20. Shep
20
SHEP
I watched as the blood drained from Thea’s face. I hated myself for being the cause of it, but I wasn’t about to let her shove me away. Close the door on something I knew had been a miracle for us both.
But just as quickly as she’d paled, color returned to her face and then some. Thea’s cheeks bloomed red, and her eyes flashed. “Did you look into me? What? Get your ex-FBI pal to check my fingerprints or something?”
“No.” I did everything I could to keep my voice calm and even. “I saw you looking at the magazine. Noticed it tweaked you. I wanted to know why.”
“Did you ever consider that it was none of your business?” she shouted.
“I care about you, Thea.”
Tears sprang to her eyes then, making the brown glisten. “You can’t.”
“Too late,” I said, taking a step toward her .
Thea took two steps back, shaking her head viciously. “You can’t care. You can’t look. You can’t.”
“What happens if I care? What happens if I look?”
She stared at me for a long moment, tears tracking down her face. “You’ll hate me.”
Everything in me stilled. It was as if my heart stopped beating right before it shattered. I couldn’t keep myself from moving then. I ate up the space between us in four long strides.
My hand slid along her jaw to cup her face. “There isn’t a thing you could tell me that would change the way I see you. The only thing it’ll change is knowing just how strong you are to have made it through it all.”
A sob tore free of Thea’s throat, and I couldn’t hold myself back. I wrapped my arms around her, cocooning her as more sobs racked her body. I never would’ve thought that such vicious movements could come from such a delicate form. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Thea was iron forged in flame. Stronger than anyone could’ve known.
I held on to her as she cried, each sob shredding my chest. But I took them all, knowing she had to let it free.
“Y-you don’t know. You won’t want anything to do with me.”
I lifted her into my arms, striding around the house and up the deck to where the chaise lounge was. I lowered us to it, keeping her cradled against me as I did. “Try me,” I whispered against her neck.
She shook her head but burrowed into me. “I don’t want you to look at me any differently.”
I slid one hand up and down her back as the other stroked her hair. “Did you murder someone in cold blood?”
“No,” she whispered.
“You steal from the elderly?” I asked.
“No.”
“Hurt a puppy?”
“Of course, not.” Thea’s voice was barely a rasp as she spoke.
“Then I’m not going to see you differently.”
She pulled back then, her eyes searching mine. “You don’t know that. ”
“ You don’t know. Not unless you try.” My fingers wove through hers. “You said you trusted me.”
“I trust you more than anyone, other than my best friend, Nikki.”
That was something, Thea speaking the name of someone I’d never heard her mention before. Giving me a little piece of her past.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Thea stared back at me, still not moving to speak. “Did he hurt you?”
Just having to say the words aloud was almost more than I could take. If she said yes, I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from hunting Brendan down and showing him what pain truly meant, consequences be damned.
“He never hit me. Never laid a hand on me in anger. There were no bruises, no broken bones, no proof.”
My brows drew together. “No proof?”
Thea pushed up fully, tugging her hand from mine and shoving her hair out of her face. I thought she might be getting ready to bolt, but instead, she pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them tightly.
“I used to work for a nonprofit. The Literacy Project. I loved it, helping people fall in love with reading and gain the skills they needed to get good jobs.”
It fit. Thea was a helper. Whether it was kittens without homes, a little girl who couldn’t decide what cupcake flavor she wanted, or an elderly woman who needed a friend. And when she let me in last night, I’d seen the books piled high everywhere. Everything from a book on growing mushrooms to gothic thrillers and more romances than I could count.
“That’s where I met Brendan.” Thea’s knuckles bleached white as she gripped her legs. “He was coming in to read a children’s book to some of our kids. He was so charming and kind. When he asked me out to coffee afterward, I was shocked but flattered.”
My gut churned, knowing this story didn’t continue down a happy road.
“I should’ve heard alarm bells with how fast he moved. Coffee turned into him taking me to dinner, then showing up with breakfast at my apartment the next day. He wanted all my time. He’d even joke about being annoyed that I had to work, but I thought it was sweet.”
Thea swallowed hard. “It wasn’t long before we were spending every night together. If I wanted to go out with Nikki and our other girlfriends, he’d pout. She saw it before I did. Saw how it would go bad.”
“And how did it go bad?” I hardly recognized my voice when I spoke, it was so devoid of emotion.
“I guess I’d call it paranoia. But some part of me still wonders if I caused it.”
“What kind of paranoia?”
Thea rolled her lips, pressing them together hard. “He got really fixated on my past.”
My skin started to prickle, and a sick feeling took root somewhere deep. “Your past how?”
“The guys I’d dated, anyone I had the slightest bit of intimacy with.” She scoffed. “It wasn’t like there were many to speak of. I worked my way through college and grad school. I didn’t have a lot of time for dating and parties. But he wanted to know everything.”
I was quiet for a moment as I listened. Playing the numbers game with a partner was dicey on a good day, but this sounded like more.
Thea took a deep breath. “He started pushing to know details. He wanted me to make a list. Every person I’d ever kissed. Anyone who’d seen other parts of my body. How many guys I’d had oral sex with. How many I’d slept with.”
She rocked her knees back and forth as if trying to soothe herself. “I thought if I just told him, he’d know I had nothing to hide. But it wasn’t enough.”
My fingers wrapped around the sides of the chaise as I struggled to keep my breathing even.
“He wanted to know where. Who. He wanted a full list of names. Details. Wanted a promise that I wouldn’t speak to any of those people ever again.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard. “No one has the right to that information, Thea. Not a single fucking soul. ”
Her eyes collided with mine. “I don’t know. He said he needed to know what could come back on him because so many eyes were on him. And then he said if I didn’t tell him, I was trying to hide things. Manipulate him. But once I did…”
“He what?”
Thea’s body shuddered, and it took everything in me not to pull her back into my arms. “He started drinking more heavily. Taking pills. He’d wake me up in the middle of the night, screaming at me. Demanding to know where I’d done what with whom. He looked up photos of an ex’s house and started pointing out rooms. Asking if I’d fucked him here or there.”
“Thea,” I croaked.
Tears slid down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away. I wasn’t sure she even realized she was crying again. “He started demanding to know where I was at all times. If I went to the gym, he’d call before and after. Ask if any guys talked to me. If I wanted to go to Nikki’s, he’d ask why. What were we doing that he couldn’t go, too? Was I lying to him about us going out? What was I wearing?”
Her fingers dug harder into her legs. “And when he was on set, it was worse. I thought maybe distance would help. But I was so wrong. If I went to dinner with Nikki, he’d accuse me of not prioritizing our relationship because he might want to call during that time. He didn’t even want me to go to a fundraiser for the nonprofit I worked for.”
Every breath I took felt like it was covered in flames. The rage swirling deep inside me coiled like a snake, striking out at every new piece of information.
“So, I just slowly stopped. Everything. It was like I simply faded away. I went to work, came home, and braced for him to call. Sometimes, it was normal, so run-of-the-mill I wondered if I’d imagined everything else.”
Thea let out a shuddering breath. “But more, he’d call in the middle of the night. Screaming, raving mad. I stopped sleeping because even when he wasn’t waking me up, I was bracing for him to. And never, not once, did I consider just not picking up the phone.”
My gut twisted at how small her voice sounded .
“But the other calls were worse somehow. The ones where he was kind, praising. I soaked all that up.” Her tears came faster. “It’s so embarrassing. I lived for those crumbs.”
“Because he trained you to,” I said quietly.
Thea’s dark brown gaze cut to me as if just realizing I was there.
“That’s the cycle. The good and then the slap.” I’d learned my share about abuse growing up with a family that fostered. I’d seen some of the worst of the worst. Saw how the mental scars—not the physical—took the most time to heal.
Tears dropped from Thea’s chin to the legs of her overalls. “He never hit me.”
“If you think that it wasn’t abuse because he never laid hands on you, you’re dead wrong. He isolated you, cut you off from your support system. He deprived you of sleep, berated you. And I’m sure there’s more you aren’t telling me.”
Her gaze shifted to the side. Fuck. It had gotten worse.
“You don’t have to share it all.” As much as I needed to know everything, I wouldn’t be the monster she’d been with before. I’d let Thea share when she was ready. “But if you want to, I’m here. And I’ll always be here.”
“I stayed way too long,” Thea whispered. “Even now, I can’t explain it. It’s like I slowly lost my mind. I was so exhausted and panicked that I couldn’t make smart decisions.”
I reached out, my fingers linking with hers. “But you’re not there now.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re hiding from him.”
It wasn’t a question, but Thea answered it anyway. “Nikki helped me. Her brother’s an accountant. We set up a trust I could hide behind. That’s what purchased this house. What pays my mortgage and car insurance. Everything else I pay in cash. I don’t have a phone, a computer, nothing that’s traceable.”
“There are ways you can have those things. Ways to protect?—”
“No.” Thea’s voice slapped across the space between us. “You don’t know him. He has connections everywhere. People bending over backward just dying to do his bidding. And he’s got a thing for computers and tech. Taught himself how to hack into people’s emails, their whole systems.”
A weight settled in my stomach. I knew someone else who’d been good at computers. Silas. The psychopath who’d targeted Rhodes and Anson. Fuck. I needed to get Anson’s read on this. See what he thought we should do to protect Thea.
“Okay,” I assured her, squeezing her fingers. “No tech.”
A little of the tension running through Thea eased.
“You haven’t heard from him since you moved here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Not once. But that article, the one that freaked me out, said he’s filming about an hour from here.”
My back molars ground together. Too damn close. But it was also far too much of a temptation. Because it wouldn’t take much to find out exactly where he was and pay a visit to the bastard.
“He’s not going to find you. And even if he does, you have people around you. You’re stronger, and you know the truth.”
Thea hiccuped a breath. “You don’t know everything he can do. All he can ruin.”
I saw it then. The true fear in her eyes. She was terrified of him.
“He won’t. I promise.”
Thea didn’t answer, and I knew it was because she didn’t believe my words. I’d prove them to her. But for now, she’d had enough. Her skin was pale, her eyes rimmed in red.
“Will you go someplace with me?” I asked.
Her brows pulled together, skepticism sweeping across her face. “Where?”
Of course, she needed all the facts. “It’ll be more fun if you don’t know.”
Thea mulled it over for a moment.
“Trust me?” I asked. It was the ultimate question. She’d given me that trust last night, but things were different now.
Her gaze locked with mine, and she sucked in a breath. “I trust you.”
That was the best goddamn gift in the world.