sit easier with me? It didn’t really matter. In the end, Hunter did what he did. And like Jeremiah said, people would think what they wanted to think.

In two more days I was strong enough to go outside. I took short walks but kept close to the cabin. I’d need to leave here soon, and that meant I needed money.

I asked Jeremiah about it when he came to stand on the porch to smoke his pipe.

“I know this is a long shot, but you wouldn’t know anyone around here who needs graphic design work, would you?” I sighed. “That’s pretty much the only marketable skill I have.”

He seemed thoughtful. “Nope, can’t say that I do. I barely know what to do with those computer things, but I have one if you want to look around for a job or something.”

I raised my eyebrow, doubtful. “You have a computer?”

He grinned, showing off his missing tooth in the front. “Bet you thought I was just an old stupid hillbilly, didn’t you? Well, I am. But my daughter keeps trying to get me hooked into that stuff, so she got me set up. It’s in the kitchen cabinet underneath the sink.”

Excited, I ran to the door. On a whim, I stopped and gave him a kiss on his cheek.

“You’re not old or stupid.”

His eyes danced. “But I am a hillbilly.”

I laughed on my way inside. “And I love you for it.”

I pulled out the laptop and cables, which were pretty new as far as I could tell, and thankfully not messed up from being in a damp, enclosed space for so long. There was a little router that pulled up a signal, though it was slow all the way out in the woods.

The cursor waited patiently for me to type some search terms about a job nearby. Or maybe there would be some kind of assistance program for homeless people—which I basically was at this point. Or if I were really desperate, I could try to get in touch with my mother.

Instead I typed in Hunter’s full name. Apparently there was a B-list actor of the same name so I had to scroll through a few pages of search results until I found the one I was looking for. A news site reporting on a conviction for aggravated assault.

Nineteen year old parishioner…

Spiritual advisor and close friend of the family…

Abused his position of authority…

Guilty and sentenced to five years in a medium security prison…

A priest?

Jesus Christ, Hunter had been a priest. No wonder Laura had been so sure of him. And yet, what I’d told her had been true. How had he come to this? Why had he done it?

I went back to the search results and found a new article dated one year later.

U.S. Federal Appeals court tossed out the conviction on Friday…

New evidence brought forward by the victim’s friend…

Had fabricated the story over a series of emails…

Released on bond pending official exoneration…

The conviction was overturned.

My palms felt sweaty on the keyboard. A girl had lied about him. Lied to get attention or for whatever reasons, and he’d gone to jail for that. Where Hunter had gotten raped. The article didn’t say but I knew it with a certainty bone-deep. A priest who had raped a teenage girl would be exactly the kind of person targeted for assault by the other inmates. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against those men.

The first article had a picture of him. I returned and studied it.

The same features. The same man.

But the younger Hunter had a smooth face and guileless eyes whereas the Hunter I knew always wore a certain level of scruff. And his eyes were haunted. The pain he held was more marked now that I had seen him before.

Even though the picture had been taken from the shoulders up, I could see the changes in his whole body. His cheeks were more gaunt now, his shoulders broader and thicker. He’d gotten leaner while bulking up on muscle. He even held himself differently, more proud before, now defiant.

I had once wondered who had broken him, and now I knew the answer. That girl had when she lied about him. The judge and jury had when they convicted and sentenced him. His fellow priests had turned against him. The inmates had attacked him.

The whole world had turned against him and in a way, he had cracked. He wasn’t entirely right in the head. Even knowing this about him, caring for him, I had to admit that his actions at that motel had been inexcusable.

But in another way, he wasn’t broken. He lived, he felt, he suffered like any person.

More than other people.

A clink sounded on the kitchen table beside the laptop. Car keys.

I looked up at Jeremiah. “No way.”

“Don’t give me a hard time about this, missy. I know what I’m doing.”

“I can’t take your car.”

“You take it and go where you want to go. Then if you still need a place to stay, you come back here. Ain’t no use for a man as old as me to be alive if he can’t help someone who needs it.”

“Jeremiah. I don’t have a license. If I get caught—”

He cackled. “Lord, girl. I don’t have a title for that car neither. You just don’t get caught.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Did you steal it?”

“Grand theft auto, is that what you’re trying to charge me with?” He sat down opposite me and grew serious. “About four years ago I was wandering the country, hitching rides and doing what I had to in truck stations to earn money for food, if you know what I mean.”

My heart clenched. “Oh, Jeremiah.”

“Now, don’t go feeling sorry for me. I made my bed, and I never really regretted it neither. But this one day a guy met up with me in the stalls. We did our business and he handed me the money—along with the keys. I figured it was some kind of setup, but I took it anyway.

“Drove straight to my daughter’s house even though I hadn’t spoken to her in a decade. She was real good to me. Put me up for a while, helped me access my VA benefits, and I finally could afford this house. Kept the car, though. Now it’s yours.”

My heart felt overfull. “Okay. I’ll use it but I’ll bring it back.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I don’t need it. I’m an old man with nowhere to go. I get groceries delivered twice a month. I figure that man at the truck stop saw that I needed the car more than he did, and that’s why I’m giving it to you. Just get where you need to go. That’s all that matters.”

Chapter Fourteen

Rainbows appear almost every day as sunlight reflects off the mist from the falls.

As I pulled the old blue Toyota next to a parking meter a mile away from the Niagara Falls State Park entrance, it occurred to me that there may be nothing here for me.

Groups of people bustled by laden with strollers and diaper bags. Concessions were sold from street vendors. Signs announced that the Maiden of the Mist—this being the name of the ship—gave tours. Even the skyline was populated erratically with tall business buildings. It was all far more modern and commercial than any of the pictures in my book had been.

But the falls fulfilled their prophecy and took my breath away on sight. Or rather, on sighting one of them, because the expanse of the three falls together was far more than I could have visualized before. It felt enormous—and considering it divided two large countries, I supposed that made sense. There were multiple rainbows arching over the falls, closer than I’d ever seen one but also see-through…rather ghostly, really.

I went to an exhibit where I heard some of the same facts from the book, about the daredevils who went down the falls in barrels, about the tightrope walker. There was even a short segment on the Hermit of Niagara Falls, which I found gratifying in the extreme. After all, if Jeremiah hadn’t been stretching the truth about that, maybe all the other stories were true too. I hoped so. It was a full life. Some good, some bad, but the man knew how to have adventures.

I did go on the large boat to get up close and personal with the falls, getting drenched despite the poncho they gave us. There was an option to go into the tunnels behind the falls, though I found cave-dwelling far less interesting without Hunter there to float with me.

By the time I had seen all there was to see, the day was waning. I counted the money Jeremiah had loaned me, feeling guilty all the while. Get where you need to go, he’d said. But I was here, and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. It was becoming less clear what that really was.

I fed the parking meter and walked over to the hostel that I’d found online before coming here. Thirty bucks got me a clean bed, even if I did have to share a room. The girl barely looked up from her book when I came in. I glanced at the cover and did a double take.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Niagara Falls.

“I read that,” I exclaimed.

I knew I sounded like a moron, but I couldn’t help it. Alone in the world, it was nice to find common ground in even the smallest ways.

“You going to work on the Maiden too?” At my puzzled look, she continued. “The Maiden of the Mist. I’m studying to pass the test so I can be one of their tour guides.” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Adventure guides.”

“No. At least, I hadn’t planned to.”

But there was a thought. I had most of the information memorized already. At least then I could earn back the money I’d borrowed from Jeremiah while I formulated a new plan. Still, I felt ambivalent about the falls. It wasn’t their fault I’d pinned so much on them. They couldn’t deliver me what I wanted, I knew that now. I’d probably always known.

The girl shut the book and groaned. “The first person to map the Niagara Falls was a French priest in 1678.” She considered. “Well, except for the Native Americans. So I guess the book is wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said wryly. “I’ve heard that.”

She tossed it onto the bed. “Sometimes I think history isn’t really what happened. It’s how you look at it.”

I grinned. “You and me are going to get along fine.”

“You got a name?”

“Evie. And you?”

“Sarah. I moved here with my dumbass boyfriend. Well, I didn’t think he was a dumbass at the time. But we broke up because he is, in fact, a dumbass. And a cheater. Figure I might as well make some money while I sort this shit out.”

“That sucks, and I understand completely.”

“Wanna grab some dinner?”

“Let’s.”

We left the hostel room and returned to the darkened streets. The crowd seemed to have swelled as night hovered over the earth. It appeared the locals came here for the concessions and games along the strand.

A tall Ferris wheel blinked bright in the sky. On the ground, everything felt mildly damp and chilly. It would only be worse at the top, and that decided me.

“Have you been on that?”

Sarah looked up, blinking against the mist. “Not yet, but I’m game.”

We purchased our tickets and waited in line for thirty minutes before climbing in. It took another ten minutes before everyone else was loaded inside and the wheel began to turn in earnest.

“So what’s your story?” she asked.

I thought about that while we circled back down to the ground.

“Kind of the same thing. Hooked up with a guy for a while. Left him. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do next.”

“Asshole.”

“Yeah. Except…I mean, yeah he really is. By anyone’s standards, he’s an asshole.”

“But…”

“But nothing.”

“You’re in love.”

“He’s a jerk. If I told you everything he’s done, you would totally agree.”

“You haven’t even told me what he’s done and I already agree with you. But you love him.”

“He’s a priest.”

That gave her pause. Then she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, I think that matters. Plus other stuff. It’s just so frustrating. I want to go back to the way things were before I found him.”

I frowned, thinking how terrified I’d been that first night. Now here I was making friends in a hostel, exploring a new place on my own. I didn’t have much of a plan or much money, but neither did I have any fear.

My heart skipped a beat. No fear. That’s what I’d been looking for, and I’d found it.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t know where he is, so even if I wanted to find him…”

“Which you do.”

“I can’t.”

She sighed, looking out over the purple-and-blue-hued falls. “Well, I know exactly where my boyfriend is. At our apartment with my friend. Who I only let stay with us because she needed a place.”

“That sucks. Big time.”

“So screw them, right?”

“Yeah.”

The word sounded hollow, and judging by the look on her face, she knew it too. But she let me off the hook, and we chatted pleasantly as we grabbed a greasy hamburger from the strip and made fun of the wax statues in the window of the museum.

“I’d better head back,” she said. “I’ve got that interview first thing in the morning.”

“Sure thing. Let me just stop at my car to grab my bag.”

We headed through the thinning crowds toward the hostel. I pulled the small bag of toiletries I’d packed out of the backpack. Something caught my eye. Standing in the open back door of the car, I looked up in the sky and saw an orange-ish light streaking across the sky, like a rainbow but brighter somehow.

“Look at that.” I pointed.

“Oh yeah, I saw that last night. I think it’s a lunar bow.”

The book had mentioned those alongside rainbows but it didn’t have a picture. It was beautiful, more striking than all the colors, I thought. Just one. I felt a smile spread across my face. As silly as it was, I felt like this was what I’d come here to see. After all the official sites, the gorgeous views, just a swash of orange across the sky. Bold, brash. Everything that I wasn’t only a few weeks ago, but not anymore.

I glanced to the side.

There was a large overfill lot meant for people who visited with trailers and RVs. In that lot was a familiar truck, and leaning against the side was Hunter. I couldn’t be sure. His body was nondescript from this far away, his face in the shadows. But it was him.

He didn’t move. He wouldn’t move.

I turned to Sarah. “I have something kind of crazy to tell you. I’m going to leave now, but not in my car. Do you want it?”

“Uh, what?”

“It’s okay if you don’t, but it just sounded earlier like you might not have one. This car is old and not even strictly street legal but it can get you where you need to go.”

“Is this some kind of trick?”

“Take it or leave it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Take it.”

I tossed her the keys as I headed down the trip. “Nice meeting you, Sarah. Good luck.”

She raised her hand in a tentative wave. “You too.”

I wanted him to come to me. It wasn’t just a pride thing. I needed to know that he wanted this too. I needed him to need me too. Sure, I suspected, I hoped, but this was put-up or shut-up time. This was putting everything on the line just to see if it stuck. It was jumping off a cliff.

The streets thinned out right away. Only the main strand had been crowded. I found the largest street that would take me to the highway and just kept walking.

Twenty minutes later I saw headlights illuminate the road beside me. I put my thumb into the air like I was hitching a ride. The familiar squeak and rumble as the truck slowed to a stop beside me.

The door opened and Hunter was there, a grave expression on his face.

“Where you headed?” he asked, deceptively calm.

“No place in particular.”

“Isn’t that usually the point of hitching a ride, to get somewhere?”

I grinned, repeating his previous sentiments back to him. “I like to travel. Sometimes I do jobs, but in between them, I keep travelling.”

He paused, seeming to think that over.

“Well, hop in then,” he said so softly I barely heard him.

I climbed into the truck and tossed my bag in the back. Without looking at me, he started up the engine and took us forward. Though I didn’t have a destination in mind, I expected him to pull out onto the freeway. Instead he kept going down Main Street past the turnoff.

“Where are we going?”

He reached under his seat and handed me a book. “Got something for you.”

I touched the familiar cardboard cover, traced the lettering. Niagara Falls.

Once the mere thought of this had sustained me, small doses of hope. Now that I’d seen the real thing, I couldn’t regret any of it. The falls were both more beautiful than I could have imagined—and yet meant so much less. They were rock and water, not meant to be anyone’s salvation. Not like flesh and blood.

There was more. A manila folder was tucked between the pages and sticking out from the sides. I opened it. My breath caught at what I read. A full confession written in Hunter’s hand detailing how he’d kidnapped me, the sexual acts we’d performed in clinical terms, and signed by him at the bottom.

Even more shocking was the letters beneath them. Signed witness statement from Laura and James. A small pain stabbed my heart imagining Laura’s horror and confusion at learning the truth. And some man named Roger Wilbourne, proprietor of a diner and gas station, who had seen a girl call for help, who’d found three unconscious men on his property later that day. Hunter had collected statements from them that were both factual and damning.

The truck slowed to a stop.

I looked out the window. The sign on the old building read Niagara Falls NY Police Department. My stomach churned with revulsion. No.

With an impassive expression, he nodded for me to get out of the truck. To go into the station and hand these documents over. The gesture took me back to that first day at the motel. The forced casualness, the banked desire. He’d claimed to want my body that night, but he’d really needed so much more.

This wasn’t about right or wrong, love or hate. If I sent him back to jail, no matter that he was stronger now, he could get raped again.

“I would never send you back,” I said through gritted teeth.

He stared at me, gaze burning with unnamed emotion. “What the fuck do I care if I go back? I can’t keep you either way, so what do I care where I am when I’m alone?”

I shuddered from some combination of shock and want. We were standing in the water at the top of the cliff, the water rushing around us, threatening to pull us under.

“Why can’t you keep me?”

His expression was incredulous. “You know what I did. How it was between us. Even if we don’t tell anyone else, you know.”

“I forgave you that night, remember.”

He snorted, unbelieving.

“You were a priest. Of all people, you understand forgiveness.”

Something dark flickered in his eyes, and in those shadows I remembered what he’d once told me. I didn’t scream, Evie. I prayed. And fallen over the cliff, crashed into the water as fast and as deep as any person could do. It wasn’t a surprise he’d become isolated and cold in the aftermath. It was a surprise he’d survived at all.

“Don’t you see? I can’t ever be normal again. Never be the kind of man who can give you a real home—”

“I had a home. For twenty years I was trapped inside one. Now I want to roam. With you.”

“I’ll never be the kind of man who can be gentle with you, Evie. Not like you deserve.”

He was talking about sex, promising me more nights of bruising hands and forceful sex and sweaty, panting, screaming into the dark.

I met his gaze. “I’m not the kind of girl who needs gentle. You aren’t the only fucked-up person here, you know.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” he said mildly.

“And I was broken long before we even met.”

“You’re not broken.” He almost snarled the words, his ferocity terrifying, compelling. “I love the way you are. The way you’re terrified but do it anyway. The way you stand up to me when you shouldn’t.”

I climbed over to him, throwing my knee over and straddling him. His whole body tensed as if it had been shocked, rigid instead of welcoming.

“What about the way I fight for us,” I whispered, “even though you’re trying to push me away?”

In a rush, he grasped me to him, sucking in lungfuls of air as if he’d been underwater, his face buried in my hair. “Yes, that. God, Evie. Jesus Fucking Christ, Evie.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” I teased, but then he was kissing me, consuming me, and I was falling, drowning, battered and bruised by the rapids, never wanting to surface. His hands were everywhere, fluid on my thighs, my breasts—but not stopping there, never resting, just moving over me as if making sure I was all there, as if taking inventory, possession and never letting go.