"No." She denied it quickly, giving a vigorous shake of her head. The uncertainty she'd felt a second ago began sliding into fear of what Dante would think of her now. "No, I don't--not ever. Well... I made an exception when I treated Harvard, but that was the only time."
"What about humans?"
"No," she said. "No, I don't--"
"You've never used your touch on another person?"
Tess got to her feet, a cold panic washing over her when she thought about the last time--the final, damning time--she'd put her hands on another human being before this rash demonstration with Dante. " My touch is a curse. I wish I didn't have this ability at all."
"It's not a curse, Tess. It's a gift. A very extraordinary gift. Jesus, when I think of all that you could do --"
"No!" She shouted the refusal before she could bite it back, her feet carrying her a few steps away from where Dante was now getting up from the sofa. He looked at her with a mix of confusion and concern. "I never should have done this. I never should have showed you."
"Well, you have, and now you have to trust me to understand. Why are you so afraid, Tess? Is it me you fear or is it your gift?"
"Stop calling it that!" She hugged herself in a tight grip, memories flooding her like a black, clutching undertow. "You wouldn't call it a gift if you knew what it has made me into--what I have done."
"Tell me."
Dante came toward her then, moving slowly, his large body filling her vision and crowding her in the small living room. She thought she should want to run--to hide, as she'd been doing for the past nine years--but an even stronger impulse made her want to fly into his arms and let everything spill out of her in an ugly but cleansing rush.
She drew in a breath and was embarrassed to hear the hitch of a sob catching in the back of her throat.
"It's all right," Dante said, his gentle voice and the tender way he took her into his embrace nearly making her break apart. "Come here. It's okay."
Tess clung to him, balancing on the edge of an emotional chasm she could feel but didn't dare look into yet. She knew the fall would be steep and painful, so many jagged rocks waiting to cut her open if she let go. Dante didn't push her. He just held her in the warm circle of his arms, letting her draw from his steady, solid strength.
Finally, the words found their way to her tongue. The weight of them was too much, the taste too vile, so she forced them out into the open.
"When I was fourteen, my father died in a car accident in Chicago. My mother remarried that next year, to a man she met at our church. He had a successful business in town and a big house on a lake. He was generous and friendly--everyone liked him, even me, despite the fact that I missed my real father very much.
"My mother drank, a lot, as long as I can remember. I thought she was getting better after we moved into my stepfather's house, but it wasn't long before she fell into it again. My stepfather didn't care that she was an alcoholic. He always kept the bar stocked, even after her worst binges. I started to realize that he preferred her drunk, so much the better if she spent entire evenings passed out on the sofa and wasn't aware of what he was doing."
Tess felt Dante's body go rigid around her. His muscles vibrated with a dangerous tension that felt like a shield of strength, cocooning her within their shelter. "Did he... touch you, Tess?"
She swallowed hard, nodded against the warmth of his bare chest. "At first, for almost a full year, he was careful. He hugged me too close and too long, looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. He tried to win me over with presents and parties for my friends at the lake house, but I didn't like being home, so once I turned sixteen I spent a lot of time out. I stayed over with friends, spent the summer at camp, anything to be away. But eventually I had to come home. Things escalated in the months leading up to my seventeenth birthday. He became violent toward both my mother and me, knocking us around, saying awful things to us. And then, one night... "
Tess's courage faltered, her head swimming with the remembered din of profanity and hysterical rantings, the clumsy racket of drunken stumbling, the splintering crash of breaking glass. And she could still hear the soft creak of her bedroom door that night her stepfather woke her from a fitful sleep, his breath stinking of liquor and cigarette smoke.
His meaty hand had been salty with sweat when he clamped it over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
"It was my birthday," she whispered numbly. "He came into my bedroom around midnight, telling me that he wanted to give me a birthday kiss."
"That disgusting son of a bitch." Dante's voice was a vicious growl, but his fingers were gentle as he stroked her hair. "Tess... Christ. The other night by the river, when I tried to do the same thing--"
"No. It wasn't the same thing. It reminded me, yes, but it wasn't at all the same thing."
"I'm so sorry. About everything. Especially what you've been through."
"Don't," she said, not willing to accept his sympathy when she hadn't gotten to the worst of it yet. " After my stepfather came into my room, he got on the bed with me. I fought him, kicking him, slapping him, but he was much stronger than me and he pinned me down with his weight. Sometime during the struggle, I heard him draw in a sharp breath. He choked a little, like he was in pain. He stopped trying to hold me down, and I finally managed to roll him off me. He let go because his heart had seized up. He was turning deep red, then blue--dying right there on the floor of my bedroom."
Dante said nothing in the long silence that followed. Maybe he knew where her confession was heading. She couldn't stop now. Tess pushed out a long breath, approaching the point of no return. " About this time, my mother came in. Drunk as usual. She saw him and she went hysterical. She was furious--with me, I mean. She screamed at me to help him, to not let him die."
"She knew what you could do with your touch?" Dante asked gently, easing her through it.
"She knew. She'd seen it firsthand, when I would take away her bruises and heal the broken bones. She was so mad at me--she blamed me for my stepfather's heart attack. I think she blamed me for everything."
"Tess," Dante murmured. "She wasn't right to blame you for any of it. You do know that, right?"