Chapter Seventy-Eight
Georgia
M y heart was slamming against my ribs, there was no air in my lungs, and I was in denial.
This was not happening.
Three years.
I hadn’t been here in three years, but walking up the driveway made it feel like yesterday, except everything seemed different, while at the same time, it was all exactly the same.
My grandfather’s old truck was parked up close to the garage. The porch light’s glass was broken. The paint was peeling. The bricks were dirty. The mailbox was tilted. The roof was missing shingles. The bushes were half dead.
But the most shocking thing was the silence.
No blaring music or TV, no people coming and going, no cars littering the front yard and driveway.
No shouting, fighting, or the sounds of people fucking.
I didn’t want to do this. “I don’t want to do this.”
With his gun in hand, a six-foot-four SEAL paused at the side door, and that’s when I heard it.
Muted, but distinctive, and the main feature of my nightmares, Henry’s voice bellowed. “ You fucking cunts better get your asses down here and cut me loose or I swear to God I will gut every goddamn one of you! ”
I’d heard Blade when he’d said Henry was restrained, but he hadn’t said he’d tied him to something. “Cut him loose?”
“Hog-tied” was all Blade said.
“ What the fuck? ” Henry yelled.
Something shifted inside me, and suddenly the fear I’d been ingesting for seven years took a back seat to curiosity. “He sounds… sober.” Or not high, or not on whatever cocktail of illegal substances he used to take.
“Wasn’t last night.” Blade glanced at his watch. “Imagine he is now. We need to move.” His intense stare landed on me. “In or out?”
In that moment, I knew two things.
This SEAL had done this for me, and he was right.
I didn’t want the memories of fear that had been burned into my soul to live there by themselves anymore. I wasn’t na?ve enough to think I could erase them with a single glance or five minutes of whatever lay waiting in the basement, but I wanted another memory. One where I wasn’t the smallest voice in the room.
“I’m in.”
Blade nodded once, then opened the door and ushered us inside.
The putrid odor of rotten food, garbage, and stale bodies hit me in the face, but none of it was as appalling as the pervasive stench of weed that was so thick and tacky, it instantly stuck to my skin.
Throwing a hand over my nose and mouth, I stumbled.
Henry yelled. “You fucking cocksuckers, I hear you! Get your asses down here before I gut every one of you!”
My back went stiff, fear flooded in, and I was suddenly seventeen years old again.
But then a warrior gripped my chin, tipped my head up, and looked at me with his ruthlessly penetrating gaze.
I didn’t need words. His eyes said it all. I wasn’t seventeen, and that fucking asshole in the basement would never have control over me again.
I nodded.
He tipped his chin and turned toward the stairs.
Then he became all SEAL.
Both of his hands palming his gun, his arms extended, his aim in sync with his constant vigilant scanning, he quickly descended the stairs without making a sound.
I followed.