Chapter 15 Penny
Penny
Rhys’s words felt like a physical blow to Penny’s chest. His sincerity was almost painful, but she smiled nonetheless, ignoring the sorrow inside her. “The people you love are very lucky to have you.”
It was something she would have done anything—anything—for.
Rhys stilled, his gaze flickering with something resembling compassion. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Your panic attack the other night…” The air in her chest froze at Rhys’s words. “Have you had them before? Or was that your first?”
Penny decided to tell the truth; he’d been honest with her. “I’ve had them since I moved out of my dad and stepmother’s house.”
“Do they always focus on being…being locked in somewhere?”
The cold wind of dread began to seep into her soul, just like the never-ending bitterness of the cellar. She couldn’t open her mouth; she could only nod.
His lips thinned as he searched her expression. “Have you been locked somewhere in the past?”
She swallowed, suppressing the urge to shiver. “My stepbrother used to lock me in the cellar when I was a kid.”
“He what?” Rhys’s amber eyes blazed with sudden heat. “How long for? Was he older than you or younger? Where were your parents?” He fired off the questions like machine gun fire.
She had to think for a moment. “Anything from a few minutes to overnight. He’s four years older than me, maybe five?
My stepmother didn’t care, and my father has been in and out of prison for most of my life.
Even when he was out, he gave my stepbrother, Joseph, preferential treatment.
” Her nose wrinkled in hatred. “After he married my stepmother, he treated my stepbrother like the son he’d always wanted. ”
Rhys looked horror-struck. “I’m assuming this wasn’t a furnished cellar?”
Slowly, Penny shook her head. “It was tiny. The only thing it had ever been used for was storing coal.” And me, I guess.
“How old were you when this was happening?”
“Pretty much as soon as my dad and I moved in with my step-mum and Joseph.” She gave him a weak smile, as though the cellar’s darkness no longer haunted her.
“On the plus side, Joseph has spent nearly as much time in prison as my dad, so he’s spent more time locked in a room against his will than I ever did.
He’s just like my father in that respect; his crimes started off small and rose in severity—but people like them don’t change; they only get worse. ”
Just like his crimes, Joseph’s abuse started small.
First, he’d threatened to lock her in the cellar.
Then he’d done it for minutes. Minutes soon turned to hours.
She refused to think of how long she spent in there in the end, but the only relief ever came when Joseph was sentenced to a young offender’s institute for increasingly violent crimes.
Rhys studied her, the silence suspended between them before he held his hand out. “Come with me.”
Penny settled her palm in his.
He led her out of the living room and—her pulse frantically drumming in her chest—into the bedroom. The largest bed she’d ever seen sat in the middle of the room, but for the life of her, Penny couldn’t tear her gaze away from it.
“Lie down on the bed and close your eyes,” he murmured, the words whispering over her skin.
Toeing off her shoes, she obeyed, ensuring her skirt remained flat over her thighs—although she couldn’t quite explain why she didn’t deny his request. This was the man with whom she’d butted heads for months, who pushed every single one of her buttons, who drove her fucking insane.
And yet here she was, doing exactly what he requested.
She heard him rustling around in the bags, followed by…was that cardboard? The longer it took, the more sensitised her skin grew. Possibilities sparked in her brain quicker than she could examine them, growing more tantalising as time elapsed.
A week ago, Penny would have reacted with revulsion at the thought of Rhys touching her, but right now she found herself doing something else entirely.
The noises around her—cardboard scraping against itself, the rustling of a plastic bag, footsteps travelling around the bed—faded as she grappled with the realisation.
She wanted it.
Penny wanted Rhys to touch her, to slide his palms down her body. She wanted to feel the weight of him on top of her. She wanted to feel the bed shaking as he thrust into her, cradled between her thighs.
“Now open your eyes.”
She’d been so lost in her fantasy that she’d almost forgotten he was in the room with her. Her eyes flew open, the heat of arousal simmering across her cheeks.
Rhys had turned the lights off, but the room was anything but dark. Radiant hues of green danced over the ceiling, as ever-changing as the wind. The brightest neon, the richest emerald, the palest teal, the most electric jade, with hints of pinks and purples in between.
To a girl kept in darkness, it was perfection.
“What do you think?” Rhys asked softly, standing a few feet back from the bed.
Penny couldn’t take her eyes off the ceiling. “It’s the northern lights.”
He nodded. “They were selling these projector lights at the service station I bought our burner phones from. I saw them and thought of you.”
I saw them and thought of you. Why did such a simple statement almost take her breath away?
She got up from the bed, her head swirling with emotions. How long had it been since someone had done her a simple kindness like this? Since her mother died?
And here was a man she’d spent months—years—hating because of his criminal record. A record he’d obtained by being protective of the people he loved. It didn’t make what he’d done any less heinous, but in that moment, something shifted within her.
Penny crossed the room with purposeful steps, throwing her arms around Rhys’s neck and drawing him into a tight hug. She sniffed as he hugged her back, feeling tears gathering in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, pulling back to look him in the eye.
He thumbed a runaway tear off her cheek, his face inches from hers. “I didn’t want you to be scared tonight.”
“I won’t be,” she promised, her gaze dropping to his lips.
Rhys mirrored her, and for half a heartbeat he leant in, but—
The grating sound of a ringtone blared out like a foghorn, carving through the sudden intimacy between them. Rhys’s eyes rolled as he pulled his new burner phone from his pocket. He groaned at the sight of the number on the screen. “I should answer. It’s my mother,” he said apologetically.