6. Kara
6
KARA
L ight pierced the darkness, only for it to sting my eyes and force them closed again. The noises around me added to the confusion, and the ache in my chest cemented the feeling of dying.
If this was the afterlife, I’d clearly not made it to Heaven because it hurt. Everything hurt so damn much.
I let my brain coast on the pain, memories focusing into sharp details then drifting away just as quickly.
Hayley Jade. Rebel. Hawk. Hayden.
Cages. Coffins. Josiah.
His face was there in the darkness, a terrifying demon of a figure that made me never want to close my eyes again.
I sat up gasping, this time determined to keep my eyes open. I didn’t want Josiah in my head.
“Take your time,” a gentle, vaguely familiar voice soothed. “You’re okay. Do you know where you are?”
I blinked rapidly, trying to make some sense of the scene around me. It was all so bright, and for a tiny second, hope filled me.
Hell wasn’t light and bright like this. Maybe my sins had been forgiven.
“Heaven?” I asked through cracked lips.
The man chuckled. “I hope not, because the food here is pretty awful.”
He sat on the foot of the bed, his smile soft and his eyes kind. “You’re in the hospital. Do you remember me?”
I focused on his neatly styled hair and the brown eyes behind his glasses. “You made me an elephant.”
Grayson grinned. “I did. Want me to show you how I make roosters?”
“Maybe some other time.” I grimaced as my lashes fluttered closed, Josiah’s face there, forcing them open again.
Grayson’s smile fell away. “I’m a bit worried about you. You get dragged out of here by some Slayers’ thug. And now you’re back with injuries that make me and the rest of your medical team pretty unhappy.”
Embarrassment crept up my neck. “I’m sorry. You really don’t need to worry about me.” This man was a doctor. He was probably busy saving lives. Nobody needed to be concerning themselves with me. “Is he here?”
“Who? The MC thug?”
I nodded. “Hawk.”
Grayson’s mouth flattened into a worried line. “I’m told he and another man are out in the waiting room. Apparently they both claim to be your husbands.”
My fingers took up a violent shake. I didn’t know why Hawk was claiming himself to be my husband, but if Josiah was out there, I wasn’t safe and I needed to run. From both of them. Hawk might not have abused me the way Josiah had, but he was a liar.
And now he was sitting out there with the man who’d forced me to marry him, only to spend years terrorizing me for not being able to produce a child.
I ignored the wheeze in my chest and pulled the oxygen tubes away from my nose. I reached for the drip in my arm, ready to yank it out.
Grayson caught my fingers. “Don’t do that. It’ll just mean they have to stick you again, and you’re already hurt enough.”
I fought with him, fear wrapping its way around my body at the very thought of being so close to my husband. It would only be a matter of time before he sweet-talked his way in here. Josiah was the ultimate charmer. It was how he convinced once sane, rational people to believe the lies he fed them. “Let me go. I can’t be here. If Josiah’s found me, I need to run.”
Grayson’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, but he pinned my hands to the bed and looked me in the eye. “Nobody is going to hurt you in here. You’re in the hospital. There are multiple locked doors between here and the waiting room.”
His calm words did nothing to temper the rising panic inside me. It choked my throat, cutting off the air, until I was yelling, desperate to get away. “It’s not enough. He’ll get to me. He always does!”
Grayson didn’t flinch at the screeching tone. “According to your notes, your husbands in the waiting room are Hayden and Hawk. There’s no mention of a Josiah.”
I slumped, the fight going out of me instantly. Soft hospital pillows caught me. “Oh.”
Grayson gave me that same smile from earlier as he let go of my wrists. It bordered on playful and lit his entire face, though the worry didn’t leave his eyes. “How many husbands do you have exactly?”
I sighed, letting him fit the oxygen back to my nostrils. “Only one. And of the three of them, the one I’m legally married to is the only one I never want to see again.” Though Hawk wasn’t high on my list of people I wanted to see right now either.
Grayson settled back at the foot of my bed. “Want to tell me why?”
I shrugged. “Josiah’s not a very nice man.”
Grayson jotted that down on his notepad, which reminded me that the last time we’d met, he’d said he was a psychologist.
His pen slid across the paper resting on a clipboard. “Talk to me about cages.”
I froze. “Why?”
“You were talking about them in your sleep.”
He looked up, his gaze remaining neutral, even though I was sure mine was anything but. He didn’t ask me twice. Or try to change the topic in the face of it clearly causing a reaction in me. He just waited patiently. “Take your time.”
I’d done such a good job of forcing myself to forget that even now, when I tried to bring the memories to the forefront, my mind resisted remembering. “I can’t,” I whispered.
I hadn’t even told my sisters about the cages. Nobody knew but me and Josiah.
Grayson nodded and put his pen down on the white blanket covering my feet. “You don’t trust me. I get that. Why should you? We barely know each other. But I only want to help.” He smiled again, and it was so simple and pure. “It’s kind of my job.”
“I don’t have a good track record when it comes to trusting men,” I admitted.
“How about I tell you my experience with cages then?”
If it was anything like mine, I was sure I didn’t want to know.
But Grayson didn’t wait for me to answer. “My parents dumped me in foster care when I was pretty young. I can’t really remember how old I was, but old enough to remember them and know that they didn’t want me.”
“Oh,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I was even that mad to begin with. They were shitty parents, and foster care was a chance at having a better life. I think I even remember being excited.” He laughed, though it held a bitter edge. “That was before I realized how truly awful human beings can be. My foster parents made my biological parents seem like saints.”
The pain was so clearly etched into his expression that I hurt for him. “I can relate,” I said quietly, more to myself than to him.
He glanced up at me. “Your parents too?”
I picked at the skin of my wrists nervously, not wanting to speak badly of the people who’d raised me. I’d been brought up to respect my elders at all times so I’d never said a word about my parents’ betrayal, always focusing my anger on Josiah.
Yet, it had been them who’d allowed it. Them who’d brought Josiah into my world then failed to protect me from him. They’d given me to him to use and abuse in any way he saw fit. They’d watched me walk around in that veil for years and never lifted a finger to help me.
They’d never even realized the bruises and trauma that veil had hidden.
I didn’t understand that. Protecting Hayley Jade was all I’d ever done, even though giving her away had broken my heart. I couldn’t raise her in a house with a monster, so when Josiah had wanted her gone from his home, I’d done what I’d thought right and let her go without a fight.
When Josiah had threatened her life again, I’d run with her.
I’d protected my child, even though my parents had never protected me.
A tear dripped down my face. “My parents sold me to my husband. Forced me to marry him.”
Grayson nodded. “Mine locked me in a cage whenever they went out. Which was a lot. They’d go out for half the night, drinking and doing drugs and who knows what else. They locked us all up while they were gone so they wouldn’t have to pay for a babysitter. Said we’d steal from them if we weren’t in the cages. Sometimes, even after they came home, they left us there while they passed out or partied some more.”
I put a hand over my mouth to hide my gasp.
Grayson looked me in the eye. “Is your story really any better?”
I wished I could say it was. “He used it as a punishment. He said I needed time alone with the Lord so I could understand why I wasn’t being granted the child Josiah wanted so much. It was supposed to be my time of repentance and a place of solitude.” I shuddered at the memory of the cage door slamming after Josiah had thrown me inside. “But it was a cage in a basement and a punishment for embarrassing him.”
There had been so many punishments, in so many different ways. Rape. The cage. Spending hours and hours on my knees on hardwood floors. They were only the tip of the iceberg. He’d continued finding new ways to hurt me every month my body hadn’t done what he wanted. Like he was searching for the perfect punishment that would wake me up into producing an heir for him.
Grayson picked up his notepad again. “And those men outside. Hawk and Hayden. You swear to me neither of them are your husband?”
I shook my head quickly. “They’re nothing like him.” I said it with absolute certainty, even though others might have disagreed. Hawk had lied. Hayden had held me captive.
But nobody had ever been as good and sweet to me as the two of them. Nobody had ever made me feel as safe. As wanted.
Grayson steeled me with his dark-eyed gaze. “Then how are you so hurt right now, Kara? If it wasn’t them who hurt you, then who did?”
I was telling the truth when I replied that I honestly had no idea.