“Nothing.”
“Hannah. You can tell me. Anything. Everything.”
She took a breath to speak, then stopped, sighed. “He shaved my head.”
Everything in him stilled, and he instinctively tightened his arms around her.
“Don’t get upset.” She tucked her face into his shoulder. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m not.”
He felt her smile against his chest. “You’re a terrible liar.”
He tried to relax. For her. And because he wanted to know everything, she would tell him. Everything about her. He stroked his finger along a thin scar running across her arm. God, he couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through and had continued to go through long after. “Do you still have pain?”
“Some. Mostly when it’s cold, or if I do too much. But I’m pretty much bionic now. I’ve got enough plates and rods and screws in me to build a small car.”
It amazed him that she could joke about it. Any of it. But that was Hannah. “What were you like before?”
“Hmm. I went to school. Argued with my brothers. I was different before. Confident and sure of myself, tired of my brothers telling me what to do. Getting too big for my britches. I was taking college classes and I—”
“Wait. College? At fourteen?”
“I scored really high on a standardized test in seventh grade. Really high. I took a few classes as part of a special program.”
“So you were a genius? Are a genius.”
She gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. In some ways, I guess. I could hear something once and remember it, understand it. I could read most anything before kindergarten and I read a lot.
“My brothers all worked, sometimes they’d drag me along. I’d sit in Nick’s office for hours and read. When I got bored with that he’d set me up with math games at his computer. I liked it. I was good at it. I could do algebra at seven, geometry at nine. And then…” She stopped, seemed to hold her breath.
“And then?”
“It all ended. I didn’t even graduate from high school.”
“Not everything ended.”
“No. Not everything. I was still alive.”
But just barely. And it broke his heart. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I mean literally. I had surgeries, went to therapy only because they made me. Other than that I just sat. My brothers begged me, bullied me. I was almost eighteen years old and I was going nowhere. I didn’t care. So deep inside myself I just got lost.”
Like he’d done. Would she understand if he told her the darkness he’d found there?
“I was trapped, stuck inside a broken and constantly hurting body, and then I saw the horses. They were out there free in the blowing grass and…I can’t explain it. I just knew that’s what I needed. So I made a deal with Nick. He would take me to the barn to ride if I went to school. So I did. I still had a few more surgeries to undergo. I got stronger. Got my GED, slowly took college classes. Baby steps.
“Riding did more for me in six months than physical therapy had done in three years. I put away saddles instead of lifting weights. I brushed horses and mucked stalls instead of stretching.”
“So you knew what you wanted to do.”
“Yes. I knew with all my heart. And I hadn’t wanted to do anything for so long. But more than that, it was the only place I trusted myself.”
“Why?” He caught her hand, kissed her fingers and linked them with his.
“Because…I wasn’t taken. I went with him.” Her voice was so heavy with pain and remorse and guilt.
“Hannah.”
“I’m not blaming myself, not exactly, but it’s the truth no one wants to talk about. I didn’t see it. How can a person not see such an evil? How can a person even be so evil?”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head almost desperately, trying not to think of all the things she wasn’t seeing in him. “I’m sorry.”
“I survived.”
“Yes. You did. More than survived. You make a difference.” And she amazed him.
“Do you think I’m going to lose the land? The barn, all of it?”
“No.” Because he wasn’t going to let that happen.
“You seem sure.”
“I am.” He thought again to tell her his own company had been interested, but he held back. Maybe he wanted this…whatever it was, between them, to have nothing to do with business. Or maybe he didn’t want her to know that if he hadn’t known her, and if he’d thought it was profitable, he wouldn’t have hesitated to go after it.
“Hey.” He lifted her chin with a finger. “If not there, you can do it somewhere else. It wouldn’t be the end.” He’d find her the perfect spot, somewhere even better. He’d design it and build it, make it so she could do whatever she wanted, have whatever she wanted.