Living in Shadow(62)

He didn’t stop. Or turn. The jog shifting into a run. Carrying him away.

Leaving her alone.

Eleanor was still shaking when she got back to her car. And she had to sit there for a good five minutes before she felt ready to turn the key and start the engine.

She felt like an earthquake had happened, the ground unsteady with aftershocks.

The point of the knife pressing against her skin. The look of horror on Luc’s face. The fabric cuff on his arm and what it meant. All those threads…

I was recruited by the militia. I’m a killer.

She drove home and didn’t remember even a minute of the drive, becoming aware she was in the driveway of her St. Mary’s Bay home only when the engine stopped.

Inside, she dropped her bag and keys beside the hall table and stood in the hallway with its polished wooden floors and white walls covered in art, staring at nothing, struggling to process what had happened with Luc.

Eventually she made herself move down the hallway and into the kitchen. Grabbing a wineglass from the cupboard and a bottle of white from the fridge, she went into her lounge and sat down on the couch, pouring herself a huge glass.

Shock was still running through her system, a terrible, aching kind of grief in her heart.

Tonight was meant to be the start of something new. Though the kind of relationship she and Luc had planned was going to be intensely sexual, she’d come to think over the past couple of weeks that it could be something more. That, in fact, she wanted more.

But now all that was gone. Shattered by his confession.

Luc had been a child soldier. And he’d lived like that for five years.

Eleanor leaned back on the couch and took a gulp of wine.

Fuck, the way he’d moved when the drunk had lumbered into her. All that lethally honed grace she’d sensed below the surface of him, exploding into action. Terrifying. Especially when she’d pulled on his arm and had it turned on her.

And all it had taken was a couple of fireworks to set it off.

She closed her eyes, remembering the dead look on his face. And then the horror when he’d realized where he was and that he was holding a knife to her throat.

I’m a killer. A killer who’s very good at pretending not to be one.

A killer didn’t look at their victim with horror. But a traumatized boy did. And that’s what he was, that’s what he’d been. A terrified boy who’d seen his parents murdered and then had a gun shoved in his hands.

Tears burned behind her closed lids.

That kind of trauma broke people and certainly Luc had been terribly scarred by his experiences. Who wouldn’t have been?

Grief sat like a broken bottle inside her chest, the sharp ends digging into her heart. Hurting for him. For the weight of the burden he’d been forced to carry. For the trauma he must have experienced. No wonder he’d had to cut off his emotions. How else could you survive something like that so young?

I’m one of them.

A tear leaked out and ran down her cheek. But she didn’t wipe it away.

He wasn’t one of them, though, was he? He’d broken through her walls, ripped through the anguish of what had happened to her with Piers, but he hadn’t left her bleeding and broken. Or hurt her needlessly. He’d touched her gently and with passion. Taken away the pain and given her pleasure in its place. Accepted the trust she’d given him and treasured it for the gift it was.

He’d healed the wounds.

That didn’t make him a killer, one of those dead-eyed soldiers who raped and tortured because any empathy they had for others had been destroyed.

That made him a good man. A man who’d drawn a line in the sand and said no. Who’d taken threads from the clothes of the men he’d been forced to kill so he wouldn’t forget.

So he wouldn’t be one of them.

And he still wasn’t. Sure, he had cracks running through him that ran deep, but he wasn’t broken. Jesus, he’d come out of five years of hell with a strong will and a passion and had gone on to do so much. That he was even able to function was kind of amazing.

He was kind of amazing. In so many ways.

You’re in love with the guy.

Eleanor opened her eyes.

Yeah, she probably was, wasn’t she? How completely ridiculous, to fall for one fucked-up man and then, years later, to fall for another who was possibly even more fucked up.

Yet Luc was strong, honorable, protective, caring. A better man than Piers had ever been or would ever be.

Her fingers tightened on the stem of her wineglass.

He was so alone. So isolated. And shit, she knew what it was to feel like that. She’d experienced what it was to feel trapped. To be forced into doing something you didn’t want to do.

She couldn’t leave him to suffer that by himself. She couldn’t leave him alone in the dark.