Worth the Risk(48)
But she was too late. His task complete, he sat back and spread the fabric open, eyes locked on what he’d revealed.
And the hot blood pounding through her veins turned cold.
Chapter 20
“Jesus.” It was all he could say, and even that came out as a shocked whisper as he stared at Hannah’s body. Scars, too many to count. Some angry and purple, others white and thin. Just below the breasts he’d touched, across her stomach he’d revealed. Patterns and groupings, vicious and savage.
An accident? An animal attack? His mind struggled to make sense of it. Had she been in the car with her parents?
Hannah just lay there, her breath coming hard and fast. A part of his brain was telling him what he didn’t want to accept. That they were deliberate. That this had been no accident.
When he finally met her eyes, they were filled with so much fear and hurt, his stomach turned. Her fingers shook as she drew the shirt together and eased out from under him. Too shocked to stop her, he watched her as if in slow motion while his mind still struggled to catch up.
She moved across the room, her steps slow and shaky, until she stopped at the windows. He swallowed hard past the rock in his throat and took a step toward her. “Hannah?”
She lifted a trembling hand. “Don’t.”
His mind was blank and full and reeling all at once. Someone did this to her. Someone hurt her. He’d thought that before. For five years he’d dealt with and lived with this same thought about someone else. It had tormented him. Driven him to the brink of insanity.
Silence weighed in the room for what seemed like an eternity. “What…?” He didn’t even know what to ask. He wanted to know, but he didn’t. “Hannah. Please.”
She stared silently out at the woods for so long he didn’t think she would answer. When she did, her voice was too thin, too far away.
“I was fourteen.”
Stephen moved until he stood a few feet from her and to the side. He studied her face, waited.
“He took me to a basement. It was always dark, dark and black unless he turned on the lights, and then it was blinding.
“He was a scientist, he said. There were things he had to know, tests he had to do. A bat. A bowling ball.” She reeled off facts like she was talking about someone else even as her hand closed over her forearm.
Cheeks pale, eyes wide, staring into the innocent woods but seeing something horrible. He didn’t want her to see it. Didn’t want her there, not even in her mind.
“He cut me. Glass. Razors. Knives. Always knives.”
The words crawled over his skin like acid, the images she created slammed into his heart until he couldn’t breathe. “Stop.” He took a step toward her.
“There was so much blood. I was wet with it.” His breath hitched.
“Stop.”
“I tried not to scream, but it hurt so much. I—”
“Hannah, stop.”
“I tried, but I— There was so much blood.” Her voice grew high-pitched and panicked.
A war raged inside him, choked him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he took her by the arms. “Just stop! For God’s sake, stop!”
Her pale face jerked to his and for seconds she seemed to look right through him. She blinked and the look in her eyes changed. Confusion. Anger. Pain. How could this have happened? How could this kind of evil touch a girl who was nothing but good and light? He dropped his hand; his mouth was so dry he couldn’t speak.
“I want you to go.” Her voice was flat, emotionless.
“Hannah.”
“I want you to go now.”
“Hannah.”
“Just go!” It burst out of her and she stumbled away from the hand he offered, grabbed his shirt off the floor, and flung it at him. “Get out!”
His heart was being torn open to the point he literally expected to see blood. But there was no blood and his shirt hit him in the face. Her small, ice-cold hands hit his bare chest.
He opened his mouth to speak. Tried again. Unable to reach the words locked behind the lump growing in his throat. One last look at her tortured face, and he opened the door. He wasn’t even off the porch before he heard it slam behind him.
—
Time skipped in Stephen’s mind. His hand opening the cabin door. Kick-starting his motorcycle. He hadn’t gone home, just drove and drove, pushing the machine between his legs to the limit, peeling around turns and daring the pavement to touch him. Faster and faster like maybe he could get away, and if he flew right off the road, all the better.
He’d been here before. Desperate to block out another person’s suffering. Ready for death or whatever punishment God wanted to dole out and thinking, Bring it. For once in my fucking life let me be the one to feel the pain.