“Look around, Leah. This house has everything you always said you wanted in a home. I built it with my own hands for you. I worked with your dad during the day and worked here late at night, sometimes past midnight, and on weekends, sometimes tired to the bone, just to give you what you wanted, or what you claimed you wanted—a place to live with me as my wife, to raise our children. But you never meant any of it.”
His words were too much. She hadn’t known. No one had ever told her about the house. How could Jocelyn and her father not tell her? Just as the hold on his temper had broken earlier, so did the floodgates of pain she had held within her for five years. She wanted to scream and fisted her hand into her mouth to stop from doing so, but that didn’t stop the fierce tremors that racked her body.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Leah?”
Reese’s temper cleared enough for him to see that something strange was happening to Leah. It was as if all the coloring had left her face and she was shaking. He reached out and touched her and she pulled back from his touch. She resembled a creature gone wild and began backing away from him, looking at him as if she didn’t know who he was. She had a crazed look in her eyes. He took a step toward her. “Leah, what’s wrong?”
“No, don’t touch me again. Don’t come near me. No! No! Please no.”
He swore and took a step toward her, concerned. “What’s the matter with you, Leah? Tell me what’s wrong. Why are you looking at me that way? I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that.”
“No! Don’t come near me. Don’t you dare touch me again. I belong to Reese and you can’t do that to me. I won’t let you. I hate you!”
Reese wasn’t entirely sure what was going on here but he knew Leah had gone into some kind of shock, as if she was reliving something bad that had happened. The thought of what that could be was like a punch in his stomach.
“Who do you think I am, Leah?” he asked quietly, deciding to use another approach. “Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are, Neil. And I won’t let you hurt me again. You won’t ever force yourself on me again.”
Neil? Reese frowned. The only Neil he knew was Neil Grunthall, but the man was dead. In fact, come to think of it, he had died around the same time Leah had disappeared. His eyes flamed as a thought entered his mind. It was one he didn’t want to consider but was forced to, knowing what a bastard Neil Grunthall had been and how the man had hated his guts. “Did Neil touch you?” he asked with deadly calm.
It was as if she hadn’t heard him. She kept backing up and when he walked toward her she picked up a vase off Jocelyn’s coffee table and held it high like a weapon, ready to throw it at a moment’s notice. “You come near me and I’ll kill you. I couldn’t defend myself before but I can now.”
“Oh, Leah.” Her words, spoken in such a heart-wrenching and tortured tone, broke everything inside of Reese and there was no way he could not go to her at that moment.
“No! I said not to come near me!”
When he got close she made good on her threat and threw the vase at him. He ducked out of the way, and it shattered on the hardwood floor. The sound made her jerk and that was all the time Reese needed to close in and grab her.
“No, Neil, let me go!” she cried out. “I belong to Reese. Don’t do this. Don’t hurt me again. I love Reese. Please let me go!”
She fought him, kicked and bit the knuckle on his left hand, but his arms wrapped around her like steel beams, refusing to let her hurt him or herself. “It’s okay, baby. I’m Reese and you do belong to me,” he whispered quietly against her struggles. “Neil is dead, Leah, and he won’t hurt you again. He won’t hurt you again.”
He said the words over and over before he finally began getting through to her. When he did, she broke down and began crying in earnest. The tortured sound, similar to the sound of a wounded animal, tore at his heart and brought tears to his eyes. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
When she went limp he picked her up and walked over to Jocelyn’s spare bedroom. Shoving open the door with his shoulder, he carried her over to the bed and placed her there.