His answering murmur reached inside her, tore her heart out. “You need a real man for that, Max, not a fleeting encounter with some useless gigolo you meet only in the dark. Someone you can wake up and face in the morning. Someone who loves you back.”
“I’ve already had that.” She couldn’t bear to let him go. She couldn’t bear to even the contemplate that kind of loss ever again. She wouldn’t survive it a second time.
“I never meant for you to stop living your life, baby. I only stayed to protect you. Because I thought those bastards would kill you that night, too, if I didn’t watch over you.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” She was cold, so cold, despite the heat of the water.
“I only stayed afterward to help you get over what they’d done to you, what you watched them do to me.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “Not another word.” First the detective. Now Cameron was reminding her all over again. Twice in two days was more than she could handle. She stood, grabbed a towel to cover herself, and resisted the urge to clamp her hands to her ears. Been there, done that. Right now she needed control.
“I’d have thought picking up guys in bars would terrify you after what my murderers did to you. How can you bear to have strangers touch you now?”
“I’m not discussing this with you.”
“You’re burying yourself with those barflies, hiding what you really feel. But you can’t hide from it forever. You’re going to explode, and God help me, Max, I’m afraid what will happen when you do. I’m afraid you won’t be able to live with what you’ve turned yourself into.”
“Get the hell out of my head, Cameron. Please.” The words hurt her throat and all she wanted to do was hunker down in a tiny ball. Hiding from everything he said.
Cameron ignored her strangled voice. “It’s not like this is anything new to you. It’s how I found you, what you’ve always done under stress. Isolation by shutting off your emotions and fucking men whose names you don’t even ask.”
She could not take one more moment of it without breaking into a million tiny pieces. “I said get out.” Her voice was a shriek in the quiet of the night, the sheer out-of-control quality of it almost frightening. Steaming water lapped at her legs. She shivered anyway.
“I’m sorry, baby, so sorry.” His whisper faded away into the darkened bedroom, leaving behind only the scent of peppermints, vanilla, and gardenias.
The mixed aromas turned her stomach. His words made her sick. She made herself want to vomit.
Dropping the towel on the tile floor, Max slid back down into the water, slipped beneath the surface where she tried desperately to drown every memory of the night Cameron died.
Chapter Nine
“You stupid cunt.” The male tone was almost casual, devoid of anger, pain, and love.
Max dreamed, knew it was Wendy’s dream, but fell slave to it even so. Terror lodged in her chest.
“You’re a sniveling, whining, good-for-nothing slut.”
Max, as Wendy, sat back on her knees on the hard cement. She wore a green-and-black striped wool skirt with suspenders made of the same rough material. The childish outfit was a favorite. She wore it like a talisman against evil.
Today, it had failed.
The giant towered over her, faceless, soulless, and pointed his index finger in her face, his other huge hand curled into a fist, the ruby stone of his class ring winking. He’d given her a black eye with that fist on more than one occasion.
“You drop your panties for any scumbag who promises to watch over you, protect you, and steal you away from me. You’re stupid, you’re weak, and you couldn’t live without a man to take care of you, you little whore. Tell me who the cocksucker is.”
She listened, a woman trapped in a child’s body, a child’s nightmare. God help her, she believed. But she didn’t give him a name.
His fist rose, ready to strike. She buried her face in her hands, took the blow on her ear. Fire burned across her skull. Shooting stars flashed in front of her eyes. Bells clanged inside her head. When she looked at him again, she was deaf. His lips moved, she heard nothing. A generous gift from a God that had suddenly remembered her after years of desertion.
In the blink of an eye, Max stood across the darkened garage, apart from Wendy who still huddled on the concrete, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. In shadow, the monster loomed over her, fist clenched for another strike.
“You want this,” the monster said. “You need this. You must have my punishment in order to feel whole again.” And Max felt the monster’s sick sense of pleasure and anticipation.
Wendy turned, the woman and the child all rolled into one portrait, a beam of heavenly light illuminating her face, just before the fist pummeled her head.
Max woke. Sweat drenched the bed sheets. An acrid scent rose from her skin. She lay curled in a cramped ball, her arms covering her head, as if anticipating the next blow.