“Easy, Tessa, you’re safe.” Hands grip my shoulders, but I thrash away from them.
“Don’t touch me!”
Somewhere nearby, there’s an alarm screeching, but I pay it little attention because I have to get away. He’s going to kill me if I don’t.
“Tessa, honey, you’re safe.”
That voice. Soft. Feminine. Familiar. Safe. That last word wraps around me like a blanket, and I still long enough to brace for the next blow. When it doesn’t come, I open my eyes.
The light is dim above me, and two nurses in scrubs are staring down at me, wide-eyed and afraid. When I remain still, they lift their hands from me and take a step back. The alarm dies, and a rhythmic beeping takes its place as Linda Knox steps into view. Her eyes are misty, but that same kind smile I’ve always attributed to her is in place.
“Mrs. Knox?” I whisper.
“I’m here, sweetie.” She steps forward and reaches out to gently touch my hand. I don’t withdraw from her, though I don’t reach for her either.
This is Zane’s mom, and after what I did—what I said to him—she’ll want to leave, too.
“I’m sorry.” The tears come rushing hard and fast. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t need to apologize for anything.” She closes the distance between us now, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me against her chest. The familiar scents of lavender and vanilla fill my lungs, and I breathe her in, too relieved to be worried about what might come when Zane tells her what I said to him. What I did.
“Call us if you need us,” one of the nurses says moments before the door closes softly.
“Are you okay? Do you hurt?” Linda asks as she pulls away.
I shake my head. “Just a nightmare.”
Linda steps back and takes a seat in a chair right beside the bed. The same chair her son had been in before I kicked him out of the room like he was enemy number one, instead of the only person I’ve ever loved.
“It’s so good to see you, honey,” Linda says. “We’ve missed you.”
I take a deep breath and toy with the blanket in front of me, the remnants of my nightmare still very much alive in my mind. “Did you talk to Zane?”
“I did. He said that you didn’t want to see him.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s between the two of you,” she says with a soft smile. “Though I do have to say that my son is a good man, and he wants to help. No matter what happened.”
Swallowing hard, I press the button on the bed remote to raise the head of it so I can lean back without lying down. “I know that.”
“Then whatever is going on between you two is for you to work out. I’m here because I love you, and because I want to make sure you’re okay.”
I’ve never really been okay. “I’ll survive.”
“Oh, honey, I know that.” She smiles, but it fades quickly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Because I don’t trust myself to do just that if I open my mouth to respond, I shake my head. Linda Knox fought for years to get me to turn my dad in. She’d offered to let me come live with them and take care of me, and I know that, if I’d have taken her up on it, she would have done just that.
But how could I bring her into my hell?
How could I give my dad ammunition against the only family I’d really ever known? There’s no doubt in my mind that he would have come after me through them. There was never any proof of it, but he burned down his ex-girlfriend’s house—with her inside. Thankfully, she’d survived, but that’s only because someone just so happened to be walking by when the place went up in flames.
He claimed he didn’t think she was in there. I know he was lying because I heard him bragging about it to a buddy of his when they’d both been drunk one night.
What would he have done to the Knoxes if I’d have taken them up on a home? A family?
My life wasn’t worth the risk to theirs.
