Chapter 19
CASSANDRA
“Tell me. Please.”
No. My first instinct was to say no and bolt from this bedroom. But the plea in those beautiful green eyes was my undoing, so I stayed in Leo’s arms.
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Babe, I get that, but it kills me that you’re fighting this alone.”
I blew out a long breath, sinking into his chest as his arms tightened around me. If there was ever a person to tell, it was him.
“It’s not fair. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing more. But . . .” God, I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want to go back to that basement and talk about this.
Leo didn’t move. He didn’t press or ask me to continue. He simply held me, wrapping me in his warmth. His cedar-and-spice scent had become my anchor.
“Why is this so hard?” I whispered.
“Because the low points are always the hardest to revisit.”
Yes. Exactly. “I just . . . it’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I was home to study. That was it. Just study and work on a paper. I’d come home to do that too the weekend we met at The Betsy.”
For a time, I’d been so angry at myself for going to the bar. Even while pregnant, I’d regretted it to a degree. But I couldn’t now. That night had changed my life. Without that night I wouldn’t have Seraphina.
I wouldn’t have Leo.
“Instead of studying, I got distracted by a hot biker.”
He grinned. “That’s your fault. You distracted me first.”
I gave him a small smile and leaned on his shoulder. Such a strong shoulder it was. He’d raise Seraphina on this shoulder, and I loved that she could always depend on it. In the depths of my soul, I knew Leo would be a good father. The sins of his past didn’t need to dictate his future.
These days, I think he realized it too.
It was like a switch had flipped after she was born.
On to off, that night he’d held her in his arms. Or maybe he’d started to change when I’d moved out.
Whatever the reason, I was grateful. Because Seraphina wasn’t the only one who could lean on his strong shoulders. I could too, especially in this.
What was the harm in talking the kidnapping through?
It had happened. It wasn’t going to magically disappear the longer I ignored it.
If anything, it was only getting worse. When he wasn’t around, when I wasn’t distracted by Seraphina, the memory would creep up on me, so fast and startling it was like a hooded figure jumping out from behind a corner to scare me into a scream.
So I took a deep breath. And let it out. All of it.
“I hate getting in my car, especially when I’m at Mom and Dad’s. Every time I stand beside the door, I shake. I don’t think I even realized it at the time, but that night you asked me to move in, part of me agreed just so I could escape that street.”
“Babe.” His hand rubbed up and down my spine.
“I either freeze and look all around, making sure I’m completely alone. Or I get in and slam the door shut so fast that one day, I rushed and slammed it on my foot.”
I’d felt like a fool, terrified of nothing. Of everything.
“I’m glad that I never have to go anywhere alone,” I said. The threat of danger with the Warriors had been a blessing. It meant I didn’t have to walk out of the house alone. Someone was always with me or watching. “I don’t think about it unless I’m alone.”
“Then you won’t be alone. Whenever you need me, just call. I’ll drop everything and walk you to your car.”
“Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?” I sat up straight and stood, pacing the length of the bedroom. “We can’t live like that, Leo. I can’t live like that. It’s been a year. Why won’t it go away? I just want it to go away.”
He stared at me with nothing but understanding on his face, then patted his knee.
I sank into his lap once more. “That’s why I don’t talk about it.
Not even with my parents. I know they worry, but I just want it to go away.
When that FBI agent called after it happened to check in, I started dodging her calls because I thought it would help make it go away.
But it’s not. It’s still there. Every minute. ”
“Then let’s walk through it. Start to finish. Tell me what happened.”
I shuddered. “Do we have to?”
“Not talking about it isn’t working, Cass. So let’s talk about it. Once. Go from there.”
“Okay.” I blew out a deep breath. “I’d just gotten home from Missoula. Mom and Dad were off in the mountains. I’d brought a backpack full of clothes, my laptop and some junk food because I didn’t want to raid Mom’s fridge and have her come home to nothing after camping all weekend.”
Pringles. Dr Pepper. Jelly beans. I’d planned to subsist on them and pizza delivery.
“I took everything inside but I’d forgotten my notebook in the car so I went outside to get it.
That’s when I saw Scarlett. She’d come out of Luke’s house—I only thought of him as Chief Rosen then.
She was wearing this backpack stuffed so full the seams stretched.
I’d never seen her before, and my first thought was that she’d broken into his house and robbed him. ”
Leo chuckled. “Oh, she definitely robbed him.”
I smiled. Yes, she had, hadn’t she? She’d robbed him of his heart.
“She was walking to the neighbor’s house and I figured this was her plan.
Rob all the houses while everyone was enjoying their Saturday afternoons away from home.
Mom and Dad are part of the neighborhood watch and with them gone, she could have had free run of their house too.
Scarlett even waved and smiled at me. I think if she hadn’t done that, I would have called the cops right away.
But she looked . . . nice. So I just stood there and watched her. ”
I’d watched her go to the neighbor’s house and ring the doorbell. I hadn’t known that neighbor. The family who’d lived there when I was in high school had moved the summer after my graduation. The house had been a rental and my parents hadn’t tried too hard to get to know its various tenants.
Scarlett had waited on the stoop while my mind had volleyed back and forth between guilty and innocent. I’d actually landed on innocent, ready to leave her be. Maybe she’d gotten the wrong house. Maybe she was going door to door for her church. It was a safe street, right?
Silly me.
“The door at the neighbor’s flew open. The guy who answered was so tall and Scarlett is so short that I saw his face.
I saw the vest he wore. She spun away, her face twisted and mouth open like she was about to scream, but he hit her over the head with a gun and she collapsed.
It happened,” I snapped my fingers, “that fast.”
I closed my eyes and it played in my mind like I was still standing there beside my car. “I should have been safe. I was at home. In the driveway. We lived on a safe street. Or maybe that’s the biggest joke of all. Maybe there is no such thing as a safe place.”
“Do you really believe that?” I opened my eyes. He reached up, cupping my jaw. There was pain on his face, almost like he feared the answer. But there was no reason.
“No, I don’t.”
Leo was my safe place. It was probably why I didn’t have the nightmares when he was home. Because I knew he’d throw himself in front of a bullet to keep Seraphina and me safe.
“Good.” He kissed the tip of my nose, then let go of my face so I could continue.
“I think I went into shock. I’ve never seen anyone hit before, not in real life. By the time I snapped out of it and scrambled for my phone to call the police, the guy had spotted me. There were three of them. I ran. I dropped my phone. But they caught me.”
There were times I’d close my eyes and still hear the thud of boots pounding behind me. I’d feel that massive hand grip my arm and whip me around. I’d feel the same hand smash into my cheek.
“One of them hit me. No one had ever hit me before.” Another shock. Another rude awakening for a girl who’d lived a privileged life. Hell, my parents didn’t even believe in spanking.
Leo’s frame tensed and the click of his jaw was audible. There was a flash of violence in his eyes and it made me love him just that much more. Because had the man who’d hit me stood in this room, I had no doubt that Leo would have killed him without hesitation.
“Things are fuzzy after that. It hurts a lot when you get hit in the face.”
“It does.” Spoken from a man who’d hit and been hit.
“I’d been so busy staring at Scarlett that I hadn’t noticed a van, but one of the men, probably the one who hit me, picked me up and carried me to it.
They’d already put Scarlett inside. She was unconscious in the back.
They had her tied. They did the same to me and I was so out of it, I didn’t even try to fight back. ”
“It would have only made it worse, babe.”
“I still wish I had fought back,” I whispered. A kick. A scream. Something. “Instead, I just lay there while they bound my hands, then slammed the doors shut.”
The van’s tires had whirled for what had felt like a year.
The sun had streamed through the back window, bright and hot.
The metal of the floor had dug into my shoulder as I’d tried not to roll and slam into a knocked-out Scarlett.
Her blood had soaked the back of her blond hair, but she’d been breathing.
Then the van had stopped. I’d held my breath as the rear doors had been ripped open.
“When we got to the clubhouse, one of the men put Scarlett over his shoulder and carried her inside. The other two each took one of my arms and hauled me. I didn’t know exactly where we were at that point.
We went through an entrance and immediately down some stairs, straight to the basement.
Then they tossed us in a cement room and locked us inside. ”