Safe at Last (Slow Burn #3)

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.

She began to tremble and it quickly progressed to shaking that spread through her body like wildfire. Her throat seemed to close in, until each breath was torturous to squeeze in and out. An odd wheezing noise echoed in her ears and it took her a moment to realize that it was the sound of her breathing—or rather her attempt at breathing.

Zack opened his eyes and her wheeze became more pronounced. For a moment she simply stopped trying to get more air into her starved lungs as she tried to make sense of his reaction.

His tears were readily visible and he made no effort to disguise his grief. Such terrible grief. Never had she seen such naked emotion reflected in another person’s eyes. It was gut-wrenching for her. It mirrored her own sorrow, was like a window into her soul and her own suffering. Suffering he was responsible for.

“Gracie,” he said, his voice thick with all the emotion so visible in his features. “You have to believe me, baby. Please.”

He eased her hands down to her lap and then leaned forward, his fingers shaking as badly as she was. He lifted his hands to her face, hesitating as if he feared she would recoil, and then carefully cupped her cheeks.

“I don’t care what you read or think you read from those bastards’ sick, twisted minds. It doesn’t matter. I had nothing to do with them hurting you. I swear it on my life! I would never do anything to hurt you. I could kill them for what they did. So help me I will kill them if it’s the last thing I do.”

His voice had gone hoarse, each word vehement and impassioned. Her eyes were wide with shock because he was begging. He’d never begged anyone for anything. He was too proud and too determined to go his own way. And she couldn’t even comprehend what he was begging for! He was denying it? Everything? Was he crazy? Or was he saying she was crazy?