Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
AYDA
The smell of lavender and coconut permeated the small dingy bathroom of the safe house.
Helen Taylor was lying in steamy, fragrant water with a washcloth over her eyes and a coconut hair treatment in her hair.
I’d made the mistake of asking what her preferred toiletries were, but it was a small kindness I knew I could offer, and watching the tension leave her shoulders made me feel better.
For a woman who was being held hostage, she was taking the whole thing a little too well.
I knew very little about the woman outside of the fact she was Jon Taylor’s wife, but the tentative resolve in which she moved around and interacted with the two men who held her captive in this house threw me.
I would have been out of my mind with fear and worry.
Not Helen. She had a bullet wound in her arm and barely blinked at the small pink spot that was now clean and healing.
Reclining like she was in the bath with the bandages removed, it was very real and startling to look at.
I was sitting on the floor by the door like her personal guard, with a gun in a holster at the small of my back as a negotiation tool.
Although she hadn’t tried anything to escape…
yet. The silence had been interrupted only by the water as she moved in the big tub and the constant soundtrack of the insects that inhabited the empty space around the structure.
My eyes hadn’t moved from the scar on her arm, and the questions just rolled around in my head gaining traction with each rotation.
“I can feel you staring at me,” she said in amusement, her hand lazily rising to pull the soaked material from her face. Turning her head, she gazed at me, a small smile on her lips. “Just ask already.”
Even in this harsh situation, Helen looked like a damn supermodel, her perfect smile not dimmed by the fading mark on her cheek or the tiny scar that looked much older on her temple.
It just enhanced her looks—made her look more real.
I tried to find a question in the chaos of my mind, but the small sentence that had been on repeat slipped through my lips instead.
“You’re so calm.”
“That ain’t a question.” Her response wasn’t condescending, more filled with humor and endless patience, which only seemed to add more questions to the long list I already had.
I didn’t respond verbally. Instead, taking a page from Drew’s playbook and simply raising my eyebrows in challenge.
“Come on. You think I want to sit here and chat about my thoughts with you?” She draped the washcloth back over her face and slid down into the tub a little farther, sending a small wave of water over the edge.
“You have something better to do?” I countered.
Helen huffed out a laugh, devoid of humor. “I have the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that may be. Doesn’t mean I’m giving you a damn thing.”
I stared at her a while longer, my thumb twisting the engagement ring on my finger. I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to know what was going on in her head.
“You really want to die here?” I asked her.
This got a reaction from her, and she reached up again and clawed at the material and dropped it to the water with a small splash.
“Are you looking forward to your death?”
“Of course not. That’s my point, though. I’m here alone, Helen. Why not talk to me? I could be your best chance of survival.”
“You think I don’t know where your loyalties lie?”
“You’d have to be pretty fucking stupid not to know that,” I said with a small shrug. “But, at this point, what do you have to lose?”
Helen studied me over her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”
“Mostly, how the hell you’re taking this so well and not freaking the fuck out.”
“You mean you haven’t figured it out?”
I shook my head again, and she drew in a long breath, seeming unsure and reluctant.
“You of all people should know why. I married a bastard, Jon...” She sighed again and fell into a conversational tone.
“Jon was young and gorgeous when I met him. He’d just started his corrections job, and he was cocky, but he still had a sweet, adoring side to him I couldn’t resist. For the first year we were together, he would look at me with those brooding eyes and tell me that I was out of his league, that he didn’t deserve me, that I was beyond perfect.
” Helen looked over at me. “It was hard to resist that level of adoration, you know? When he knocked me up accidentally, his immediate response was to ask me to marry him. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing for us, but he begged me, and I finally broke down.
So, we went through with the big white wedding before I started to show everyone I was pregnant.
The moment the ‘I dos’ were over, that was when the sweet Jon fucked off and left me with a bitter, jealous, power-hungry asshole who had become my husband.
He always had to know where I was, what I was doing.
The control and power were always his, and he thrived off it.
It’s hard to love a man like that, so brutal and controlling, but in the beginning, you do.
You blame yourself. The first time a guy hit on me after giving birth, Jon lost his shit.
He accused me of instigating the flirting, and when I argued back, he smacked me.
It was only an open palm across the face, but it was enough to get my attention.
Then it was too late for me to walk away from him and our marriage.
I was in too deep, and he was in law enforcement—a brethren you can’t infiltrate or break, no matter how fucked up that brotherhood is.
The abuse got worse over the years. He would beat me until I couldn’t feel my body, then cry about what he’d done once he had to look at the mess he’d left behind, promising it would never happen again.
It always happened again. The makeup sex almost seemed worth the pain at first. I know you get that. ”
Helen bounced her eyebrows suggestively like I knew what the fuck she was talking about.
I wasn’t sure how she’d made that leap, and when she looked at me for confirmation of some sort, I just shook my head.
If she expected me to relate to her on that level, she was more than mistaken.
Drew was a hard man, but I’d never once been afraid of him.
Not for a second. I kept my face blank and just stared at her, my curiosity not allowing me to contradict her because I wanted to keep her talking.
It didn’t take her long. She seemed nonplussed at my lack of confirmation like she’d already made up her mind. Like she knew who Drew was and what he was capable of.
“The first time Jon broke a bone, I think he scared himself more than he scared me, but that was my breaking point. I was done. I wanted out. I needed out. I had my two girls by then, and I wasn’t going to let them bear witness to the shit show Jon insisted on performing almost nightly.
I needed those girls to know that abuse wasn’t okay.
Women weren’t just punching bags for men when they had a bad day. So I tried to leave.”
I could hear that it didn’t end well in the tone of her voice.
“How bad was it?” I asked, leaning forward, my arms resting on my knees.
“He damn near killed me. It was then that I started having my mom take the girls on vacation more often. I suggested they go to some fancy school we really couldn’t afford halfway across the country, which, thankfully, Jon agreed to.
God, when the girls started dating, I was the one who had to hide that shit from their father.
Life got both better and worse once they went to college.
Worse regarding the abuse, but better because they didn’t have to see that shit, and I didn’t have to hide it.
I didn’t have to smile through the pain like I wasn’t broken from the inside out.
Life hasn’t been good for me since I met that bastard.
It’s been worse since the girls left. So, when Drew stormed in and wanted to kill me with the same rage Jon had always shown, I thought I was going to be finally set free.
There was a brief moment of calm before I decided not to die quietly.
I still have my girls to think about, after all.
” She paused again and met my eyes. “I’m grateful that I’m not dead, and in a fucked up way, I have been set free from the prison of my marriage.
Even this,” she said, lifting the arm with a bullet hole in it, “is an improvement to my fucking life with my husband.”
“Drew is nothing like Jon Taylor.” My voice was filled with conviction and vehemence.
Drew’s violence came to those who threatened to destroy the people he loved.
I never once had to think about how he would react if I did something he didn’t like.
He may get pissed, but I usually got pissed right back.
That was what happened in relationships.
Never once had I ever so much as considered he would turn that anger on me in the way Jon had done to Helen. “Nothing like him.”
“I’m starting to see that. That man hates with a passion that burns him from the inside out.
You can’t deny that, but just one minute of seeing him with you, and I know he loves with just as much passion.
He would rather protect you than hurt you.
That doesn’t take away from the truth of all this, though, and that’s that hard men make it impossible to love them.
” She laughed bitterly. “You know, I’ve been waiting for this.
” She waved around the small bathroom. “With the amount of shit Jon pulls with those men under his care in that prison, I actually expected this to happen a lot sooner. I even got used to the idea. On truly bad days, I longed for someone to come and kidnap me.”