As she opened her mouth to proceed with her story, Isaac moved her hand back over his mouth and once again pressed a tender kiss into her palm before lowering it to his lap, but he didn’t release it, instead tangling his fingers with hers, lacing them together as they rested between them.
“A gathering was called, one that every cult member was forced to attend. They dragged me into the meeting room and then threw me on the floor in front of the entire assembly. I was again told to admit that evil lives within me and that only God decided life or death. I was ordered to renounce Satan, to renounce my gift and to beg the elders for mercy and forgiveness.”
Tears of rage streamed down her cheeks as she relived the incident as if it were only yesterday. She lifted her chin so that she could look Isaac in the eye.
“They demanded that I beg theeldersfor mercy and forgiveness,” she said bitterly. “Not God.Them.They believed themselves to be gods and here they were accusing me of being evil. Saying that Satan lived within me, when they were the ones guilty of all they accused me of.
“I defied them. I spoke out. I shouldn’t have, but God, I couldn’t do what they demanded. I don’t know how I found the strength to stand up on my own, but I did, and I faced them down, staring them directly in the eyes. I told them they were wrong. That it wastheywho were evil. Not me. That God wasn’t imperfect and that he created me, and it was he who gave me the gift to help others. I told them that Satan was evil and he would never, nor did he have the power to, grant someone the power to heal, to dogood. They tied me to a whipping post and said that they’d drive the demons from me if it was the last thing they did.”
“Jesus,” Isaac muttered, reaching for her and holding her tightly. “Baby, stop. You don’t have to relive this.”
“But I do,” she said tearfully. “You have to know everything, Isaac. So that you understand what you’re dealing with and why I had to escape the hell I’d lived in for so long.”
He tucked her head underneath his chin and wrapped his strong arms around her, creating a haven, a safe place where it felt like nothing could ever hurt her again.
“I held out for as long as I could. I swear I did,” she said brokenly.
“Baby, stop,” Isaac pleaded. “Do you think you have to defend yourself to me? You did nothing wrong and god damn it, I won’t have you think it. I won’t have you feel shame that you gave in when they damn near beat you to death.”
“But that’s just it. I was so stupid. They never intended to kill me. They would have never killed me. They were simply punishing me and setting the stage. It was all an act. A pretense. They needed me for their own selfish purposes and had no thought for anyone else in the cult who may have need of my healing power. They made me a pariah. It was all a carefully staged way to alienate me from the rest of the cult so the elders could be sure no one would ever help me. So I would be completely isolated and on my own so they could do with me as they liked.”
A growl sounded low and fierce in Isaac’s throat, startling her from the pain of reliving such terrifying memories.
“They didn’t just try to isolate you, Jenna. They tried to break you.”
“They succeeded,” she said dully, looking away from him, not wanting him to see her shame and weakness.
“The hell they did!” Isaac barked, causing her to jump, nearly sliding off his lap and out of his grasp.
He immediately calmed, though rage was still blazing from his eyes, and he gathered her back up in his arms, repositioning her on his lap. He shifted so he could frame her face with his hands. His touch was exquisitely tender. His thumbs feathered over her cheekbones, his caresses as soft as a butterfly’s wings.
“Look at me, Jenna.”
Reluctantly she lifted her eyes to meet his and felt tears well up all over again when she saw so much emotion reflected in his gaze. There was tenderness, understanding. Compassion, but not pity. To her shock, she also saw pride, but there was something else staring back at her. Something she couldn’t name because it wasn’t something she’d ever seen. But it warmed her from the inside out and gave her peace at a moment when her thoughts were anything but peaceful.
“The woman sitting here in my arms is not broken,” he said fiercely. “You may be down and they may have damaged you—hell, they did damage you—but honey, they didnotbreak you.”
His words only made her want to cry even more.
“Then why do I feel so broken, so shattered on the inside?” she asked in a small voice that stuttered as sobs knotted her throat. “Why does it feel like I have no idea who I am? That I’m nothing and that I don’t even exist? And that even if I’m someone, I’ll never be able to put the pieces back together of that person and I’ll always be what they made me?”
Isaac gazed at her with a look filled with so much caring and respect that she wanted to turn away from him and curl into a ball so small that no one would ever see her. What she really was and not this person Isaac thought he saw. The pitiful, weak woman who hadn’t had the will or the strength to defy what she knew in her heart was wrong.
He looked at her like she mattered. With admiration she didn’t deserve, but God how she wanted to be a woman worthy of having a good man, a man like Isaac who stood against evil every single day. Looking at her just like he was gazing at her right now. Like she was worth it. But she wasn’t. She’d brought him and the people in his life—people he obviously cared about—nothing but pain, danger and deception. How could he even stand to look at her at all, much less with such warm understanding and kindness?
“You are not what they tried to bend you and shape you into, Jenna,” he insisted. “Baby, everyone bends, but not everyone breaks. If they had broken you, if they had succeeded in making you what they wanted, would you be here with me right now? Would you have found the courage to stand up to them even after they beat you down time after time? Would you have found a way to escape them and run despite your fears of the unknown world you were escaping into? You can think and say what you want about what a failure you are, how weak you are and how unworthy you are of anything good in this world, but baby? I’m going to call bullshit every single time that fucked-up shit comes out of your pretty mouth. If it takes forever, I’ll get you to see the woman I see every time I look at you.”
She flushed, heat invading her cheeks until her face felt as though it were on fire.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said, his expression growing more somber and an edge to his voice that indicated he was deadly serious. “I will never let them take you back.”
He stroked her cheek, letting the backs of his knuckles graze lightly over her skin, leaving a peculiar tingling sensation in their wake.
“I will never let them touch you or put their hands on you again. And furthermore, should we ever be so fortunate as for them to get injured or even better, killed, you will not lift a single finger to heal their sorry asses.
“I intend to hunt every single one of those assholes down and make them pay for every mark, every blow, every beating, every bruise and every single word they ever said to make you feel like you were nothing.”
Terror exploded in Jenna’s heart, nearly paralyzing her with its intensity.
