Rock Wedding(69)

Shoving away from the kitchen chair, Abe stalked to the window, pressing his hands against the counter as he fought the rage vibrating under his skin. “Did that asswipe hit you? While you were together?” He’d never forget how Sarah had looked that night, so shocked and lost and shattered.

But it wasn’t until this instant that he understood just how much Vance had hurt her soul. His blow would’ve awakened nightmare memories of her childhood. Abe didn’t have to read very hard between the lines to know that her mother and her mother’s boyfriends must’ve hit Sarah.

“No.” Sarah’s response was immediate and firm. “That was the first time—and I wouldn’t have stood for it even if you and the others hadn’t been there to support me. I was never going to be that woman, the one with fist-sized bruises under her shirts and heavy makeup to hide the black eyes.”

Abe’s gut filled with ice. Suddenly he knew where this was going. “One of them went too far?”





CHAPTER 25



“HE BROKE HER NECK.” Tears clogged her voice on the starkly brutal answer, but she kept speaking. “Then he set fire to our trailer. I crawled to her room, tried to drag her out… until I realized… until I realized…”

Striding back to her, Abe tugged her up into his arms. He went to speak but she wasn’t finished. “The police caught him. He’s serving life in prison.” A shuddering sob. “She wasn’t a good mom, but she was still my mom and he killed her.”

“Fuck, you were a strong kid.” He knew she must’ve testified to send that murderous bastard to prison.

“I got put into foster care after that.” She wiped her face on her T-shirt. “It was a bad place. More violence along with a son with wandering hands and a way of looking at me like I was meat.”

Abe gritted his teeth together, his muscles rigid.

Sarah continued to talk. “After the prick cornered me one night, grinding his crotch into me and telling me I was going to get it and I better not say a word or his parents would kick me out for being a slut, I packed up what little I had and left.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

He crushed her close, his heart thudding. Fifteen-year-olds didn’t last long on the street without attracting the attention of certain predators. Especially fifteen-year-old girls as beautiful and as well-developed as Sarah must’ve already been. His muscles bunched, his rage returning on a black roar at the idea of her being hurt that way.

“You okay to keep talking?” Abe would never force her back into hell.

“You might as well know the rest,” she said, her head turned to one side on his chest and her arms down by her sides instead of around him. “I didn’t have any real money. Just a few dollars given to me by a cop who felt sorry for me.”

A short pause, her breathing jagged. The next words she spoke were haunted. “After hours walking down the highway alone in the dark”—echoes of fear in her voice—“I hitched a ride out of town with a trucker. And I gave him what he wanted because he told me we’d be together forever, that he’d take care of me, make sure I never had to be alone in the dark again. I’d watched men make promises to my mom and break them over and over, should’ve known not to believe him, but I was so alone and so scared.”

Abe was so far beyond anger now that there was no word to describe it. What the fuck kind of asshole took advantage of a grieving fifteen-year-old? “If you ever see him, point him out and I’ll break his nose, and you can kick him in the nuts.”

A wet laugh and Sarah’s arms slipped around him at last, as if she finally trusted that he wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t reject her. “He left me in Los Angeles two months later. Just drove out while I was using a restroom.” Nails digging into his skin. “I had such dreams of the big city, of the lights and the pretty people, but I found those things don’t exist for girls with no one.”

His gaze blood red, Abe kissed her temple, braced to hear the worst.

“I was so lonely. Easy prey for the smooth-talking predators.” Another rasping breath. “But I’d learned from my experience with the trucker, and then for the first time in my life, I had a stroke of luck. I was squatting in an abandoned building with a bunch of other kids and getting ready to run to avoid a drug dealer I already knew wanted to pimp me out, when the police raided it.”

Abe kissed her temple again, so fucking scared and angry for the girl she’d been. “That doesn’t sound like good luck.”

“The cops didn’t want to deal with us kids—they were after the narcotics den in the basement. So they handed us over to a local charity organization. Most of the others ran off first chance they got, but I stayed.” She shrugged. “I hadn’t been on the streets long enough to make friends or have other loyalties, and at least with the charity, I had a place to sleep where I didn’t have to worry about being assaulted.”