Remnants of Riley

Chapter 27

Ibarely notice as Emmett lifts me from the floor, gathers my things, and carries me to his car. I watch through blurry eyes as he buckles me in, closes my door, then runs back to the office to shut off the lights and lock up. The sound of his car door closing when he gets in hardly registers through the blood rushing in my ears, and the streetlights as he starts to drive are nothing but a blur of yellow and white light whizzing by.

I become warm, my body finally starting to calm back down and stop shaking. When I look at the center console between us, I see that Emmett has my seat heater turned on high. It lulls me further into the haze I’m in, and my eyes become heavy, the hum of the engine my own personal lullaby.

When I open my eyes again, I’m in a bed, but it’s not my own. Sitting up, I try to take stock of where I am. I notice my work clothes are gone, replaced with a large black t-shirt instead. As my eyes move around the room, I can just barely make out my surroundings thanks to a faint glow coming from a cracked door across from the bed.

I’m at Emmett’s.

I look toward the windows, and that’s when I see him.

He sits in one of the chairs in the corner, elbows braced on his knees, a glass hanging from his fingertips in one hand. He’s shirtless, his tattoos like shadows against his arms and chest in the dark. And while I can’t make out his face, hidden by the darkness in the corner, I know he’s looking at me. I can feel his eyes on me, watching me as I watch him.

I swallow hard, the painful reminder of what happened flooding back, making me feel small and weak and full of shame.

I thought I could control it. The way Emmett makes me feel, the way my body craves him, I thought I had moved past the panic that used to consume me. I thought, with him, I was finally moving on.

But I was wrong. So very, very wrong. Because the second his hand tightened on my throat, I was back in that house again with Trevor, fighting for my life as he strangled me, beat me, abused me. Until I was nothing left but a bloody pulp, sure I would die before making it to the hospital in time.

The last time.

I start taking deep breaths and counting, tapping my fingers against each other as I fight off the memories of that last night with him. It doesn’t work though, my usual coping routine doing nothing to slow the racing of my heart. My breaths start to get shorter, more erratic, and I know it’s coming again. The panic. The feeling of total helplessness and worry and dread and everything I hate, all rolled up into one dark, consuming hole inside of me.

Emmett’s beside me in a second, running his hand up and down my back, whispering words into my ear that I can’t even understand right now. But his touch soothes me, my breathing evening out.

He continues to murmur to me, words that I’m not hearing but that are comforting, nonetheless. His deep, steady voice like an anchor, keeping me attached to reality. To him. And the steady motion of his hand on my back–up and down and up and down and up and down–slows my racing heart, until finally, I feel in control again.

When I’m sure I’ve got a handle on myself, I finally dare to look at him. He’s sitting beside me, legs stretched out in front of him as he continues rubbing my back. But when I raise my eyes to look at his face, the anger I see there has me flinching, embarrassment coursing through me that he’s seeing me like this, at my weakest.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice coming out as a squeak. “I can leave.”

I suddenly feel like a burden, and that, combined with the shame of him seeing me like he did, makes me want to run. To get some distance between us before these feelings eat me alive.

I move to get up, but his hand grabs my arm, holding me in place.

He lays back and pulls me down with him, nestling me into his side and grabbing one of my thighs, pulling it over him. His other hand presses into my back, holding me close. It’s a position we’ve slept in many times now, and the familiarity of it is comforting.

“It’s one in the morning,” he says, his voice rough. His hand gives my thigh a slight squeeze. “You’re not leaving. Your car isn’t even here.”

I’d completely forgotten how I got here, so lost in the battle that had been whirring inside me.

Inhaling deeply, I bury my face in his side. I love how he smells, like leather and spring earth, the scent blanketing me in a further sense of comfort. My fingers trace the tattoos on his chest in a slow, soothing rhythm, the feel of his skin grounding me even more.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.

He lets out a deep breath. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Because you”re mad.” I clear my throat as my voice threatens to crack. “Because you had to see me like that.”

His muscles tense and flex beneath me, and I’m afraid of what he’ll say. Will he agree? That I’m weak? Will he think less of me because I freaked out in the middle of being intimate? Will he even still want me after he learns the truth and how messed up I am?

He could easily find someone else. Someone worth his time. Someone who he can be with and not have to worry about them having a total fucking breakdown from his touch.

Tears leak from my eyes, and his hand on my thigh comes up to thumb them away.

“I am angry,” he finally admits. But when I look up, the dark look that was on his face just moments ago is replaced with something else. Something softer. Kinder. “But I’m not angry at you, Riley. I’m angry at whoever hurt you so fucking bad that me putting my hand on your throat caused you so much pain. I’m angry that someone else put their hand there with the intention of hurting you. Because that’s what it was, right? When I put my hand around your throat, you went somewhere else.”

I nod against him.

He knew. Somehow, he figured out exactly what caused my spiral.

“Tell me,” he says, and the edge to his voice tells me everything I need to know that he would never say out loud. That he would never let anyone else hurt me. That he would never hurt me.

I prop myself up on my elbow to look at him. “It was my ex, Trevor. We were together for two years, out in Utah. The first year and a half were perfect. We were engaged, planning a life together. But then I found out he’d been cheating on me the entire time.” I swallow around the lump in my throat, fresh tears streaking down my cheeks.

Emmett doesn”t wipe them away this time, instead letting them fall onto his side and run down onto the sheets. He stares ahead at the ceiling, jaw clenched, but keeps his hand on my lower back, his thumb stroking soothingly over my skin.

“It was with a lot of different women,” I continue. “Somehow, that was worse. If it had been just one woman, I almost feel like I could have justified it. Made sense of it somehow. How pathetic is that?” I close my eyes for a second, forcing down the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I was so in love with him, I was willing to forgive him if it had been just one woman.” I wipe my wet cheeks with my t-shirt. “But it wasn’t, and I threatened to leave him. That was the first night he became violent with me.”

I tilt my head up, watching as Emmett’s eyes darken, and I’m sure his teeth are going to shatter with how tightly he’s clenching his jaw.

“He threw me around, threatened to kill me if I left, and then,” I pause, wiping away the tears that won’t stop, “he raped me. After that night, that became our new norm. He would beat me, choke me, rape me. Anything he could do to scare me into staying. And it worked. For six months it worked. I was so afraid of him killing me that I stayed. Because living in hell was better than dying, right?”

At that, Emmett finally looks at me, and the absolute hatred in his eyes, hatred toward Trevor for what he did, gives me the confidence to keep going.

“I finally made the decision one day to actually leave. It… It didn’t go well. He found out, and I ended up in the hospital for a week because of how badly he hurt me. But I got my escape, and I never looked back.” I give him a weak smile. “I spent the next year bouncing from place to place before finally settling back here.”

Emmett pulls me into his chest, his arms wrapped tight around me. “What happened to Trevor?” he asks with barely contained rage.

I wrap my arms around him the best I can. “He can’t hurt me anymore.” The important thing was that I got away, regardless of how that happened or what the consequences were. I’ll live with that last day forever, but for now, I just want to forget it again.

Emmett grabs my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “I’m sorry,” he says gently. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have put my hands on you like that.”

“I know.” Emmett may be a lot of things, but he would never intentionally hurt me.

He rolls, flipping us so that I’m under him and he’s between my thighs. His hands come to my face, wiping the tears trailing down my temples.

“Is there…” he starts, his eyes searching my face as he considers his words. “Do you have any other triggers? Is there anything else I need to know? To avoid?”

A small laugh escapes me. “Honestly, for a long time, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to be intimate with someone again. I freaked out once when someone tried to kiss me a few months after I’d left Trevor.” I bring my hands to his chest, running them up and along his shoulders, his neck, until I’m holding his face. “But with you, it was always different. You made me feel something I didn’t think I’d ever feel again.” I lean up and kiss him, slow and gentle. “You made me feel alive again. For the first time in so long, I wanted someone again.”

His eyes search my face, and when he doesn’t say anything, I get nervous. Maybe I shared too much. There’s a look on his face I can’t read, and suddenly all that doubt pools in my chest again.

“Do you still…” I let out a shuddering breath. “I hope you still want to be with me after all of that.”

“Fuck, baby,” he says, bringing a hand up to grab mine and hold it against his chest. “There’s nothing you could say or do that would make me want you any less. I promise you.”

Fresh tears spill from my eyes, and he leans down, kissing me so tenderly it makes my chest ache.

When he pulls away, he rolls off me and onto his side, pulling me in so my back is pressed to his chest. He holds me so tight that I finally relax into him. Into his warmth and his strength and his smell, and all the things I love about him. He’s become my safe space. My shelter amidst the storm.

Riley sleeps soundly next to me. It took her a while to fall asleep again after confessing everything to me that she did, but her breathing has finally evened out, the steady rise and fall of her chest letting me know she’s finally found peace for the night.

Trevor.

That’s who she’d cried out to all those weeks ago when I’d been in her apartment. But it hadn’t been in want or need, it had been in fear. She’d been dreaming about him. About what he did to her.

I’d wanted to kill him when his name had fallen from her lips then, the idea of another man having her igniting something dark in me. But now…

Now I want to fucking torture him for the rest of his goddamn days for what he did to her. I want him alive. I want him breathing. So I can make him feel over and over again the pain that he’s caused her.

My fists clench in anger, and it takes everything I have to stay still and not wake Riley. There’s a storm brewing inside me right now like I’ve never experienced before. A burning heat in my chest threatening to consume me, and I don’t know how to calm it. I don’t know how to push it back down and ignore it.

The blood rushes in my ears as I think of him threatening her. Hurting her. Raping her. My adrenaline spikes, my heart pounding against my chest like it’s trying to escape the confines of my body.

I close my eyes, forcing the imagery of her at his hands out of my mind. I’m no help to Riley if I wake her just because I can’t control my own anger. She doesn’t need that. Right now, she just needs to feel safe.

Is she safe, though? She said he couldn’t hurt her anymore. But what the hell does that mean? Is he alive? Is he still in Utah?

Carefully, I turn and reach behind me to grab my phone from the nightstand. Pulling up Jax’s name, I send him a quick text.

Me:You still have that PI contact? I need some info on someone

I don’t expect a response until tomorrow, given how late it is, but I can’t help but grind my teeth at the prospect of waiting that long. I need to know where Trevor is. I need to make sure he never gets to Riley again.

Normally, I do my own due diligence looking into someone, but I’ve got nothing to go off of here other than a first name and state of residence from years ago. That doesn’t exactly narrow things down, and I’m not about to grill Riley for details and make her relive the worst moments of her life again. Not when she’s clearly still learning to cope with what happened to her.

But I know Jax’s guy is solid, and he works under the table, not afraid to take on even the dirtiest of requests. So I can wait until I hear from him.

And then, I’ll fix this.

Because Riley is mine. Her good moments and bad. Her laughter and her tears. Her happy moments and her sad. All of it is mine.