She smiled at me in some kind of wonder that ripped through me like a raging storm.
With a trembling hand, she reached up and took hold of my fingers that flitted close to her face, never looking away when she brought them to her mouth and pressed the gentlest kiss against my skin.
That simple gesture burned through me like a wildfire.
There was no sound, but I felt the whisper of her words as they moved against my fingers. “Thank you.”
Two of the easiest words. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard them ring with such magnitude.
I stood there feeling my world coming apart around me.
I could feel it. The goodness and grace. I wanted to lean in and inhale it. Suck it down and take it inside. Make it a part of me.
I blinked, the words so thick it was difficult to form them. “I’d do it all over. A million times.”
Her mouth trembled and her eyes glistened, her gaze sweeping me for the flash of a second before she turned back to stare at my face. Her voice shook with emotion. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”
“Come on, Alexis. We need to get inside. They’re expecting us.”
My attention shifted to the woman who spoke with some kind of quiet understanding. She was maybe a handful of years older than the girl standing in front of me. They resembled each other enough that I came to the quick conclusion they had to be sisters.
Alexis looked at her with a slow nod before she turned back to me, her expression so sincere and overwhelming. That single glance conveyed so much without her ever saying a thing.
Finally, she broke the connection that seemed to bind us and let her sister take her by the arm. Her head dropped toward the ground, and her sister glanced over her shoulder at me as she led her toward the station door.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, her own gratitude sliding out.
I shook my head at her. Saving her was something anyone would do. But something about my involvement felt like more. Like in one of those fateful moments last night, it’d become something different.
Something I couldn’t ever allow it to be.
I watched until they disappeared inside, and I heaved out a strained breath, the connection severed.
“Well, hot damn.” Ash’s voice suddenly cut through the dense air, the guy acting the fool the way he always did. “Look at that. I do believe there’s hope for our boy here, after all.”
Uneasy, Anthony shifted on his feet.
I tossed a glare at Ash, probably harder than it needed to be. “Don’t even go there. Not today.”
I knew he was only messing with me. That he was just pushing me in a direction he thought I should go. But I couldn’t stand for him to rub it in, to taunt me with what I might want.
Didn’t matter how badly I wanted her. She was something I could never have.
Chapter Seven
Alexis
“He’s out there, Avril, and I have no idea what he might do to you.” My voice dropped to a pained whisper as I spoke into the phone, clutching it as if it might be a lifeline. “I have no idea what he has done to you. Call me. Please. I need to know you’re okay.”
I ended the voice mail and my gaze automatically moved to the bay window that overlooked the tiny garden on the side of my even tinier house. My chest ached, swamped in sadness and worry, this overwhelming grief that gripped me and refused to let me go. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt a hopelessness like this.
She left me.
Chelsey had warned me for years Avril was only using me. Using guilt to bend me to her will.
But I’d always held out hope that one day Avril would finally see. That she’d finally land at rock bottom, and somehow it would make a difference that I was there to catch her when she fell.
I’d always believed our connection was stronger than the addiction. Regardless of anything else, I’d chosen to believe our bond—our friendship and our devotion—meant more.
She left me.
To be broken. Violated.
Terror shivered down my spine when I realized just how deranged that man had to be. I didn’t know his name. I only knew he somehow had brainwashed my sister into believing she owed him something. It was hard to even think about what would have happened to me at his vile hands had my deliverer not intervened.
I was still having a hard time processing the kind of control that monster had over my sister with just a low command.
I rested the phone on my pursed lips, fighting tears as the realization finally took hold.
Avril’s fear was so much greater than all of those things. So much greater than our love. Maybe it had been bred by her addiction that still held her hostage, but those chains were controlled by that disgusting man.
Maybe it made me the biggest fool of all, but I’d never felt more committed to freeing her than I did now.
A shock of surprised air shot from my lungs when three sharp knocks sounded at my door, jerking me from the silence.
God, my nerves were frazzled. Shot. Which was so not like me.
I felt scared and vulnerable and timid. I usually embraced life, not ran from it.
Doing my best to shake it off, I inhaled, straightened my shirt, and ran my fingers through my bangs, as if fidgeting and stalling might straighten out the mess of emotions laying siege to my spirit. Then, I slowly moved across the floor.
A quiet dimness held fast to my living room, save the waterfall of light pouring in through the single bay window that faded into a pale, dusky glow as it spread out through the room.
Almost warily, I hiked up on my toes so I could peer out the peephole.
I stumbled back and my heart galloped out ahead of me.
An onslaught of emotions rushed and sped and churned at who was waiting on the other side, this mix of unknown gratitude and confusion that had chased me for the last three days.
I felt frozen by the fact he was there as another soft but pleading knock sounded at the wood.
Swallowing hard, I gathered my wits, twisted the lock, and slowly cracked open the door.
He was standing there on my small stoop. Larger than life and filling it full. Capturing sight and mind and reason.
I stood at his feet, staring at him while he stood there staring at me.
Brown eyes potent and kind and somehow unyielding and hard.
My knees suddenly felt weak as I was flooded with this foolish kind of fascination that made me want to reach out and touch his face. To explore him, body and soul and mind. This man, who’d rushed in to hold together all the splintering pieces of my world and forced them back together before they were completely destroyed and unrepairable.
Maybe this feeling was purely gratitude. Or maybe it was wholly due to the trauma. How I felt bound to him in an unfathomable way.
As if when he’d been holding those splintering pieces together, the man had managed to chip away a small piece of my soul. A piece that would permanently belong to him.