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Hunter snaps out of his trance first. “Raven, baby,” he starts to say cautiously. “Can you please put down the razor?”
She just stares at him.
He inches toward her.
“Stop,” she bites out in an uneven tone. “Stay the hell away from me.” Tears pool in her eyes again as she glares at him.
He does what she asks, stopping in his tracks. His gaze briefly flicks to the bed where I now notice papers, photos, and a phone.
My stomach ravels into even more knots.
Just what did Benton do to her?
Hunter looks back at her and holds up his hands in front of him. “I won’t come any closer until you give me permission.” He fleetingly pauses. “But can you please tell me what happened?Please.” When she doesn’t answer, he gives another pause. “Did … did someone touch you or hurt you?”
She stares at him for a beat, her face shifting. “You guys did!” she cries. “You fucking knew, didn’t you? Knew who I was … That we—I was …” Her gaze flits to the mess on the bed, and then a heart-wrenching sob rips from her chest. “I want to forget again … I don’t want to remember these ugly, violent things that are spinning in my head.”
I think it clicks then—what happened, what the papers on the bed probably are, what they unleashed in her.
Raven is Willow, and she had forgotten that she was—that much I already suspected.
But clearly, whatever is on those papers, photos, and phone released her memories. And now she knows …
About us …
About the pain …
About how we were broken.
Hunter swallows audibly. “We didn’t know until today,” he whispers. “And we wanted to tell you … We were just figuring out how … Jax and I were just talking about it …” He lowers his voice. “We didn’t want to hurt you.”
She stares at him with tears streaming down her face, and then something breaks. Caves Shatters.
Her face crumbles as she starts to cry uncontrollably.
“I want to die,” she says. “I don’t want to deal with this shit anymore. All the pain … all the loneliness …”
Her words rip my soul in two, and before I even know what I’m doing, I push past Hunter, heading toward her.
“Jax,” Hunter warns, but I ignore him, crouching down in front.
My legs are shaky, my hands are trembling, and my heart is an erratic mess. And yet, somehow, by some fucking miracle, my voice comes out even, like maybe my soul just knows that’s what she needs now.
“I know,” I say quietly. “I know how you’re feeling … how much you want to bleed out that pain. But Raven, sweetheart, it’s not worth it. Trust me; I do know that.” I remove the leather band from my wrist and, with a trembling breath, stick out my arm and show her my own scars. “You’re not alone, and you’ll never be alone again.”
Her sobbing has quieted, but she’s still crying as she lifts her gaze to mine. I’m honestly kind of glad she’s crying while looking at me. I know it’s a strange thing to say, and I probably sound like a psychopath, but it’s how I feel. Because if she was trying to hide it, trying to bury her pain, then it means she doesn’t trust me at all. But letting me see her like this, she has to trust me a little. At least enough that she hopes I’ll try to save her from drowning in her own agony.
And I’m going to fucking try with everything I have in me.
So, even though I loathe my scars being touched, when she reaches out and lightly touches one of them, I hold perfectly still. And surprisingly, her touch is way less scalding than I expected it to be.
She stares at the scars for a while, tracing her finger back and forth across the lines. And it’s painfully torturous at first, but eventually, it morphs into something else, something that’s tortuously soothing.
“Why was this done to me?” she finally whispers, lifting her gaze to mine. “Why was all of that …?” She swallows down a trembling breath as her gaze flicks to the papers then back to me. “Why was that done to us? And did my … Did my parents know about it?”
I gather a steady breath before saying, “I honestly don’t know.” It’s a question that’s haunted my mind forever.
Why did this happen? Because my father wanted money? Is it that simple?
