His gaze locked on her. Hard and cold and a little bit terrifying. “First of all, you left it unlocked on the bed so I could read the dental results. Our victim’s name is Ellender Garza. I sent that information on to the law enforcement rangers so they can start pulling a victim profile together. Second, I didn’t mean to read through your messages. A new message came through while I was reading the results that started with the words, ‘You’ve always been a selfish brat.’ So yeah, I clicked on it to make sure it was coming from a wrong number, and I didn’t have to pay someone a visit.”
Her body locked up on her. Her mind went blank. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t part of the deal. Reality wasn’t supposed to breach the bubble they’d created in this room. In here, they were just two people who cared about each other and happened to be having a baby together. No talk of the past or the future or the threat outside these walls. Drennan closed her eyes against the shame charging through her. Those messages… She’d kept them and all the voicemails as a reminder not to trust the upward arc of the cycle where her mother said what Drennan wanted to hear and pretended to give a damn. To force herself to see the truth. No one was ever supposed to see them, least of all him.
Harvey tossed the phone on the bed, face up. Full of messages just like that one from her mother. He pointed down at the phone. “Except there are countless others just like that one from that specific number, spanning months. Who the hell has been messaging you that vile crap, and where can I find them, Drennan?”
She didn’t know what to say, couldn’t remember how to breathe.
“Is this the person you won’t tell me about?” He was right there, suddenly standing in front of her. She hadn’t heard him move, or maybe she’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to track him rounding the end of the bed and coming to stand in front of her. His thumb traced the bottom edge of her lip, so light she could’ve imagined it. “The one who hurt you? Who is it?”
Tears burned in her eyes. She’d tried. She’d tried to hide it, to not blame herself for all the accusations and disappointment thrown her way, but abuse—in any form—liked to be kept a secret. That was where it did the most damage, isolated its victims and crushed all sources of hope. It’d built until she couldn’t handle the pressure anymore, and the control she’d convinced herself was enough broke. Her mouth wobbled the harder she attempted to hold it in. “My dad died when I was eight. It was a car accident. The kind most people don’t walk away from, but I did.”
Harvey pulled back slightly, but not out of reach. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. He was my best friend. No matter how tired he was at the end of a long workday at the hospital or what else needed to be done, he went out of his way to spend time with me every day.” A smile tugged at her mouth, but even she could feel it didn’t last long as the grief rolled in. Not as strong as it used to but still there. She wasn’t sure she’d ever stop feeling it. “We did everything together as a family. Just him, me and my mom. They were the perfect couple. Teasing each other while theymade dinner together, laughing at inside jokes, sneaking kisses when they thought I couldn’t see, but after he died, my mom changed. It was like a switch had been flipped. There weren’t any more trips to the nearest gas station for a treat or sitting down to dinner together. Her smiles were gone, and I couldn’t figure out why she would get this look on her face anytime she saw me. Like I was a stranger.”
Straightening to his full height, Harvey gave her a glimpse of the soldier she knew him to be. Alert, ready. “Your dad was a doctor?”
Her heart squeezed too hard in her chest. She nodded. “I thought I could make her proud by following in his footsteps, but she didn’t see it that way.”
“She took her grief out on you, a child who was grieving her father as much as she was grieving her husband.” He lost that hardness as he stepped into her, his knuckles grazing her cheek. The touch elicited a whole new sensation in her chest, as though she suddenly had room to feel something more than the armor she’d built against the people in her life. “And she still is, isn’t she?”
“No. Because I won’t let her. She sends me messages and leaves voicemails, but I never respond back. I don’t answer her calls.” She’d never spoken about any of this. Cassidy had been witness to her mother’s confrontations in the middle of the ER when she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention, but right now, Drennan wanted this to last longer. This…unloading. Where she peeled back another layer of the empty, compliant outlet she’d been nearly her whole life and exposed the woman she knew herself to be underneath. She wanted him to be part of that. She wanted to delay the inevitable moment Harvey realized he’d started caring about her more than he set out to, about what happened to her and the baby. That moment was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it, but she could push itoff a little while longer. With moments like this. “I took away her power over me, and she’s desperate to get it back.”
The notches between his eyebrows deepened. Did he know he was still touching her as though he needed that connection between them? “So then why keep them?”
“To remind myself I am not the abuse I endured.” Another invisible layer peeled back, revealing a spark of something she’d felt the night they’d met. “I’m the hope that refused to surrender.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
She wasn’t the abuse she endured.
A resounding echo thudded hard in Harvey’s chest.
“No more, Drennan.” He turned for the bed, collecting her phone from the comforter that had kept them tangled together throughout the night. He handed the device off. The choice was entirely up to her. He couldn’t make it for her. “Stop putting yourself in a position to get hurt. You have good intentions in reminding yourself of what she’s capable of, but one of these days, a message will come through that won’t do that job. It will do what she intends, and you’ll be right back to being her metaphorical punching bag.”
She sighed. “I know. I’ve told myself to block and delete her number so many times.” Tears glittered in her eyes. She nodded, as though trying to convince herself—of recognizing—that what he said made sense. “I just keep hoping she’ll realize her mistake and she’ll remember that I’m her daughter. That she’s supposed to love me.”
He didn’t know the specifics of what her mother had put her through, but he couldn’t help but admire the woman who’d come out on the other side of it. How Drennan had stood there and braved exposing a piece of herself she’d guarded for so long. Because he knew she had. He knew the lengths she’d gone through to protect her abuser out of shame and potential disbelief from people who were supposed to care about her. He’d done the exact same thing. Lying to his teachers, pushing away his friends, not making eye contact with anyone long enough forthem to realize the bruises on his face hadn’t come from falling down the stairs the second time in a week. He’d isolated himself just to avoid having to answer questions about his home life and ensuring his father’s wrath if the man ever found out about it. It hadn’t gotten any easier in the military, but at least he hadn’t been—how had Drennan put it?—trying to heal in the same place he’d been broken.
And Drennan was… She was awe-inspiring. Stronger than anyone he’d ever known, including the men and women in his unit, and everything he wasn’t. She’d overcome that part of her that relived every injury and harsh word over and over to get her through the day. He wanted that. More than anything he wanted to move past the hollowness in his chest and find something worth reaching out for. But the man he’d become had been built on years of detachment, grief and pain, and letting go felt like forgiving. Something he wasn’t sure he could ever bring himself to do.
He stepped into her, drawn by more than the need to offer some semblance of comfort—if he was capable of that at all. He wanted to feel her, breathe her in, make her and the peace she brought part of him. Harvey pressed a soft kiss to her mouth, excited by her gasp, as he shifted her damp hair away from her face. “People like your mother will always need someone to blame. They teach you that love is not unconditional or deserved, that it’s given only when certain expectations and whims are met. They need the control and use manipulation to feel powerful, and when you don’t give them what they want or you fight back, you become the villain. But, Drennan, I would much rather see you as the villain in her story than as a victim.”
She swiped at her face. “I don’t want to be a victim. I want to be the mother this baby needs.”
Hell, that threatened to gut him on the spot. She was one of the few, the ones who recognized the cycle and refused to pass italong to the next generation. If his father had been brave enough to make that choice… Harvey didn’t know where he would be. “You already are.”
Her laugh punctured through the hard layer of ice he’d set in his chest. Clear and full of a brightness he hadn’t let himself recognize in a long time. “You don’t have to say that. I’m sure all of this is too much to handle, even for you.”
“I can handle you.” He kissed her again, this one more than an offer of comfort. The sweep of his tongue was driven by the need to reward her for all the hard days, the lonely nights and the tears she’d shed for a woman who didn’t deserve a single one of them.
“You should get dressed.” Harvey skimmed his knuckles along her throat, reveling in the strong beat of her pulse. Warmth radiated into his hand at the contact, and he wanted to drown in it. To drag her back into that bed and help them both forget the atrocities they’d survived. That was what they were. That was what the pain in her eyes that’d called to him the night they’d met spoke of. Survival. It was something they shared, something that bonded them, but every cell in his body told him even without that, he’d still feel this unexplainable connection to get close to her. He fanned his fingers over her jaw, framing one side of her face. “I want to drop by the clinic to get you that ultrasound before I head into the park to follow up with the law enforcement rangers. Make sure everything is okay with the baby.”
“I’ll just need a few minutes.” Nodding, Drennan clutched at the towel with a wisp of a smile as she backed toward the bathroom door. “Thank you.”
A swell of something foreign climbed his throat, but he wouldn’t let it out. Nothing he said in response would be worthy of the woman having his baby, so Harvey sat back on the edge of the mattress to wait. No one had ever thanked him for hisadvice, but then again, he’d never felt comfortable giving it. While he might’ve gone through his own personal hell, he’d kept that part of his life locked up tight. But it’d felt good to talk Drennan through those contradictory feelings of wanting to destroy the threat to your well-being while trying to make it love you at the same time. Felt freeing. Healing. True to her word, mere minutes passed before she stepped back into the bedroom clothed in black slacks and a T-shirt and tennis shoes and they were on their way to the clinic.
Harvey maneuvered into the parking lot he was becoming all too familiar with and rounded the front of the SUV to help Drennan out. Based on her hesitation and automatic reaching for the door, he was betting no one had done that for her, either. Or she hadn’t let them, needing to prove she could make it through this life without help. He understood that. Didn’t mean he was going to let her.
