"That night. It's been a month."
"And yet Eric's still harassing you. You can go back to the police, have them look up the initial call you made about Eric."
She hunched her shoulders, trying to shrink further into the sofa. "I don't need the hassle."
"Is that the only reason?"
Shay slumped back against the cushions, exhausted and a little sick. "Just leave it, James. I've told you enough."
"I don't think you have." He reached over and placed his hand over hers where it lay on her thigh. "I get it. You're scared. You've been the victim of abuse. Douche bags like Eric wouldn't stand a chance if their true natures were obvious. Now that you know what he's capable of you need to protect yourself."
She gave her head a tight little shake. "I can't."
"Why?"
She made a little sound of misery. "You don't understand. You don't know anything about me. About my past. What I've done."
There was a beat of silence. "Tell me."
Shay twisted away from him, feeling something dark and ugly rip open inside her, something so horrible that she had not been able to face it at the time. "I'm not worth your effort. I'm broken. Screwed up."
"Maybe you need to see-"
"A shrink?" She whipped back around to face him. Here it came, all the things she had hoped to spare herself, and him. She felt her world collapsing inward, the walls of years of effort crumbling beneath her feet as she free-fell into darkness.
"Shay?" Hands framed her face and lifted it. And then she was gazing up from that dreadful bottomless place into the blazing summer blue of James's eyes.
"I stabbed a man."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Shay wondered how long a person could hold her breath and not pass out. James hadn't reacted to her confession. It was as if he, too, were waiting. The only difference was he was breathing slow and even, just as before.
After several heartbeats he said, "Who was he?"
Shay gasped softly before speaking. "A friend of my mother's."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen."
She felt James shift to angle his body toward hers on the sofa.
"Tell me what happened." His voice was little more than a breath.
"It was a mistake." Even as she said the words Shay gave her head a little shake. She'd started all wrong. This wasn't the way to tell it. But she really didn't know how. She hadn't actually said the words out loud to anyone in a long time. When her world blasted apart, she couldn't. Ever since those years, she hadn't wanted to.
"Does Eric know about this?"
"He guessed something. I have nightmares sometimes. Like the night you were here."
James nodded. "I remember. Go on."
Shay rocked her head in the negative against her palm. She really really didn't want to say more. But James was getting close to her very fast. If he was going to bolt, he needed to do it before she started counting on him to always be there for her.
He shifted closer and raised a hand to cup her cheek. "Just say words, Shay. Whatever you're thinking. Just say that."
"I don't remember it. No, I do. Some of it. But then it gets all weird and crazy." She strung the last word out as if it caused her pain.
"Where were you?"
"We lived over a Chinese restaurant in Raleigh." She swallowed. "I've hated Chinese food ever since. Dad had been in the army, a lifer, died in 2000. Nothing heroic. Service copter went down on practice maneuvers out in Arizona."
James let out a rough sound. It caught and perfectly reflected her feelings.
"Mom was an LPN. She brought us back home to live but work wasn't easy to find. She took double shifts at a nursing home. At first, she didn't date much. Then she met Andrew. He was nice to us for a while. But after he moved in, to help with the rent, he would sometimes get drunk and break things. And he looked at me in a way that made me feel funny."
"Yeah."
"Mom said that I was just not used to having a man around the place. But she put a lock on my bedroom door when I asked her to. When she worked night shifts I would lock it and never get out of bed in the middle of the night. Only one night I woke up and had to pee really bad."
Shay swallowed. Things were getting confusing. She could feel a pressure building like two hands clutching her heart. She was opening the door to a horror-movie basement that everyone knew never to go down into. Only, for her, the horror had been all too real.
"I was on the toilet, in the dark, when I heard … "
James's arm tightened around her. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
But she did.
The words spilled out over themselves.
The footsteps. Heavy. Andrew's. The shadow of his feet under the bathroom door from the light he'd turned on in the hallway.
She was washing her hands when the doorknob began to turn.
She'd yelled she was inside. But he only shouted back for her to open up. He was drunk. Nowhere to hide.
That's when she remembered the scissors in the drawer, the long narrow-bladed pair her mother used to trim her bangs. She grabbed them and hid them behind her back.
The door opened.
Then she was on the floor, his breath in her face as he groped her under her pajamas.
Shay sat forward suddenly, gasping for breath.
"I can't remember! I can't remember!"
James touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Shay?"
She jerked away from his touch. "Don't touch me! Just don't."
He twisted away and reached for the lamp beside the sofa. It flared to life.
Shay sat hunched over, gasping as if she'd been punched in the stomach.
He leaned close but didn't touch her again. "You need something? Water?"
She shook her head tightly. "The scissors just missed his heart. They said I could have killed him."
"Serves the asshole right." James didn't sound in the least bit doubtful about that opinion.
She turned her head toward him, a deep crease between her brows.
"You were being attacked. You defended yourself. Should have been an airtight legal defense."
Shay shook her head, years of therapy unspooling in her thoughts. "No. It wasn't like that. Andrew admitted he was drunk when he went to take a leak. He said he didn't know I was in there. I just went berserk when he opened the door."
James frowned. "People who are afraid sometimes overreact but you were defending yourself, Shay."
"Not everybody would have stabbed someone."
Shay turned away from him. It was easier than watching his expression of sympathy. "Mom said the police found me in the middle of the street screaming and screaming, with blood all over me. They thought I was injured. By the time the EMTs got there, I'd shut down. Everything. Couldn't even speak. They took me to emergency and then checked me into a psych ward. The doctor said the traumatic event of the stabbing caused me to have a nervous breakdown."
"Christ!" James made a fist to keep from touching her. "How long were you there?"
"Thirty days. Court ordered. I was evaluated with a dissociative anxiety disorder and as a possible endangerment to myself and others."
"None of that has anything to do with attempted rape. The authorities would still have to take into account your statement of what happened."
"They didn't get my statement." Shay swallowed, the rest of the story coming a little easier. "I couldn't defend myself. When I could talk again, after twenty-four hours or so, I couldn't remember what happened. I didn't for weeks. By then Andrew had pressed charges. He was out of the hospital and said I needed to pay for what I'd done."
"Screw that! You had every right to defend yourself."
This time James reached out for her and tried to draw her back against him but she resisted. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Try to make me sound … normal."
"You were normal. It's the situation that was bat-shit crazy. Andrew tried to molest you. You did finally remember that."
She flinched as if his compassion were just another burden. "Not soon enough. My mother had pushed me to accept a plea bargain of temporary insanity. I was tried as a juvenile. I didn't have to do jail time. But there was court-ordered therapy."
"Aw shit, Shay." Her words grabbed him by the throat, choking off the life's blood of his professional detachment until he was just a man aching over the pain of someone he cared about deeply.
Shay sat with her fingers twisted together, gulping in uneven breaths. Shouldering the unfamiliar feeling of helplessness, he watched her silently wrestle with her old demons. He knew that he couldn't simply talk or argue her out of her feelings. She'd lived too long with this for him to change years of thinking in a single conversation. But the story made him want to break a few heads, specifically ones belonging to Andrew and Eric. Andrew's vicious actions had screwed up her sense of self and of justice at a tender age. Eric, though he did not know why, had taken advantage of her need to keep all aspects of her life secret. Yet, somehow, she had survived. That grit had to be admired. "What happened next?"