“Callie.”
The pleading tone of his voice made her tear her attention away from the bathroom. Torment etched his face, and the pleading in his eyes tugged at her heart.
“There was… a… a man.” Though she wouldn’t exactly describe Carter as such, some apes were more of a man than him. In many ways, he was as much of a monster as the Savages. “We dated for a few months, and then….” She shrugged as she held her hands helplessly up before her. “Then it went so wrong.”
Lucien stepped forward and stopped when she held her hands up to ward him off. He ached to hold her, but she didn’t want that.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’m not really sure.” She stared at him, but she felt like she was looking straight into the past. “His name is Carter. We never had sex, but he started becoming so possessive and strange. He called me all the time, and when I didn’t pick up, he would text me. One day, I received over a hundred messages from him while I was at work.
“All those messages demanded to know where was and what I was doing, even though he knew I was at work. When it first started, I would reply and tell him I was at work and would talk to him later. That wasn’t enough, and the messages and calls continued. At first, I was annoyed and stopped answering, but then I became creeped out and refused to reply. That was when the messages became more frantic and frightening.”
Lucien inhaled a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. Declan had been teaching him how to keep control of his emotions while he lived in this state of flux and not knowing. However, the deep breath in, deep breath out thing was not helping right now.
“That was when I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and to leave me alone,” Callie continued. “But the messages and calls continued, and I also started finding things on my doorstep. I was renting a house at the time, and when I opened the door in the morning, there would be roses or chocolates or some other gift there with a note saying he was sorry, to please forgive him, and he loved me.”
Lucien’s fangs lengthened at this revelation. She was his to love.
“I always threw everything out. And then, after a few weeks, things got really bad.” Her voice broke on the last couple of words, and she couldn’t suppress a sob.
It took everything Lucien had to keep himself restrained from approaching her, but he was afraid that if he went to her, she would stop talking or push him away.
“What happened?” he prodded gently.
“Instead of flowers, jewelry, and candy, he started leaving me birds, snakes, and finally, cats.” Nausea churned in Callie’s stomach as she recalled her daily offering of dead animals. “The letters became nastier, and he started promising to make me regret leaving him.”
Callie sniffled as she recalled the horrific spectacle of those broken animals lying on her doorstep. She cried over every one of them as she buried them in her backyard. He’d known how to upset her the most by bringing her those offerings.
“After the first week of flowers and candies, I went out and bought one of those doorbell camera things, and I had him on video for the first couple of visits. But then, he broke it. I bought another camera and put it up high so he couldn’t get to it, but he started wearing hoodies and keeping his face averted from it. After the second day of dead animals, I went to the police.”
“And what did they do?”
“They talked to him and told him to cut it out, but there wasn’t much they could do. I had him on video for the first couple of times, but though we all knew it was him, there was no proof once he started disguising himself.”
Unable to support herself anymore, Callie slid down the wall and drew her knees up to her chest. She looked up at Lucien, who remained five feet away from her. His eyes were a vivid red, and his fangs glinted, but she wasn’t scared of him anymore.
“Then, one day, he decided playing with dead animals wasn’t enough. He broke into my house while I was at work, and when I came home, he was waiting for me in my bedroom.”
Callie shuddered as she recalled walking in to find him sitting on her bed, in the middle of her things. He’d pulled out all her underwear and laid it out on the mattress. He was holding a pair when she entered.
She hadn’t known he was there or how he got in, and that was the creepiest thing of all. The police eventually discovered he’d pried open a basement window, out of view of her cameras, and climbed inside.
As she told him this, she saw the fury building inside him, but now that she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. Every detail, every horrible second of it, poured from her like water flowing over Niagara Falls.
“I turned and ran, but before I made it to the front door, he was on me, beating me. As he battered me, he screamed that I’d betrayed him and he would make me pay. It was all so fast that I could barely react. I remember throwing my hands up to protect my face, but when he hit me in my stomach, they instinctively fell, and that was when he broke my nose.
“It was like a wild animal was on me, kicking me, hitting me, choking me.” Her hand touched her throat as she recalled his fingers squeezing it. “I was sure he was going to kill me, and I still don’t know what made him stop. I don’t know if he got cold feet in the end or heard something, but I woke later with a pounding headache, and I was so sore I could barely drag myself across the floor to where my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket.
“When I lifted it, I saw the broken screen, but I still managed to call nine-one-one. I tried speaking to the operator, but I’d lost my voice. I could only hit buttons in response to her questions, but it must have been enough because the police arrived at my house five minutes later.”
Lucien crouched down across from her and rested his fingers on the ground as he studied her. If he ever met this Carter, he’d beat him bloody before allowing him to recover and doing it all over again until the bastard finally died.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
“They took me to the hospital, and when I was able to, I wrote down his name. That took some time to do as I had a concussion and couldn’t really hold on to one thought at a time, but finally, I could tell them who did it, and they arrested him. I pressed charges. He was put in jail, but he made bail. I was given a restraining order, but I still don’t understand what it was supposed to do against someone like him.
“I packed up all my things and left my home behind for a third-floor apartment because I wanted to be near other people. I preferred not to be all alone again, and I wanted someone who could hear me scream if he came back. And my life went on.
“As the case against him progressed, I learned he had a history of harassing women. It had never progressed to what happened between us, but I was his third restraining order. One of the women moved to California to get away from him.
“The night the Savages took me, I was out celebrating with friends because my life was returning to normal. It had been three months since I heard anything from him, and though his trial date was still pending, he’d left me alone. I didn’t understand what good a restraining order was, but obviously, it was good enough to deter him. My life was finally mine again, and then it all came crashing down.”
And he was continuing to tear it apart, he realized with a sick sensation in his stomach. He was ordering her about, locking her way, and keeping her from doing the only thing she’d asked of him since arriving here. All he wanted was to keep her safe, but he was breaking her in the process.