Ellie had reached her goal for weight gain, so she tried to spend as much time getting off her butt as possible. Zane had an indoor pool in his Denver mansion just like he had in Rocky Springs, so she tried to swim every evening, and tried to do some time on the treadmill as often as possible. So far, her weight had stayed steady.
Though, if she were honest, the workout Zane gave her in bed every night was probably why she wasn’t gaining weight. He’d taken her to just about every restaurant in the area that he personally liked, every single one of them fantastic.
Her only complaint was that he wouldn’t let her settle her old debt with him. He refused to let her pay for anything, nor would he take any part of her paycheck as his assistant to try to pay him back for all that he’d done for her in the past. In fact, he refused to even acknowledge that she owed him anything.
It was the only thing they ever really fought over.
Unlike some couples, the remote control was never an issue. She loved watching the science channels with him, and he’d become almost as addicted to her crime shows as she had always been. They rarely missed an episode of Supernatural, but if they did, they were quick to pick it up on demand. It seemed they were equally quirky about what shows and movies they watched.
Tonight, she’d left him watching a documentary on TV to go down to her workshop and pack some products. Ellie made it a point to make sure her orders got out for delivery quickly.
“I missed you,” Zane’s voice said huskily from behind her.
She’d heard him coming downstairs, but hadn’t expected to suddenly feel his hard body pressed against her back. She startled, nearly dropping the candles she was packing.
He stretched out his hand and caught the box expertly, setting it back on the counter.
Ellie’s heart still racing, she turned around in his arms. “You scared me,” she told him as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Totally unintentional,” he said remorsefully.
“I know. It’s not you. I guess I still have some involuntary reactions that I can’t control.” Ellie hated it when her rational brain didn’t connect with her body sometimes.
Zane took her hand and led her over to the media area with a sectional couch. He dropped onto the middle of it and pulled her into his lap. “Do you want to talk about it?”
No! No, I don’t.
Any time it came to really discussing her experiences during her horrific months in captivity, she preferred to pretend it never happened. Natalie never let her get away with avoiding it for long, and some of those sessions were brutally difficult, but Zane hadn’t ever pushed her.
She shook her head, but answered, “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m over it and moving on, but once in a while I still feel the scars inside me that haven’t quite healed. I’m not quite sure I’ll even have complete closure because he’s dead, and he died while I was still in the cabin.”
“The bastard took the coward’s way out. You never got to see him in court, and you never got to see him pay for what he did,” Zane replied angrily.
She nodded. “Exactly. It’s like he never existed. It’s weird because I was relieved he was dead, but I was angry, too.”
“It’s not weird, sweetheart. I think it’s natural to feel that way.”
Ellie sighed, knowing she’d never feel as close to anyone as she did to the man comforting her right now. She didn’t want to close him out, and she wouldn’t want it from him if he’d gone through something traumatic. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Wherever you want,” Zane said gently. “Tell me the things that haunt you the most.”
“The fact that I didn’t get away with his laptop the day it happened. I think about what I could have done differently. Maybe I should have gotten out of the office quicker. Maybe I didn’t fight hard enough because I was hoping I could talk him down. Maybe I shouldn’t have run, and I could have pretended I didn’t know until I had the opportunity to steal his computer from him. There’s so many things I could have done differently that might have saved both me and Chloe some pain.”
Zane absently stroked his hand over her curls as he answered, “You did the best that you could under the circumstances. Any of those alternatives might have failed.”
“Possibly,” she agreed. “But I’ll never know. There was no opportunity after that to escape. I think I was unconscious during most of the drive to the cabin, so I had no idea where I was. It was disorienting, and he had me chained before my head could clear.”
“How often did he come up to the cabin? Did he leave right away?”