“What’s wrong?” I asked, searching her face for any sign of the pain that must have sent her reeling. Instead there were only dilated pupils and shock on her heart-shaped face.
“He liked the way I fit him. He liked the way I felt,” she mumbled, her forehead creasing with what I recognized as shame. It was the same face I made when I thought of the words murmured in my ear as a boy—the things that could have been sweet nothings in another time and place, but took on a dark, tormented meaning in the context I had.
I touched a hand to her chest above her breast, feeling her racing heart beat beneath my palm. “This,” I said pointedly. “You fit with me. Not your body, Irina. You’re here with me, not with him.” She stared up at me, holding my eyes as she worked to calm her frantic breaths.
As she tried to remind herself that she was safe.
“He’ll never stop,” she said, leaning forward. Her forehead touched the fabric of my shirt, filling me with the odd desire to have it against my bare skin. I wanted to feel her, to wrap her in my arms and comfort her with my skin and my scent until she recognized me instinctively as hers.
“He’ll have to go through me to get to you. That is never going to happen,” I said, touching my free hand to the back of her head. I pulled her closer, letting her wrap her arms around me and sink into my embrace.
Nothing was perfect. Our relationship would be flawed and messy and we’d stumble more times than I wanted to acknowledge.
But in the moments where she welcomed my touch, I knew we’d make it through.
Eventually.
46
IRINA
For two weeks he sat with me, supervising my healing and the way my body slowly filled out with the fluids they put in my veins. With the food he hand-fed me, refusing to take no for an answer and threatening me with a feeding tube if I didn’t cooperate.
“Have you apologized to Ivory yet?” he asked, his voice soft despite the undercurrent of tension thrumming through his body. His tenseness only bled into me, the reaction on my part involuntary.
I couldn’t help but pick up on other people’s emotions, so they’d absorb into me and become a part of me even when all I wanted was to shut them out. To push the people attached to them away until it was just me and my own torment inside my head.
The last thing I needed was his anger. I had enough of my own swirling to the surface, rising from the depths where I’d shoved it all down in order to cope. To forget the pain that had consumed me.
But as I caught up on sleep finally, wrapped in the safe cradle of Scar’s arms around me, as my body grew stronger with the nutrients filling it and slowly healed from most of the injuries I’d suffered, the emotional trauma came to the forefront.
The complete and utter fear that all the healing in the world wouldn’t matter when Darragh came for me again.
“No,” I mumbled, the word hanging between us. I couldn’t help the surge of jealousy within me every time Scar spoke her name. Every time he wanted me to right the ways I’d wronged her with my suicide attempt. For any normal person, his concern for the woman and her emotional state would have been touching.
Their relationship would have been something to value.
But the truth I knew down to my bones was that Scar would do anything for her, but I wasn’t worth that. He had pushed me away, time and time again, proving which of us he would choose if it came down to it.
I would never be Ivory. I’d never be as strong and stable as the pregnant mother who ensnared men everywhere she went. I wasn’t worth a relationship, not when my emotions were too turbulent for even me to understand.
I couldn’t blame him for it, but I resented it anyway.
I knew I needed to apologize for what I’d done, and for the way it would have affected her if I’d been successful. She’d been responsible for watching me, and I’d manipulated her to take my own life.
“I will,” I said, swearing to myself that I would do it the next time Scar left my side. It didn’t happen often; the man was determined to keep his eyes on me as often as possible. He claimed it was because he didn’t trust me not to wrap someone around my finger and tell them what they wanted to hear.
That I would do anything to end my life.
A week ago, he’d have been right. But the clarity of my mind and the memory of my father’s face when Scar had informed him of what I’d tried to do haunted me.
I hadn’t known that people cared enough to miss me. In the aftermath of it, I couldn’t stand the sudden outpouring of love and support: the flowers at Scar’s bedside, and the cards and notes from the kids at the center.
All of it was overwhelming. Draining.
“I know you will,” Scar said, his tone gentle. Where he might have wanted to order me around in previous weeks, it was as if he could see straight through to the heart of me. As if he could feel the shifting and changing pieces within trying to reconnect, trying to knit into something new. He pulled his laptop into his lap, typing away at the work he did in the background for the Bellandis.
People often underestimated him, assuming the scars and brutal appearance made him a mindless robot and killing machine, but I’d seen through to the mind inside in the last two weeks.
He was brilliant, hacking into databases and accounts like it was as easy as breathing for him. I had to wonder why Matteo used him as a bodyguard at all when his skills in technology were probably even more valuable, but Scar’s loyalty to Ivory was unquestionable.
Having a skilled hacker wasn’t nearly as important to Matteo as having his wife alive.
I glanced over at his computer screen warily, wondering what national database I would find him poring through. The name and number at the top of the screen snagged my attention, my disbelief rising.
“Is that my bank account?” I asked, snatching the laptop from him and scrolling down through the transactions. The number at the top matched my account, but the amount of money in it…
That was far from correct.
“Where is all my money?” I demanded, searching through the transfers to various accounts I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t rich. Despite who my father was, I wanted a life of minimalism. Any money my father transferred into my account, I automatically donated to to Fresh Start.
He knew it. Detested it.
Knowing I wasn’t working while I recovered, he’d have made sure to transfer extra to cover my bills in the interim.
But all of it was gone.
Scar didn’t answer, easing the laptop away from me, and putting it back in his lap. He touched the button at the top of the screen, closing the account permanently. “What are you doing?” I whispered, turning to my side. My arm no longer throbbed with every use, the exercises the physician put me through ensuring I gained full use of my arm again following my injury.
My body was healing, even if my mind never would.
He sighed, setting the computer on the nightstand on his side of the bed and grasping me around the waist. He lifted me from the bed, depositing me where the laptop had once been.
Everything in me froze, the feeling of him between my legs bringing back every memory, every trauma of what I’d survived.
My leg ached as I struggled, the brace that remained there putting pressure on my leg that had mostly healed but was still weak and stiff from disuse. “Settle,” Scar commanded, touching my cheek with his hand. The warmth of him sank into my skin, drawing me from the terror of my memories. In the two weeks he’d been a constantly at my side, he’d never touched me more than to hold me, or to help me in the shower.