Page 42 of Summer Ride

There were probably things she had yet to admit to herself.

“My father actually went on the stand in court when I was on trial and told the judge that I was a terrible child. That I had probably enjoyed my years of torture and rape and had most likely helped Axel lure the others…” She suddenly dropped off, her eyes going wide.

His entire body had stilled at her words.

“Kara?” he said, gently squeezing her hand in his.

She closed her eyes and shook her head as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I… hadn’t ever wanted to tell…” She bit her lip.

He could see that she was struggling. Knew that whatever she was holding back was the cause of so much of her pain.

“I’m here. No matter what. I’ll never judge or leave you,” he said softly. “I promise.”

Her eyes flew open and bore into his.

“Don’t you dare.” She shook her head vigorously. “You can’t promise me that before you hear the whole story.”

“Then tell me the whole story.” He held his breath. “And I’ll prove you wrong.”

She leaned her head back on the headboard, her eyes closed. For a moment, he thought she was going to fall back asleep, but she shifted and then started talking.

“I’ve told you most of it. How I was kidnapped from my bed, and Axel held me for three years. Then, when I was found, I went to juvie.” Her eyes opened and landed on his face. “I didn’t tell you why I ended up in jail or what I was convicted of.” Her eyes locked with his. “There were several charges brought against me. Prostitution, kidnapping, torture of a child, rape, and attempted murder.”

His heart jumped in his chest as she said each of the charges. He knew in his heart she wasn’t guilty of any of it. She had only been thirteen when she’d been taken against her will. After six years, he knew her so well. He trusted her more than he trusted anyone else in life, besides his own parents.

“I was convicted of a couple of those charges,” she said. “Prostitution, and...” She bit her lip and shook her head.

He reached over and took her hand in his. “I’m still here,” he said softly. He watched the corners of her mouth twitch slightly.

“I was found guilty of prostitution and torture of a child.” She took a deep breath. “About a year and a half after Axel took me, he kidnapped Britney from the side of a road in Arkansas. When we traveled, I was in a hidden compartment in the trunk of his car. I don’t know where exactly he found her or how he convinced her to get in the car with him. The only thing I do know is that night, after checking into a hotel, he left me in the hiding spot. It wasn’t the first time, but it was mid-summer in Nevada, and I was pretty sure I was going to die from heat exhaustion. I’d already relieved myself many times during the long road trip, so the only thing cooling me down was my urine-soaked clothes.” As she talked, her eyes moved to a spot on the opposite side of the room. Their fingers were still interlocked, and he knew that she was using the contact for strength to continue telling him the story. “Halfway through the night, he finally came out and gathered me. When he carried me into the hotel room, he took me to the bathroom to hose me off. As we passed through the small room, I saw a small mound in the middle of the bed but had no clue it was a girl. To this day, I still don’t know Britney’s last name or where she came from.” She glanced at him briefly. “Or exactly where in the Nevada desert that Axel forced me to bury her body.” Her eyes snapped to his, then her chin rose. “I do remember almost six weeks of watching him rape her every single night. While he had her, he didn’t touch me. Instead, he would force me to do things to her that…” Her eyes closed quickly as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I will never forgive myself for. I wasn’t there when he killed her. He’d sold me to a john, and I was in the room next door, chained to the bed, when he snapped her in half. Both of her legs…” She made a strange sound, a gasping and gurgling noise, and he gathered her up in his arms.

“You can stop now,” he said, holding onto her. He didn’t know if he wanted to hear any more. It might just break him, knowing everything she’d been through. Everything she thought of in the darkness of night when she was alone. How did she do it? How did she survive on a daily basis?

“No.” She shook her head and leaned back. “I need to finish.” She wiped her face with her hands and started again. “In the middle of the night, we drove out into the darkness. He handed me a shovel and told me to dig. Then he tossed her inside, and I covered her up.” She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes. “When we returned, he placed me back in the hidden compartment in the trunk, and we drove for days. A few months later, it happened again. Only this time, it was Ryan. He was six years old. When I saw him lying on the hotel bed, naked, covered in blood and…” She shook her head. “Something just snapped in me. I knew that Axel carried a large hunting knife everywhere he went. He used it to threaten me, to make these marks.” She held out her arms and showed him the thin white lines that crisscrossed her skin. There were hundreds of them all over her body. Since she was fair skinned, most of them were unnoticeable unless you got up close. He’d wondered from the first moment he’d seen her what those marks were. She’d lied over the years about how she had fallen into a berry patch as a kid. “He’d used the knife to cut Ryan before he’d gotten me from the trunk. That night, after he showered me off, he demanded that I do things to Ryan. That we…” She shook her head. “The knife was on the nightstand still. Axel must have forgotten it was there. The only problem was, he was watching my every move. There was no way I could grab it before he got to me. No way. He was bigger than me. I knew what would happen if I tried and wasn’t successful.” She closed her eyes as more tears rolled down her cheek.

“What did you do?” he asked, his voice sounding far away as his head buzzed. Somehow, he already knew.

“I did what he told me to do. I tortured a little boy, half my size, until I finally had my chance. When I eventually wrapped my fingers around the knife, I sure as hell made it count. I made him hurt.” Her eyes narrowed, and he could see the anger behind them. “I took one of the most important body parts away from him, forever.”

Carter swallowed. “Jesus.” He jumped off the bed and paced the room for a few moments. Neither of them spoke as he wondered how in the hell she had survived. “They used what you did, what you were forced to do, against you, didn’t they?”

She nodded as she tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Ryan was alive. Even though he was six, he told them what I had done to him,” she said with her eyes closed. “Even though I told the lawyers and the judge in a private session what I knew Axel would do to me if I hadn’t, they still took my father’s and my brother’s word that I was willingly with Axel over mine.”

“What did your father and brother have to do with any of it?” he asked, the anger in his tone apparent.

“They both testified that I had been very… sexually driven before I’d run away. Their words, exactly. That night, the night I was kidnapped, I had gotten in trouble for looking lustfully at a magazine that I’d taken from a store. Again, their words, not mine.”

“Right, the fashion magazine.” He remembered her telling him. She nodded.

“They used that against me. Even though technically they didn’t lie, they did make it out to be something nefarious. To them, I supposed it was. Girls aren’t supposed to disobey. Men are godly. Women aren’t.” She relaxed back, looking very tired. “Tonight’s dream was replaying my brother giving his statement on the stand about how I used to lust after women and boys before I was thirteen. That he had no doubt in his mind that I had raped Ryan because I’d enjoyed it. That he believed Axel and I had run away together because we’d made a deal with the devil and wanted Satan babies. He’d been seventeen at the time. The way he looked at me…” She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “It was the same tonight.” She started crying uncontrollably.

Carter rushed over and pulled her into his arms. “I won’t let that man get near you ever again,” he promised as he held onto her until the sunlight filled the room.

Knowing everything about her past, he didn’t hold her responsible for any of it. She’d been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and mentally and physically abused, not only by Axel, but by her own family.

No wonder she didn’t want any of her mother’s money. There was no doubt in his mind that he would never want to see anyone who believed the worst, like her family did, ever again.

She was, without a doubt, the kindest, most levelheaded woman he’d ever met. Her genuinely caring heart was what had drawn him to her in the first place.