Chapter 15 Rex
FIFTEEN
REX
For the second time that day, it was the scream that woke me.
The terrorized call of someone who needed help but who was no longer in danger.
Whatever dragons Rachel needed slaying, they’d died years back. At least, according to her.
I couldn’t fight the demons in her mind, couldn’t stop them from attacking her.
But that wasn’t what broke me.
That happened when she started slapping me. When her nails dug down and she clawed at me like I was her attacker.
Like I was the one who’d hurt her when I’d hurt my-fucking-self before I ever did anything to bring her pain.
She kicked at me and shoved at me, slapping and pinching and scratching and aiming to do anything to maim me.
She’d broken me years ago, but this?
The chasm ruptured.
Splintered.
I twisted us around so that I was no longer with my back to the sofa, but as I tried to get away from her, she took it as another sign of attack.
“NO!” she screamed, the word hoarse like she’d been saying it over and over again.
“NO! King—he’ll… NO!”
My name on her lips tore at my insides.
“NO!” It came again as I finally managed to clamber off her, my knees colliding with the rug beneath the coffee table.
It was a tight fit so I wasn’t surprised by the shard of pain that hit me when I collided with the edge of the glass table, but it was nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, to the agony that came when she whimpered, “He’ll kill you, Grizzly. When he finds out, he’ll kill you.”
Grizzly.
My uncle.
If she’d kicked me in the balls, I’d have been able to catch my breath sooner.
Instead, I just sat there. There were too many punches to field. Too fucking many.
If I’d been in my right mind, I’d have known to get the hell out of there.
Jackass behavior or not—I knew how Rachel worked.
And I wasn’t wrong.
The second her eyes opened and they clashed with my stunned ones, it began.
"Grizzly?" she asked rawly, with that one terrified word clawing her fingers into my chest so she could pluck my heart out.
Then, she blinked dazedly and started freezing me out.
I could see the ice forming between us, creeping into being like it was a tangible thing. Stacking higher and higher as she created those fucking walls that kept me out and that locked her in.
Walls that protected her from what my uncle had done to her.
“Grizzly did this to you?” I demanded.
She stiffened, her tension soaring. I thought she’d answer but all she managed to rattle off, in a voice hoarse from her screams, was, “Get. Out.”