There’s another grunt and the sound of flesh being ripped.
I shuffle forward, bend over, and grip the latch. Pulling up the door, bright white light blinds me. I squeeze my eyes shut just as a deep voice bellows, “Go! Wyn. Runnnnn!”
“He knew my name,” I say, thinking back. “Of all the things I’ve replayed in my mind and all the things that haunt me, running into the woman at the end of the hall screaming, the way the monster chased us both. Pulling the fire alarm, the lightsfrom the trucks when we made it outside.” I shake my head, my chest heavy again. “I forgot that the manknewmy name.”
Julian leans his elbows on his knees, looking at his palms and running his fingers along the lines that I once read playfully at a bar.How could this ever work between us?I’m the reason his father isn’t just dead, but what happened to him was undoubtedly ugly.
“The things you survived,” Julian says, sounding in disbelief. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the strength you have.”
I look up, feeling his attention on me. His eyes are glassy from all of it until he looks down, his attention on his palm, silence settling heavily around the two of us.
Wiping away the tears that keep falling, I try to tame the way my hands shake.
“I’m so sorry.” My stomach is tense and my heart races, knowing that this is so much, too much. I sit up taller, waiting for him to stand and walk away. I’m bracing myself for the things that could be swirling in his mind to come out unfiltered.I am brave.If I survived all of that, I can survive this.
He swipes at his cheek, brushing away the tears that managed to escape, and finally looks up at me again. Then he reaches out his hand, palm facing up.
I look down and then up at him, not sure what he’s asking me.
“I’m not asking for a palm reading, Crowne,” he says with a small, watery laugh. “Hold my hand, baby. If you’re okay with me touching you now, I’d like to hold your hand.”
I slide my palm against his—large and warm.
“I’ve been running through every possibility as to why my father was in a place he wasn’t meant to be. The authorities told me he had a heart attack, but with minimal details around when and who had found him. None of it felt right.” He clearshis throat, brushing his fingers along the top of my hand he’s holding.
I move closer, standing up slightly so I can shift and wrap my arms around him. I need to be close to him, even if it’s only for a little while longer. I breathe him in as his arms wrap around me, the way his hair feels between my fingers, and the warmth of his skin at the nape of his neck has me feeling like I can breathe.
He pulls back slightly, tipping my chin up, and kisses my forehead. “Thank you for telling me all of this. For trusting me with what happened to you.” He pauses, his face squinting as he tries to hold in his emotions. “I’m grateful that my father was smart enough to find you, to get into that storage unit, and help you. He had always been a hero to me; I just didn’t know how big until now.” His arms wrap tighter, both of us moving as if there’s music playing. His heavy breath is laced with the pain of what he lost. I feel helpless, knowing that he’s forced to feel it all over again.
When he pulls back, he presses his forehead to mine and whispers, “You are so fucking brave.” I want to believe that, but there’s a part of me that can’t feel it, knowing other people did more, sacrificed more. His hands move up my back and up my neck, into my hair, guiding me to look at him. I close my eyes. That isn’t what I was.
“I gave up,” I say, hating that it’s the truth. “I didn’t fight. Other people—other victims, your father, the woman who found me in that storage unit, they did.” My chest heaves at the admission as a sob rushes from me. “That doesn’t feel brave, Julian.” I shake my head and quietly confess, “That’s barely surviving.”
“Crowne,” he whispers, like that’s an impossible thought.
But I shake my head again, trying to get this out. “I spent every day experiencing a fucking monster trying new ways to gain my admiration and then trying to break me like it was forsport.” I wipe away the steady stream of tears that track down my cheeks and chin. “I didn’t break, not for him, not for the others either.” I breathe in slowly, out slowly, as his hands slide along my skin, never wavering. “But hearing who it costyou.” My body trembles all over again, my words stumbling over each other. “I’ve never felt more broken.”
He kisses my head again, holds me, arms wrapped tightly, breathing slowly, and drawing lines and circles around my back.
“At some point, you’ll feel and know with certainty how brave you were. That it was a choice. That you didn’t need someone to tell you that you could be brave, Wyn. You simply chose it.” He drops a kiss on my shoulder. “I always thought there wouldn’t be anything I wouldn’t do to have him back.” His breath stutters, as if he’s trying hard to hold himself together. “I miss him every day. I’ll keep missing him every day. He would be so happy if he saw the incredible woman I’m with right now,” he says, moving his hands from my back up to frame my face. “There are plenty of pieces of this that I would change if I could, but you and I both know that isn’t possible. And I wouldn’t change this, what this is between us, to feel this, with you,” he whispers as his thumbs brush the tears falling down my cheeks. “Thatwould be the thing I wouldn’t undo.” He wraps his arms around me again, and the only thing I’m capable of doing is letting him. My body slumps into his, all of my weight and everything I never wanted to surface. Grief and loss, anger and pain, and through all of it, his arms simply wrap tighter.
It's the last thing I ever would’ve expected. And maybe that’s why I cry so hard that my body feels limp and exhausted.
I wait for him to pull away, for him to stand up and realize all of this is too much. The trauma that exists below my surface that’ll never go away. How it’s been intertwined with his family and the destruction of it. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t let go. And he doesn’t leave. Not even when we finally move inside. Hedoesn’t leave after he runs a bath for me. And he doesn’t leave after he peels off my clothes and helps me into the water. He stays, quietly and purposefully.
“Stop looking at me like you’re waiting for me to change my mind and leave,” he says, almost as if can read my thoughts.
The damp air in the bathroom is warm enough that the mirrors and windows are fogged. It smells like the rosemary in a pot perched on the window and him. A warm oak that lingers on his skin and clothes. I feel relaxed, relieved, like layers are slowly being peeled back now that all of me and the ugliness I’ve endured is out in the open.
He combs his fingers through my hair, lifting the ends that had dipped into the water. I tilt my neck back to look at him when he asks, “Want me to wash it or pull it up?”
“Up, please,” I answer. He reaches for a tie on the sink, and because this man has insanely great hair and pulls it up regularly, he does the same with mine. Gathering it into his hands, he twists it up high and into a bun. “I was going to stay there,” I say, feeling like he should know he was a part of the reason I came back here. “Being alive was enough,” I correct, “is enough.” I sit up in the still-hot bathwater and rest my arms against the tub’s curved sides to face him fully. “I finally stopped thinking about the days I lost and found enjoyment in the small things again. It should’ve been enough.” I move back and rest my back against the tub.
He watches, listens, keeping his eyes trained on mine.
“And then, I met you.” I run my wet fingers along my lip. “I left Hideaway because I knew it would never be enough for me. I missed my family. God, I missed them.” I close my eyes and take another grounding breath. But if I had gone back when it was safe, when my captor had been killed, I wouldn’t have been okay. I needed time.
“And you feel guilty about that?” he asks, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
