When I hung up, I pulled up the unsent message to Helene again, and I erased it. Everything I did hurt her in some way. That’s all I was capable of with her, and every compulsive need I had to reach out to her, touch her, smell her, taste her, hell, just be near her, brought me one second closer to inflicting more pain on her. And for what? Hazleton was not a permanent stop on my journey.
“I’m sorry, Helene,” I whispered, and then I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Helene
Eleven Years Ago
My mind checked out for a while. I could hear Kane’s quiet grunts, and I could feel my back being scraped on the hard rough floor as he thrust into me. I could even feel the pain stabbing and stretching with each jolt, but it was all muffled through some cotton ball cloud in my brain.
I was glad it was Kane. I was also devastated it was. I felt his tears dropping to my cheeks, and he moaned this strangled agonized sound as he moved into me.
“I’m sorry,” he cried out the words quietly. “I’m sorry.” He kept repeating it over and over and over again.
When I opened my eyes to see him, he paused as he stared at me, clearly shocked I was looking at him.
“Close your eyes, baby,” he whispered. “Please don’t look at me.”
I nodded and did as he asked, closing them tight and waiting for it to be over. This had to end.
Kane’s hips sped from a moment, and he pushed farther in, singing my core with more pain. His body went still, and he groaned as he held himself deep inside me. When he pulled back, leaving my body, I cried and tried to clench my legs closed as pain bit into me. Kane kneeled back on his feet, covering his face with his hands and sobbing.
The stranger laughed loudly, clapping his hands. “Looks like someone enjoyed himself.”
Kane lunged toward the man as a strangled yell escaped his lips. But the man aimed the gun at his face, stopping Kane still.
“You fucking freak,” Kane hissed, spit flying from his lips as he struggled to control the rage.
I curled up on my side, hugging my knees as I cowered in the fetal position. Kane was now beside me on his knees, and his hands were balled at his sides. His groin was covered in blood, but he was oblivious to anything but the gun in his face.
“You’re gonna thank her for getting my cock so fucking wet for you in a minute,” the man said.
“Wha… What?” Kane asked. He sounded confused, and the anger he’d been struggling to keep in check moments before was suddenly gone. He sank back to sit on his feet.
My eyes flashed up to him. I didn’t understand what was happening. Kane was trembling from head to foot, and he sank farther to sit on the floor, his eyes moving around wildly in panic.
The stranger reached down to my face, gripping my jaw and squeezing tight as he craned my face awkwardly around to look up at him. “You can relax, sweetheart. Your job’s done.” He smiled this sickening, sadistic smile at me before he glanced over at Kane who was sitting in a stupor on the floor a foot away from me. When the man’s eyes stayed on Kane, he chuckled. “Time to show the smart ass what he gets for copping an attitude with the wrong man.”
And then I understood.
“Get on your hands and knees,” he snapped coldly at Kane, but Kane didn’t move. Instead, he shook his head slowly, closing his eyes. When the man put the muzzle of the gun to my head, I whimpered, and Kane’s eyes darted to me.
His breath hitched, and sobs shook his chest as he looked at me, and when he groaned, it was the most pained and horrified sound I’d ever heard. He nodded, pushing up to his knees again.
“Please don’t hurt him,” I begged the man even as he held the gun to my head. “Please … please.”
The man smirked at me as he pulled a condom from his pocket. “He did this to himself, sweetheart. He did it to you too for that matter.”
The man stood and stared down at Kane with an amused look on his face. When Kane reached down to the ground, planting his hands on the floor, he glanced at me and then hung his head in shame as he looked the other way.
The sudden whooshing sound as the stranger kicked Kane in the stomach startled me, and I screamed, pushing my body farther from them as I panicked. The kick threw Kane into the metal wall mounted shelving unit beside him. He came down hard on the corner of the metal, and his breath left him in a grunt.
He tried to push himself up from the place he was sprawled awkwardly over the lower shelf, but he groaned in pain, and his mouth pulled back in a grimace. I covered my mouth when I saw the damage. Blood was dripping from his side where he’d fallen on the corner of the shelf, and as Kane looked down at the side of his stomach, he clutched at it.
I covered my mouth, crying, and Kane looked at me in desperation. That’s when the stranger, towering above him, brought his fist down into the side of Kane’s face, knocking him hard over the shelf again. Kane lay across the shelf, gasping, but as his hands trembled and he clutched at the metal shelf to push himself up again, the stranger knelt behind him.
And Kane started screaming.
Chapter Fourteen
Helene
“We’ll take the check,” Mark said.