Shattered Valor (27 page)

“Ty, what’s going on?” Eden asked. “What are you doing with the ax?”

“There’s more I have to show you. You should know everything. Every fucking thing. Go.” He pointed at Mandy. “Stay out of it, Em.”

Eden flipped the light on and started down the steps. He flipped it off and followed her, slamming the door behind them. Most of the basement was unfinished. Raw concrete walls, exposed pipes, the bones of the floor supports above, all lit in the sparse moonlight from the windows.

Ty led her in a straight path across the bare basement to the bathroom. Walled in on four sides, it was the only finished room and sat up against the front wall like an ugly box. He released her and swung the ax at a wall. She heard a ringing metal on metal sound.

“What are you doing?” He swung again, ignoring her. “Ty stop! You’re going to hit a pipe or some wires.” He slashed at the wall again. She stepped around the corner to open the bathroom door. “Look, it’s unlocked.” She flipped the light on. “We don’t have to chop the wall down. We can just walk in. See?”

“Go ahead. Go in there. But shut off the fucking light.”

“No. Ty, you’re scaring me.” The ax hit metal, sending another high-pitched ping into the air.

“Get in there,” he ordered.

“No.” She stood outside the bathroom. She sent a look at the stairs, wondering if she could make it past Ty.
“Keep him safe,”
Kit had said. Who was going to keep her safe?

He was using the ax head to pull at the ripped drywall until he had a three-foot hole exposed on the outside. He switched his hold on the ax handle and started shoving at the dry wall on the inside of the bathroom wall. As chunks of the wall came down, she could see that inside the bathroom’s wooden frame was an iron cage.

When he seemed satisfied at the amount of wall he’d exposed, he looked over at her. A chill washed down her spine, freezing her to the spot where she stood. He came toward her. She backed a step away, but he caught her arm and dragged her into the bathroom with him.

“This was my bedroom. From the time I was fourteen to when I was seventeen and Kit rescued me.” He looked around the room. “There were no walls then. Only the bars. The tub and sink weren’t here either. The toilet was a simple steel bowl. I drank and bathed where I peed. I lived like a fucking animal.

“My dad had long told people he home-schooled me, that I was slow, that he didn’t want to burden the school with a special-needs child. It explained why no one in town ever saw me.”

The chill that had started at her spine spread out over her skin. “The Jacksons knew this was happening to you and didn’t stop it?”

“They couldn’t stop it. They had children of their own. My father threatened their kids. Dennis insisted I be given better care. He made my father hire a tutor when I was young. He helped me with my homework and academic projects. Here, at the house. I wasn’t allowed to interact with his kids or anyone from town.

“When I was fourteen, dear old dad figured out a new torture for me. As with all the previous ones, I did what he demanded. I whored for him. For years. For food. For clothes. Sometimes just to be near someone.”

“Oh, Ty,” Eden barely choked the words past her tightening throat.

“This is who I am, Eden.”

“It isn’t who you are, Ty. It is what was done to you. You are stronger than it. You survived it. You beat it.”

He stared at the black metal bars showing through the ripped wall, and shook his head. “Everything that I’ve done, everyone I’ve ever been with, they’re there, between us. I’m tainted.”

Eden gripped his face, forcing him to bend his taut posture so that he could look at her. “I’m touching you. Feel my hands. See me. There’s only you and only me. No one is between us. It’s over.”

A muscle bunched and released in the corners of his jaw beneath her palms. “After Kit got me away, I learned that men were supposed to have sex with women. I didn’t know—” He drew a shaky breath. “I hired prostitutes to show me how to have hetero sex.” His nostrils flared as he looked at her. “You’re the first woman I haven’t paid to be with me.”

Eden wiped at a tear on his face. “How did you get into the Army?”

“I lived with Kit for nearly two years when I left here. He hid me, not that his mom would have noticed or cared if I stayed with them. Anything that kept her son busy and distracted from her shenanigans worked for her. Kit brought me books. He fed me. He saved my goddamned life while his own was falling apart. I studied for the GED and passed it. When the sheriff took Kit down to the recruiter, I went with them.”

“You learned in two years what it takes others years of school?”

“No. Not everything. I’d had a tutor until I was fourteen. Then I studied the things Kit was learning in school. He actually started going to his classes so that he could teach me when he got home. The GED requirements were what I studied against. The rest I’ve learned in the years since. I was hungry to know everything. I still am.”

“How could your father do this to you?”

Ty sighed. He stepped back against the opposite wall and slid down to sit on the floor. Eden sat next to him, close against his side. “I learned later that the terms of my mother’s will stated that if I was dead, in jail, or declared mentally incompetent, that my inheritance would go to him. This house was part of my inheritance.”

“Didn’t anyone from her estate check in with you?”

“They did. My father would dress me and take me to one of the bedrooms that he’d stocked with clothes and toys, all of which I was forbidden to touch. The only toys I’d had as a kid were ones Dennis gave me that I’d been able to hide from my father. My dad staged the interviews. I’m sure I ranted like a crazy person to the solicitor, who soon began believing that I was bonkers as my dad claimed.”

“Where was your mother during all of this?”

“She died when I was four. Choked to death. She was here alone.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m certain he killed her.”

“And your grandparents?”

He shook his head. “My grandmother died before my parents married, but my grandfather died shortly before my mother. I bet my dad killed him too. I never knew his parents.”

“So there was no one to look in on you.”

“Only the solicitor. He pretty much wrote me off after the first couple of years. When I was older and might have been more believable in my accusations, my father made it clear what was at stake if I spoke out against him—Dennis and Kathy. Their kids were grown and gone by then, but my father said a bullet could still find them.”

Eden gasped. “Like the bullet that found you in Afghanistan.”

Ty nodded. “Kit thinks so.”

“And what of the snake pit? Why is someone still trying to kill you?”

“Kit thinks I’m being targeted. I’m not so convinced. I think our enemies would hit any of us if the opportunity presented itself.”

They sat in the dark for a long while, neither of them speaking. After a while, he pushed himself to his feet, then gave her a hand up. He could just make out her face in the dim light from the hole he’d made in the wall. He touched her cheek, hungry to feel her soft skin. “This is the shit I’m trying to work through. I’m sorry I scared you. Sorry you’re snagged in this hell with me.”

She took hold of his face. “I’m not afraid of your hell. I told you I would stand between you and your demons.”

He wrapped his arm around her neck and kissed her forehead. “I’m going outside for a bit. I need to breathe.”

“Want company?”

“No. Go to bed, Eden. I’ll be up in a bit.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kit walked down the hallway, through the short hall leading to the garage. He grabbed a set of keys to one of the SUVs. None of the guys stopped him, which was good. He wasn’t in a mood for chatter.

He plugged in his iPhone and cranked Five Finger Death Punch. The heavy metal filled the SUV, soaked into his brain, and blocked the noise in his head. He closed his eyes and saw his best friend, young and in pain, locked in a repeating hell of rape and humiliation. He’d known things were bad for Blade, but some part of him had hoped the beatings and deprivation were the worst of it.

He opened his eyes, saw the rape replay against the backdrop of the closed garage door, watching it loop in his mind until tears filled his eyes and curtained the image. He opened the garage door, then put the SUV in gear and moved down the dirt drive to the road. He didn’t want to stop at the road, but it was a decision point. Go right and drive into the quiet solace of the mountains as the gloaming hour softened the skies. Go left to the woman he loves, the woman his heart had belonged to since their high school days—the only one who might be able to hold his soul together.

He turned left.

Ty’s property was at the crest of a hill that overlooked the town of Wolf Creek Bend, washed now in the muted orange of the fading sunlight. He reached Ivy’s small track home without being aware of having made any turns. He parked behind a big red dually with some fancy lettering on it.

He looked at the house for a long moment. There were no cars in the driveway, and the garage was closed. He hoped she was home. And Casey, too. God, he could meet his daughter tonight. He wiped the moisture from his cheeks and dried his hands on his thighs. It felt so right, being here, now. Coming to Ivy to ease his soul.

He walked up the path to her front door as a wariness started humming in his head. Opening the screen door, he knocked on the closed front door.

He waited a second, then knocked again. Nothing. He let the screen door shut as he stepped back. No one was home. Where were they? He turned and looked around at her neighborhood. Houses just like hers sat in neat rows up and down the street, some with porches, some with additions or other modifications. Giant elm trees locked branches with ancient cottonwoods, arching over the street.

He turned, intending to knock one more time, but the door opened. She was there. Ivy. Her dark hair and big blue eyes filled his vision, quieted the endless scream in his head.

“Kit.” She opened the screen door, inviting him inside. “Are you okay?”

Kit walked inside. The space was small, but nicely decorated in whites and blues like a seashore cottage. The remains of a dinner for two were still on the table. Two plates, two wine glasses. Candles. A man was sitting on the sofa.

“Who’s this?” he asked her, nodding toward the guy.

“He’s a friend. Bobby Gallahan—Kit Bolanger.” She made the introductions.

Bobby stood up to shake hands. Kit ignored him. “Where’s Casey?”

Ivy crossed her arms. “What’s going on, Kit?”

“I needed to see you. Is she here?”

“No. She’s spending the night with a friend.”

Kit nodded. He looked at the guy. “Get out.”

Bobby put his hands on his hips and took a step forward. “Hey now, if you need to have a minute with Ivy, that’s fine. But you’re not horning in on my date.”

Kit laughed and grabbed the guy by the collar. He thought about giving the guy an especially hard exit, but there were no convenient obstacles to bang him into. “You’re right. I’m taking it fucking over. Get out.” He escorted him across the threshold and slammed the door shut.

He looked at Ivy. She backed up a step. Shit. He’d scared her. He paused, then moved toward her more slowly, stopping only when his toes touched hers. He lifted his hands to cup her neck, letting the softness of her skin sooth him. Ever so gently, he pulled her closer, closer. He kissed her forehead, inhaled the sweet scent of her. He could feel her breath on his neck.

He lowered his cheek against her face, down her temple to her cheek. Her arms slowly unfurled from their tight hold on her waist to wrap around his.

“What’s this about, Kit?”

“I wish—I wish I could undo time,” he whispered against her skin. “I wish I was then the me I am now. I would have torn your father apart to stay at your side. You are everything to me, Ivy.”

She pulled back and looked at him. She set a hand on his face, and looked at him with eyes that said they were at the end of a road. “But we can’t, can we? We are what our decisions and time have made us.”

He covered her hand with his, twining his fingers through hers. “We can make new decisions. We can start again.”

She blinked, clearing the moisture in her eyes. “We’re adults now. We know not to make decisions based on hormones. We know the things that didn’t work. We know what we don’t want to experience. Ever again.”

He pressed his thumb to her lips and shook his head. “No.” He bent his head to her, replacing his thumb with his mouth. “Don’t shut us down, Ivy. Please.” Her lips were soft, giving. He took them once, twice, then made the mistake of looking into her eyes. She was a thousand miles away, a decade ago, in a place that hurt. He was hurting her even now.

He pulled back, waiting for her to speak the words that would eviscerate his soul. And even though he was ready for them, he flinched when they came.

“I can’t, Kit. I can’t go there again.”

He let go of her. He stepped back. He looked over her shoulder, seeing nothing. She spoke, but he didn’t hear her. He was dead, but somehow, the message didn’t get to his body. He pivoted and moved to the door. He stepped out into the cool night. There was just enough light that the streetlights hadn’t yet come on.