Page 108 of Tormented
THIRTY-ONE
Abbey
Sawyer’s fingers run through my hair in a slow, methodical rhythm as we stand amidst the horror. Seeing their clothes, their bank cards, and their phones laid out before me hit home how much these mangled piles of flesh really were somebody once.
Somebody possibly like me.
Possibly not.
Do they have families who miss them? Or were they lost in life, looking for love in all the wrong places?
Worse still, though, are the repressed feelings these women dredge up. The first seven years of my life weren’t spent living. I don’t know what you could call that time. I guess I was growing, but I sure as hell wasn’t experiencing anything you could call a childhood.
I might have been young, I may have been naïve, but I sure as fuck wasn’t stupid. Mom went to work, Evan had “friends” over . . . but sometimes they never left. Even a four-year-old knows there’s something intrinsically wrong with that.
I don’t protest when Sawyer pushes his arm beneath mine, wraps it around my back, and hoists me into his hold. He carries me out of the basement, through the house of horrors, and into the crisp dawn air without saying a single word. I clench his cut in my balled fist, burying my face into the crook of his neck and clinging to him like he’s Flopsy and I’m four years old all over again.
Only this time I would have had a demon of my own to keep me safe.
Where were the big bad men with good hearts, like Sawyer, when I was young? Where were the knights disguised in leather when the coward I was forced to call Daddy ruled my life with terror and pain?
I guess late is better than never, huh?
I jostle in Sawyer’s hold as he seats himself on the front steps of the house. The gray pickup looms in front of us as I stay huddled in Sawyer’s lap. I reach out before us and point to it.
“We should get her out.”
“Rooster will take care of it.”
I blink, my mind lost somewhere in the fog between the past and now. “Who’s Rooster?”
Sawyer coaxes me to sit up so that my head rests back on his shoulder, and points past the pickup, down the driveway. In the distance three lonely figures walk toward us, kitted out all in black, the color that’s become such a part of my life.
“Promise me something, Abbey-girl.” The words whispered in my ear send shivers racing over my flesh. I’d give this man my soul if he asked that sweetly.
“What?”
“You’ll tell me all your darkest secrets when we get back to Lincoln. I’ll let you get where you feel safer first, and you let me share your pain.”
I turn in his hold; the men are close enough now that I can hear their boots crunch the dry dirt. “Why burden you with more of what you already have enough of?”
His hand rises and rests gently against the side of my face. The honesty in his clear blue eyes has me in a trance, entirely under his spell. “Because my shoulders are strong enough to carry it for you.”
“We interrupting?” a rough smoker’s voice calls out from behind me.
Sawyer sweeps his thumb across my lips, leaving a trail of fireworks in its wake. I climb off his lap to sit out of the way, and push my hands between my knees as he stands to greet our visitors.
“Rooster. Good to see you, brother.”
The enormous redheaded man grins, pulling Sawyer in for a clinch. “What are they feeding you, boy? You almost look normal.” He laughs, stepping back to let the other two men shake Sawyer’s hand also.
A young, skinny guy steps forward almost nervously and gives Sawyer’s outstretched hand a quick pump. He backs up, hands in his pockets, and watches from under a curtain of dark hair as the third guy regards Sawyer with much less camaraderie. Critical brown eyes bore into my pretty boy as the stocky guy steps up and gives a formal handshake. There’s no mistaking it’s out of etiquette rather than actual friendly greeting.
“You got everythin’ you need?” Sawyer asks, addressing Rooster.
“Pretty sure we do.” The big guy gives me a nod. “Ma’am.”
“If it’s all good with you then,” Sawyer interjects, eyeballing Rooster, “we’ll head off.”