Dangerous Embrace (Embrace #1) (21 page)

“Is that the reason you’ve decided you don’t want children, because of what this asshole did to you?”

“No.” She fought to keep her tone level despite the way she was feeling.

“Then why?”

“I never intended to get close enough to another man to want children with him.”

Mark sat back on the sofa, creating a cold distance between them. “You have completely given up on your own happiness because some jerk beat on you?”

“No. You don’t understand. This isn’t
some jerk’s
fault, it’s mine. Don’t be confused about that.” Her voice hardened.

“You’re right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why after eight years you still believe what happened to you is your fault. You’re a smart woman, Sarah. You should know better than this.”

“No matter what I tell you I can’t make you understand.”

“Try,” he said, leaning forward again.

Sarah rubbed her hands over her face, pressing her index fingers to her temples. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get the words out.”

Feeling defeated, she lay back into the cushions. His disgusted expression told her that the words she’d spoken had done their job.

“You’re letting the asshole who did this to you—you are letting him win! It’s no different than letting that rapist chase you out of your home.”

“You just don’t understand...”

“Then help me. Make me understand, Sarah.”

“I haven’t made this decision because I’m afraid some guy will beat me up again. You are completely off target, listen.” Her eyes pooled with tears as she tried to find the words. “I refuse to give anyone that kind of power again. He beat me because I let him have
me
.” She poked her chest. “I wasn’t strong enough to maintain my own identity. I wasn’t strong enough to say
no
and walk away.”

Agitated, she stood up. “I let him manipulate me. I let myself become his victim. I should have left early on, before I got pregnant, but I stayed and I let him mentally beat me into submission. I handed him my heart, soul, and spirit on a silver platter and he crushed them into a million pieces.”

She paced the room trying to hold back her emotions before they took over.

“So you pick up the pieces. You can still have a life.”

“I have a life!”

“A broken life,” he said, standing to face her.

“There’s no fixing this.” Sarah couldn’t look at him. When he reached out for her hand, she pulled away. She felt so disgusted with herself, she couldn’t bear his sympathy.

“If I’d been stronger, if I could have maintained one ounce of self-respect, he wouldn’t have been able to hurt me. Hell—even the beatings were nothing compared to the things I let him say to me. The words I believed when I should have cared enough about myself and been smart enough to walk away.”

She raised her hands to her face, and then dropped them to her sides, exasperated. “If that’s what love is, then I’m not interested in ever being loved by anyone again.”

She turned, finally making eye contact with him.

Mark approached her and she held out her hand to stop him.

“I told you, fucking dark water. I warned you, but you wanted to know.” Tears spilled down her face as she left the room. Mark called her name, but she didn’t turn back.

Sarah wasn’t sure how long it took for her to fall asleep, but her dream came fast and more vivid than any other she’d had before.

Jamie stood in front of her smiling. She smiled back at him, but when she leaned in to talk to him, his form changed. He morphed into a little girl just like Sarah, gray eyes and a heart-shaped face. She recognized her own smile immediately. The little, girl twin was different though, dark raven hair, long and straight—the exact color of her father’s.

The atmosphere swirled and changed around them, and suddenly Kevin was with them. Sarah was scared for the little girl standing in front of her—scared for her child. Kevin approached the little girl with the same sick smile her attacker wore. He was looking at her little girl through Kevin’s face with hunger in his eyes. Sarah screamed at him to leave the girl alone. He turned toward Sarah and lunged at her, wrapping his hands around her throat.

”
You killed my child,” he screamed as she struggled to hit him, to push him off and defend herself. She couldn’t scream with his hands clamped around her throat. Kevin was finally killing her, just like he had always promised he would.

~

“Sarah—wake up!” Mark shouted at her, as she thrashed around and pulled at her throat, screaming.

He shook her and she swung her arms out to protect herself. When her screams turned into gasps, he screamed her name. “Sarah!”

She jerked up, breathing in and gasping again.

“Sarah, wake up, breathe—breathe.”

Sweat saturated her clothes and glistened on her face. When her breathing calmed, she began to sob.

“Sarah, you have to breathe, baby.” Mark fought for calm, his heart racing in his chest. It killed him to see her like this, but he had no idea how to help her. When he reached out for her, she pushed him away to scramble out of bed. Her body trembled violently, and Mark worried she’d collapse at any second. She paced with a hand clutched on her throat. Her wide eyes searched the room, though she appeared as if she was still in the dream.

“Where’s my gun?” she sobbed, stumbling around in the dark until Mark grabbed her and drew her to him, not letting her pull away this time.

“Sarah, please stop. You don’t need the gun. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Sarah surrendered this time, not fighting Mark’s arms. He didn’t loosen his grip, afraid she might sink to the floor if he did. As her sobs slowed, the crying turned into a whimper.

“I promise you’re safe, baby.”

She calmed, but she didn’t speak. Mark helped her to the bathroom and sat her down on the toilet, draped his robe over her trembling shoulders, and ran a washcloth under cold water. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused as they stared at the floor.

He wiped away the tears and held the cold washcloth over the back of her neck and throat. He could see the red marks where she’d tried to free herself from an imaginary grasp. When her shivering slowed, he picked her up like a small child and carried her to the bed. He pulled the blankets off the floor and crawled in, wrapping his arms around her.

His heart broke for her as he lay there trying to make her feel secure enough to go back to sleep. She nuzzled into his chest, her body still taut with tension. It took over an hour for her to relax enough to drift back to sleep.

A few times during the night, her body went rigid, and she tried to push him away. He just pulled her closer and whispered reassurances in her ear until she relaxed.

This was his fault, dammit. He shouldn’t have forced her to talk about it. She’d tried to avoid the subject, and he’d kept pushing, forcing her to bring up all those bad memories. He suspected something tragic had happened in her past. He’d guessed most of it, but never imagined a miscarriage—and the emotional abuse. Mark expected to hear how badly it hurt physically. Clearly, the emotional scars ran much deeper, and he wasn’t prepared for that. Damn, how could she blame herself for being manipulated by a monster?

His soul hurt knowing this awful, abusive relationship had been what she’d based the decisions of her life on, a vicious cycle of abuse and loss. She didn’t even know what love—real love—felt like.

When Sarah woke, she felt the strength of Mark’s embrace. She stretched her arms out to push away from him. He eased his grip and looked down at her.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

Her head pounded so hard it made her dizzy and unable to think straight. She looked down at their intertwined legs, and then back up into his eyes. He carefully reached up and brushed the hair off her cheek.

“How do you feel?”

She tried again to lift herself up, stopping when a sharp pain shot through her arm. “Oh—ow!”

“Careful, you may have hurt yourself last night.”

Sarah stared at him, not sure how he ended up in bed with her.

Kevin.

She shot up and placed her hand on her neck. The vivid dream felt real, although everything after it clouded, as if the dream was reality and reality was the dream.

Mark rubbed a hand up her back. “Just a dream.”

His unbridled concern and tenderness showed the true difference between a man and a monster. Mark was right, not all men were like Kevin. She should’ve been embarrassed for the way she behaved, but her gratefulness outweighed her embarrassment tenfold.

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

His expression relaxed. “You shower, I’ll fetch.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sarah came out of the bathroom wrapped in Mark’s robe with a towel on her head. At the same time, he walked back into the bedroom with two cups of coffee.

“I can’t believe it’s after two,” she said, taking the cup he offered. “God, that smells good, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, turning to sit on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

Sarah sat next to him sideways with her feet curled underneath her.

With one sip of the rich brew, her headache melted away. She sipped it again and then looked up at Mark. They stared at each other for a long moment before she broke the silence.

“Thank you.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Sarah, I’m sorry I pushed you last night. If I would have known...”

“If you would have known I’d have crazy nightmares about murderous ex-boyfriends?” She chuckled. “I didn’t even know. I haven’t had nightmares that bad in a long time.” She let out a long breath. “God, I thought I was past this, moving on and living a normal life.”

She moved her hand to her throat.

“I guess Kevin is the ex-boyfriend in question?”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Kevin Lewis from high school?”

Her eyes popped back open. “How do you know?”

“He left a creepy message in your high school yearbook. I couldn’t find his picture, just Jeffrey Lewis.”

“That’s his brother. Kevin graduated with Devon the year before me. We started dating in my junior year, his senior. He was the cutest boy in school.” She smirked at the memory of how thrilled she was when he asked her out, and how stupid she was for accepting.

How could she have known? Every girl in school wanted to date him.

“He was sweet then. Once he left school, things changed.” She looked down at her coffee to avoid Mark’s gaze.

“You don’t have to talk about this. I don’t want you to worry about him.”

Sarah knew Mark was concerned about her, but she found she wanted to confide in him.

“At first his insecurity was endearing...
stupid, stupid girl
.” She shook her head. How naïve she’d been. “He controlled everything about me—and I let him.”

Sarah’s eyes were unfocused, staring into the fire.

“Sarah—”

“When I told him, he beat the hell out of me...accused me of cheating, because ‘there was no way it could be his kid’. I’d never been with anyone else, and he still didn’t trust me.” She looked into Mark’s eyes. “He beat me up, but I didn’t lose the baby until months later.”

Mark exhaled heavily. “Was that the first time he beat you?”

“He’d smacked me around a few times but never beat me until I got pregnant. Six months into my pregnancy, things were better. He proposed to me again. I hoped he was over the insecurities and I believed things were back to normal...at least until I caught him in bed with someone else. That’s the day I lost my baby.”

When her voice quavered, she kept talking. If she didn’t get it all out, she’d lose her nerve. “I went home and started packing. When he came home and saw what I was doing, he beat me—almost to death—and raped me, telling me the entire time he’d kill me if I ever left him.”

Remaining silent, Mark leaned over to take her hand with both of his.

“It’s true,” she said, shaking her head. “I have no doubt he’ll find me one day and finish what he started. He’ll keep his promise.” Her voice hardened, the quaver gone.

“Did you leave right after the miscarriage?”

“Kevin had been arrested. After a few days in the hospital, I left...went to Devon’s. When I got there, I went to bed and slept for two days straight. I was bruised, sick, and completely spiritless.”

“How did your brother keep from hunting the son of a bitch down and killing him?”

She shook her head. “He’d never leave me alone like that. He was so worried...and so pissed at me for not calling him. I was terrified that Kevin would come after me. With his parents help, I was sure he’d be out on bail or some stupid technicality soon enough.” She waved dismissively. “It didn’t happen, but I still didn’t stay in San Diego for very long. Devon took me to stay with Richard. He lives in San Francisco.”

She reached over and grabbed her coffee mug to busy her hands.
No turning back now.
She had to tell him the truth. The thought of that alone scared her senseless. Protecting her identity had become a major focus in her life.