Safe at Last (Slow Burn 3)

Zack bolted to his feet, his hands dropping hers as he stared at her in shocked disbelief. The room was spinning around him in dizzying circles. Blood rushed to his ears and the roar nearly deafened him. He searched her features for some sign that he’d heard wrong. But no, every single word was branded into his mind with painful clarity. This was a nightmare. One he had no hope of waking up from. In that moment, he wanted to die.

“What friends?” he asked in a horrified voice.

He was barely able to choke out the words as his chest constricted to the point he couldn’t even squeeze air into his lungs. He was paralyzed, unable to move, to think, to process the terrible truth.

She sagged back against the couch, and it was as if the life had seeped right out of her, leaving her drained and listless. There was such a look of despair and hopelessness that it gutted him to look at her.

“Kevin, Stuart and Bryan,” she said dully.

Zack went rigid with shock. No. Hell no. This had to be some sick joke. He couldn’t even coherently formulate his thoughts enough to question her further. Kevin, Stuart and Bryan? They weren’t just friends. They were his best friends. He’d known them since kindergarten. Hell, he still saw them once a year or so. He’d been to their houses. Met their wives and kids.

And they not only terrorized and raped a girl they damn well knew he adored, but their thoughts implicated him? God, he was going to be sick. He’d cried on their fucking shoulders when Gracie had disappeared. They’d even helped him look for her. No one else gave a damn, and for that matter most of the people in his town didn’t even know who she was. His father had laughed when Zack had gone to him in panic and despair. He’d told Zack that she very likely ran off just like her mother had and that he was better off without her.

Jesus Christ, no wonder they kept up with whether Zack had ever managed to find her. No wonder they so easily accepted that she was alive when most people would have gently suggested to their friend that Gracie was likely dead and that he’d never know what happened to her. Every time he got together with them in the ensuing years, they always asked if he’d ever found Gracie. They’d probably inwardly rejoiced in the fact he hadn’t, because then, surely the truth would have come out. Just as it was coming to light now. And then he’d know every detail of their foul deed. Especially that they’d implicated him in the crime.

A terrible sound of anguish made him wince and then he realized that it had come from him.

“No,” he whispered. “Oh God no. No. No. No!”

He shut his eyes and curled his hands into tight balls at his sides. He was falling apart piece by piece and was on the verge of coming completely undone.

He staggered, his legs no longer able to hold up. He fell to his knees, his hands covering his face as raw sounds of despair welled in his chest and boiled out his throat. Tears blurred his vision and he scrubbed angrily at them, determined that he would keep it together. For Gracie. For them both. If they ever had a chance. If he ever had a chance to gain her trust again. He had to hold it together.

Knowing he had zero chance of standing, he crawled the short distance to the couch where Gracie sat, eyes drenched with despair, her anguish mirroring his own.

His chest was so tight he felt like he was about to explode. A knot formed in his throat, making breathing next to impossible. And yet this was important. The most important moment he’d ever face. This was his life. His love. His happiness. And the woman who held all three in her small, delicate hands thought he had done the unspeakable.

TWENTY-TWO

ANNA-GRACE was rigid with shock as she took in Zack’s grief-ravaged face. Her mind was a mass of seething confusion and she felt much as she had at the hospital just after being injected with pain medication. Was she having some drug-induced psychosis? Was this all some bizarre dream and she was really still in the hospital? Had she imagined the entire chain of events up to now?

But no, this was real. His touch was real and he curled his hands so tightly around hers that it made her wince. She stifled her reaction, though, because she didn’t want him to know he’d hurt her. How messed up was that? Shouldn’t she want him to hurt? Bleed just as her heart had bled every time she thought back to happier times? When she was in love and thought she was loved in return?

Numbly she stared as he shakily drew her hands up to his lips, and closing his eyes, he bowed his head slightly so that his mouth rested atop her knuckles. The gesture was so tender, so filled with aching emotion that her breath caught in her throat and just remained until she was forced to exhale because her chest protested the lack of oxygen.

None of this made sense. She hadn’t made a mistake. Her attackers’ thoughts—memories—had all been identical. Zack telling them to fuck the bitch up and get rid of her. She was dead weight he no longer wanted to carry. Every single word, every single image had hurt her far worse than the physical pain and humiliation they’d meted out. She’d cried, not because of the pain. No, she’d been numb with shock and completely grief stricken, shutting out the horror of their violation. Her tears had been for Zack. And for what she knew then she’d lost. What she’d never had, because it had all been a lie.

He’d never loved her. He didn’t know what love was. And maybe at sixteen she hadn’t known either, but she knew what it wasn’t. Love wasn’t shameful and degrading. Love wasn’t callously discarding her like trash after reducing her to that level.

She could still feel how dirty she’d felt lying there on the ground, weeping brokenly and praying to die. How later, when she’d dragged herself into her tiny room at the motel, she’d scrubbed herself for hours in a shower that had long gone cold. But the chill of the water on her skin was nothing compared to the bone-deep cold that had settled to the depths of her soul.

Never would she forget sitting on her bed, naked, trembling, skin red and raw from the endless scrubbing and considering—wanting—what only someone with no hope ever contemplated. And worse, in those darkest hours, very nearly giving in to the overwhelming temptation that whispered so insidiously through her shattered mind.

And he was asking, not for her forgiveness—some things weren’t forgivable—but for her to believe something that contradicted what her gift had enabled her to see, to know.

Zack’s reaction wasn’t one of shame, remorse or guilt or even distress over being found out. She saw someone who was completely . . . wrecked. Despair and utter heartbreak were evident in every line of his face. There was such overwhelming devastation in his eyes that it hurt to look at him.