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Thrusting into her, I keep my pace light. Slow. Careful not to hurt her in the fragile state she’s already in. While every part of me wants to speed up, this isn’t about me. It’s about her.
The time it takes for the pressure to build inside me is embarrassingly quick. I reach down and press my thumb against Tessa’s clit, rubbing it in a way that makes her voice raise a couple octaves. The two of us chase our high together, and the second she tightens around me, I can’t hold back anymore. I let go, pulsing inside of her and emptying everything I’ve got into the condom.
WE’RE LAYING IN MY bed, with her head resting on my chest. I lightly graze my hand up and down her back in a comforting motion. I’m not even sure she’s still awake, being as we’ve been like this for half an hour now and she’s yet to say anything. The only indication I have is the small motion of her hand on my stomach.
“It was during the spring,” she breathes. “My sister had stayed out all night, which was really unlike her, and my Uncle Dominic came to pick me up. He said he wanted to take us both out to breakfast.”
“Tess, you don’t have to…”
“I want to,” she cuts me off. “If I don’t tell someone, it’s going to eat me alive.”
I press a kiss into her hair. “Okay.”
After a deep breath, she continues. “When I got into the car, I realized something was off with him. It’s like he went from the loving uncle I always remembered to a monster in less than a minute. I tried to get away, but someone was in the back seat. They put something over my face and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in some type of wet basement.”
My heart hurts listening to her, but I don’t say anything. Instead, I continue to rub her back and keep her as comfortable as possible.
“He spent the next however many hours abusing me and letting his friends do whatever they wanted to my body. If I didn’t do what they said or what they wanted, they’d beat me. I lost count of how many times I blacked out, but it was enough to give me a concussion.
“My uncle forced me to call my sister. Apparently, her boyfriend had managed to piss him off, and when he couldn’t find them, he planned on using me to lure them out. I tried to tell Delaney to stay away, but of course, she didn’t listen. He tied me to a chair and looked at each one of my cuts and bruises with so much pride it made me sick.”
She stops for a second to compose herself, wiping her tears with the blanket, and I take the time to kiss her forehead. Every word she’s saying is like a knife straight to the heart.
“So, the house…”
“I’ll get there,” she tells me. “After K
nox and Delaney got there, it was clear he had no intention of letting any of us get out of there alive. He was going to kill us all, and the sick part is, he probably would have gotten away with it. Knox somehow convinced him to let me and Delaney go. He was going to sacrifice himself for us.
“Just as he told his men to untie me, though, there was a commotion outside. Dominic was sure Knox and Delaney had brought the police with him, and he went off. He pointed a gun at my head to get Laney to stop hiding from behind her boyfriend and made her walk further away from Knox. I was completely convinced I was going to die that day. We all were.” She pauses a moment, takes a deep breath, then continues.
“Thankfully, the FBI had already gotten a guy undercover in his fight ring, Jackson. He had been training Knox and Grayson on how to fight for Dominic. It was a psychotic way to make money off the sick and deranged. He came out with his gun pointed at my uncle, and being as all his guys were dealing with the shit outside, he was defenseless.
Instead of surrendering, he did the unthinkable. He pointed the gun at Delaney and pulled the trigger.”
Her whole body shudders, as if the memory of that part alone is enough to torment her for the rest of her life.
“It didn’t even register that my uncle was shot ten times while standing right next to me. His blood splattered onto my face, but my attention was on my sister. Somehow, Knox managed to jump in front of her in time and took the bullet. It lodged itself in his chest, and he lost a lot of blood.
“He was in surgery for what felt like ages, and a coma for weeks after that, but he pulled through. I’ve never been more thankful for a person than I am for him, because losing my sister isn’t something I’d be able to handle. Not now, not ever.”
“Tessa,” I whisper, feeling my heart break for her.
“I’m almost done,” she replies. “I was dating Easton at the time, and he helped me through a lot. It’s why no matter what, I’ll never be able to have anything but respect for him. He did everything I needed him to do, whenever I needed it, but he was still something that connected me to that night. When he and I broke up, I was almost relieved. That relationship was one less thing to remind me of that day.”
“And him coming back today brought that all back up?”
She nods. “He was supposed to be at UCLA, but he told me today he transferred to NHU and moved back. He told me he wants to get back together, but that’s not what I want. When he got mad, he let it slip that my dad played a bigger part in everything than I knew. He wouldn’t tell me more than that, so I went home to see what I could figure out.”
My arms tighten around her involuntarily, and I have to tamp down the anger at Easton’s behavior. His careless shots could have killed her today.
She continues. “My father is a control freak, and went as far as putting surveillance cameras all over the inside of the house. I managed to get into his computer and found the footage from that day.”
Her lip starts to quiver, and she moves until she’s looking up at me. Her eyes are filled with tears and her cheeks are soaked. She takes in a shaky breath.
“My dad knew what my uncle was trying to do the whole time. He handed his own daughters over without a care in the world.”
Just like that, she breaks again, and the sobs rip through her. I pull her in as close as possible, holding her tight as she comes apart in my arms.
