And two, figure out why the hell Officer Darby was following me.
28
SUNNY
My hand shook as I poured a glass of wine.
I hadn’t planned on this.
I hadn’t planned onhim.
I hadn’t planned on my carefully crafted world getting turned upside down the moment—thefreaking moment—I had finally found peace.
Happiness.
Content solitude.
Leaving everything off except for a dim light in the kitchen, I left a trail of flip flops through the living room and sank onto the couch. I stared out the window. The night was young, the moon low in the sky, hiding just below the treetops in the distance. Slashes of black branches swayed against the glowing spotlight. A cool breeze blew in through the open window.
Athena pulled herself off the floor, padded over and licked my hand. Tango and Max were out on their nightly bathroom breaks before coming in for the night. Brutus was still by the river.
Athena never left my side.
I stroked the coarse, sable fur on the top of her head. “Good girl, baby,” I cooed, to calm myself just as much as to soothe her. “Good girl.”
Athena and I had been through a lot together. New jobs, new houses, new men, new me. Therapists, nights on the bathroom floor, days not leaving the bed. Tears until there were no more. Fear until there was no more.
My stomach rolled at the thought it could be happening all over again. Maybe not in the exact way, but an attack was an attack. Abuse was abuse. Physically and mentally. I’d experienced both in the last twenty four hours. At the City Park, of all places, and then the bar. Attacked physically, then mentally. For the second time in my life.
Was it happening again?
Could it all happen again?
I’d spent the last eight years picking up the broken pieces of a life changed forever. Putting one foot in front of the other while realizing the woman I once knew was no more, and having no idea who that new woman was. All I knew was my soul, the very core of me, had changed the instant Kenzo Rees slammed his fist into my jaw.
Funny how life can change in an instant.
There’s no going back after you wake up in ICU and remember you were put there by the hand of someone you loved. Someone you’d given your heart to.
Someone youtrusted.
That was what hurt the most, believe it or not. Looking back, it was the shattered trust that did me in. Of all the scars I’d gotten that night, that was the one that never quite healed back correctly. That shattered trust had not only made me question every word and motive out of every man’s mouth from that day forward, it made me question myself. That was the worst. I not only lost trust in other people, butin myself as well. And that’s—that’s—the dangerous part. Once you lose faith in yourself, everything else is like a slow burning ember, gradually fading away over time until it eventually turns to dust. My confidence, gone. My self-worth obliterated.
I remember looking in the mirror a few months after the attack and feeling like my actualfacehad changed. Physically. My skin, bone structure, everything had changed.
I didn’t recognize the woman I’d become. I just knew that a dark hole had formed somewhere in my body, stealing that childhood light that used to shine from me. The darkness was always there, every day, for better or worse.
For better or worse.
It wasn’t until six years after the attack, a year after my mom died—followed by the downward spiral of my father—that I’d decided I was going to turn that worse into better.
I remember the moment like it was yesterday. I woke up on the kitchen floor with a bottle of vodka in my hand, an empty pizza box at my feet, and my first blinding migraine.
I peeled my torso off the tile and vomited on my lap. When Athena lapped it up, I decided I’d had enough.
I’d gained thirty-seven pounds since the attack. Thirty-freaking-seven pounds of booze, pizza, and double-stuffed Oreos. I’d stopped working out, wearing makeup, feeling pretty—ever. I didn’t date because I didn’t trust men. Didn’t have friends because I didn’t trust anyone. I lived off my father’s money, working part-time at a vet clinic, interacting with as few humans as possible.
I was done wallowing in misery, the disgusting self-loathing that had become as routine to me as the anti-depressants I’d popped throughout the day. I was done accepting the pain, accepting the life mine had turned into.
