I give into it and bask in the tingly waves that pass over me.Then as I’m slowly returning to the moment and the orgasm subsides, I blink to tears.
The sudden weight of trauma crushes me, unloading all at once.
My pleased gasp turns into a small, warbling cry.
Killian’s head snaps up, panic flashing across his face. “Jhene? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“No…” I murmur and twist my body to bury my face in his sheets. I don’t want him seeing me like this. “You didn’t hurt me at all. I’m sorry… I don’t know why I’m?—”
Another cry forces its way out and interrupts me.
“Hey, don’t hide.” Killian’s moved up the bed and gathers me into his arms. He pulls me up ’til I’m propped against his chest and his fingers are stroking at my curls. “Tell me what it is. What’s going on in that head of yours, stray?”
I shake my head against his chest and mumble, “It’s not you. You’re… you’re so good to me, Killer. I just… I…”
He uses his other hand to rub circles on my back, encouraging me to continue. I sniffle and draw a fresh breath so I can.
“Sometimes when we’re together like this… I think abouthim.”
He tenses up, arms still around me, though he says nothing. He’s waiting for me to get the rest out.
“I hate it,” I whisper. “He’s not even here, yet sometimes it still feels like he is. It’s like he’s still in control of me and there’s nothing I can do about it. He’s in my head, and I can’t get him out.”
“Shhhh… don’t beat yourself up about that,” he says, his gruff tone gentler than usual. “You’re a free woman, you understand? He’s not here. He’s never gonna go anywhere near you again. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
“It’s just, I spent so many years trapped. I keep reverting back to that.”
“It’s gonna take time, stray. What you went through… that’s not something that goes away overnight. But know I’m never gonna judge you for any of that, alright?”
I nod and then press my face back into the hard plane of his chest. My eyes close, and I will the panic to go away.
Killian holds me as long as I need him to. We sit in his dark apartment in silence, his arms wrapped around me and my face buried in his chest.
“Do you ever look back on the past and wish you could warn yourself?” I mutter moments later. I lift my head up and peer at the shadowed lines of his face.
“Only to tell myself to fight back sooner,” he answers.
I understand what he’s alluding to—he’s told me about his alcoholic father and his drunken rages. He took it for years before he finally stood up for himself and his mom and sister.
I sigh and sit back, studying the palm of my hand as it rests in my lap. “I do all the time. I think about how I wish I could go back. Warn Mom not to make the deal she made.”
“With Fedorov?”
“She worked for him,” I confess darkly. “She was his accountant. Hiswasher. Her job was to make money disappear. Make it so their books looked legit. But they didn’t pay her much, and as a single mom with two daughters, things were always tight.”
“That’s no surprise.”
“When Eva got sick, the medical bills piled up fast. We couldn’t keep up. That’s why I got a tutoring job as soon as I could the summer I turned fourteen. But it still wasn’t enough. So Fedorov offered my mom a loan.” I laugh bitterly at the memory. “She thought she was saving us. She didn’t realize she was signing our lives away.”
“What kind of deal was it?”
“The kind where there’s no escape from. The interest kept growing. No matter how much she paid, it was never enough. He kept changing the terms by adding more. Moving thegoalposts. When she finally realized she’d never be able to pay it off...” I swallow hard, the grief rising up my throat. “He told her he was going to take us. Me and Eva. As payment.”
Killian’s face darkens. “The sick fuck.”
“She panicked. She took us to the Greyhound station in the middle of the night and bought tickets across the country. We were going to go live with an old friend of hers in California. She told us to wait by the buses while she went to get snacks…”
“But she never came back,” he finishes for me, and I give a small nod.
