Chapter 18 #2
“He touched me.” She didn’t say where. She didn’t need to. “I whimpered, terrified. Lark heard.”
“What?” Grayson hadn’t considered that. Hadn’t even remembered that Lark was in the same room.
“A bomb could go off next to Lark’s head while she was sleeping and she wouldn’t hear it.
When she’s awake, she lives life in fast-forward, but at night, it’s a different story.
She’s the soundest sleeper on the planet.
That night, she heard me cry out, even though it was quiet and my cries were muted by Uncle John’s hand. ”
“What did she do?”
This time when Wren smiled, it wasn’t sad or forced. It was real. “She screamed the fucking house down.”
Grayson couldn’t help but smile with her, because it was clear that part of the memory wasn’t painful at all. “She what?”
“The room was dark, but when she heard me and woke up to see a shadowy figure in my bed, she screamed nonstop.”
“What happened?”
“Uncle John panicked. He leapt off the bed, stumbling away. He tripped over Lark’s drum set and landed on his ass. Her toys were always strewn all over the room.”
“Good for Lark.”
“For being messy?” Wren asked, amused.
“Messy and loud.” Grayson decided right then and there, his days of giving Lark a hard time were over. She had a champion for life.
“My uncle was still on the floor, struggling to get up, when the bedroom door flew open and the lights turned on. Mom and Dad ran in, because Lark was still screaming like we were both being murdered. Dad had the baseball bat he kept under his bed raised in his hands.”
Wren went quiet, and Grayson got the sense she was playing that moment over again.
“What did your dad do?”
“He looked confused for a minute. Uncle John said he’d come running when he heard the screaming and tripped, but Lark shook her head. Pointed at me, said he’d been in my bed, hurting me.” Wren was wringing her hands, so he covered them with one of his own.
“Everything happened fast after that,” Wren said, replaying the scene for him.
“Mom started crying and ran over to my bed, running her hands over me, checking me to see if I was hurt. Dad dropped the bat, but…” Again, her smile grew.
“My dad is the most mild-mannered man on the planet. He’s the guy who catches bugs to put them back outside. And I mean all bugs, including ants.”
Grayson wasn’t sure why that information was relevant, until she continued.
“But that night, he crossed the room and punched the shit out of my great-uncle. Hit him so hard, Uncle John tripped over the drum again. He took one look at my dad and didn’t even try to stand again. He started apologizing, saying he was sick. I didn’t understand what that meant at the time.”
“There was no excuse for what he did to you, Wren.”
She nodded. “I know that. Dad bent down and picked up the bat, then he told Mom to get her phone and call the police. Uncle John looked like he wanted to run, but my dad raised the bat again, basically daring him to try. Lark and I don’t talk about what happened, but one night, right after I moved back to Gracemont after graduating from college, we both got a little tipsy and it came up.
Lark said it was like our dad was channeling Liam Neeson that night.
We laughed until we cried because…well, you’ve seen my dad. ”
Grayson grinned. Mr. McCoy was definitely on the smaller side, the type of guy who wore socks with his sandals and a thick belt that he hung his key chain on, so he always jingled when he walked.
Grayson would bet his last dollar that Mr. McCoy never left the house without a Swiss Army knife in his pocket, so that he was ready at a moment’s notice to screw, tweeze, or clip something.
“That man tried to hurt his little girl. I suspect your dad could have flipped a car at that moment.”
Wren obviously liked that idea. “Yeah. I think he could have. Sheriff Anderson showed up and arrested Uncle John.”
That part of the story caught Grayson off guard. Because he’d never heard a whiff of this happening, and in Gracemont, that was shocking. Not because he thought the sheriff told tales, but because there would have been a trial or something.
Wren must have guessed where his thoughts had drifted.
“He hadn’t shown up in Gracemont for a visit or to reconnect with family.
He’d been living with a woman in Oklahoma, who had a daughter about my age.
She’d found pictures on my uncle’s phone of the little girl, naked.
She lost her shit, threw him out, called the cops.
When Sheriff Anderson ran his name, he discovered Uncle John was wanted in another state.
He was transferred back there to be tried.
My parents thought that would be best. They didn’t want people in town whispering about what had happened, behind my back. ”
Grayson understood that. “Tell me he went to jail.”
Wren nodded. “He did. He’s still there, as far as I know. He was sentenced to fifteen years.”
She did the math the same time he did.
“Guess he’ll be getting out soon,” she murmured.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Grayson said. “That son of a bitch will never come near you again as long as there’s a breath in my body.”
Wren frowned, as if his words confused her. “I don’t think he’ll come back to Gracemont.”
Grayson hoped she was right.
“So…” Wren had told him that whole story with her gaze averted or directed toward the wall, only glancing his direction for a second or two at a time.
This time, she turned and faced him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.
“I understand if this is too much for you. Because as you can see, I’m still a mess. And that’s with therapy.”
Grayson snorted. Because what the hell? “I’m not going anywhere, Wren.”
“Grayson,” she started, clearly thinking they were in some sort of debate. “I’m serious. I’m twenty-three years old and afraid of the dark.”
“I’ll buy you a million nightlights.”
“My claustrophobia is no joke.”
He shrugged. “I hate crowds too. We’ll avoid them together.”
“I suffer from nightmares, once or twice a week.”
“And I’ll be right there to comfort you when they come.”
“That’s not fair to you,” she insisted. “I’ll disrupt your sleep.”
“I’m a farm boy, little bird. I can exist on five hours of sleep a night, if need be.”
She sighed, then bit her lower lip…which was her tell that she didn’t want to say the next part. Obviously, she’d been building up to what she viewed as the real problem.
She was about to waste her breath, because as far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a damn thing the two of them couldn’t overcome together. But he knew she wouldn’t believe him until he addressed all the concerns head-on.
“You’ve seen… I mean, I’ve never managed to…” She closed her eyes, shutting down.
Grayson wouldn’t let her do that. He tapped her under the chin, forcing her to look at him again. “You’ve come this far, brave girl. Say the rest. Tell me why you think this thing between us can’t work.”
She blew out a shuddering breath. “I can’t do physical intimacy without falling apart. Without responding like a lunatic. You saw what happened the other night. All you did was put your arm around me, and I freaked out and fell out of bed.”
“You were coming out of a nightmare,” he interjected, but she didn’t acknowledge his word, plowing onward.
“And the night after the dance, when you were kissing me and you pushed me to my back…I panicked.”
“We’ve done other things, Wren. You’re perfectly capable of being physical with me.”
She shook her head, unwilling to believe him, but he refused to back down.
“Think about the things that bothered you. Me pinning you beneath me, either with my body or my arm. Of course those things upset you. You felt trapped. But now that I know, we adjust.”
“How?” she asked, exasperated. “You were asleep when you reached out to hold me.”
Grayson refused to let her walk away without a fight. “We’re going to adjust,” he repeated, insistently. “There’s nothing we can’t figure out. Together.”