Chapter 48
RYDER
I held her hand as she laid in the hospital bed, passed out and beaten to a pulp. Bruises mottled her face and her lip was swollen and split open where the fucker hit her. Thick bandages wrapped around each wrist, protecting the skin that had been rubbed raw from thick ropes.
And that was just the damage I could see.
“We gave her some painkillers,” Caroline whispered. “She doesn’t feel anything right now.”
Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at the woman I loved.
I failed her.
It wasn’t actually my fault, but somehow, that didn’t help a thing.
“How’s Jeff?” I asked, my voice groggy from the hours sitting here, staring at Ellie.
“He’s going to be okay. He keeps asking about Ellie.”
I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to say a word more than that.
“The doctor won’t tell me what happened,” I whispered.
“Patient confidentiality.”
My eyes slid to her. She held Ellie’s hand in hers, her eyes shimmering with tears.
And I fucking knew.
“No,” I hissed, all the air fleeing my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. “Fuck,” I cried out, burying my face against her body as sobs ripped through me.
I clung to her for dear life, cursing the bastard that trapped her in that basement. Pain ripped through me, shredding every inch of my soul. She needed me, and I wasn’t there.
She fucking needed me.
“Hey,” JR said behind me. His hand on my shoulder set me off, and I leapt to my feet. Spinning around, I shoved him against the wall as anger ripped through me.
“Ryder!” Caroline called out.
But I wasn’t there. I was staring at the man who attacked her, and I was about to strangle the life out of him for what he did to my girl. She was tied up like a fucking animal, and then he took something from her that he didn’t deserve. No man deserved to live after something like that.
My hand slid up to his throat and I squeezed as every cell of my body lit with fire. Right now, I didn’t care about the consequences. I only wanted this man dead.
“Ryder,” a voice said, calm and collected, pulling me back from the edge I was about to topple over.
My vision wavered, and suddenly, the man in front of me was no longer Ellie’s attacker. It was JR, and he was talking to me, not even fighting back.
But there was someone else in the room. Slowly, I turned my head, my eyes welling with tears again when I saw my old man standing there, a heartbroken look on his face.
My grip around JR’s neck loosened, but when my father slid his hand up my arm and gently held the back of my neck, I fucking lost it. Tears slid down my face unchecked as he tugged me into his arms and held me.
“I know, son,” he whispered.
I gripped his shirt, squeezing hard as angry grunts slipped from my lips. “He hurt her,” I grit out as every inch of me fell apart.
“I know. I know.”
“He fucking hurt her, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t stop him,” I ground out.
“No, you weren’t, but you’re here now.”
“Too fucking late.”
He tugged away from me, his face stern once again. “I know, and I know you feel like you failed her, but you need to buck up.”
His words struck me hard, and I immediately stiffened, but he didn’t let me pull away. His hand clapped the side of my face and he held me in place, forcing me to look at him.
“As shitty as you feel, she’s in hell right now, and she needs you fighting her corner.
You can’t fall apart when she needs you.
So, get it all out now. Go hit something.
Tear a goddamn room apart if you need to.
And then you come back here and sit by her side.
Hold her hand and tell her you’ll be there every fucking step of the way. Because this isn’t about you.”
His words struck like a dagger to the chest, splitting me wide open. My tears dried almost instantly, and as I looked over my shoulder at the broken woman lying in that bed, the anger slipped away to the background, leaving me able to function once again.
“Come with me, son.”
I wasn’t ready to leave her side, but he was right. I needed to get my head on straight for Ellie, so I could do whatever she needed when she woke up. I followed my old man down the hall to an empty room, and once inside, I waited for him to speak.
“You look just like him,” he started, his eyes full of anger.
“Now is not the time—”
“It’s why I’ve always been such a shitty father.
” Sighing, he shoved his fingers through his hair and paced away from me.
“Your grandfather used to be beat the shit out of me whenever he got the chance, and I swore when I had kids of my own, I would treat them better than he ever did me. Little did I know you would be his exact replica.”
When his eyes met mine, they were filled with tears and regret. I had never understood my old man’s hatred. He’d never bothered to say a word, and my mother just defended him without explaining.
“When I looked at you, all I could see was him. I know that I should have gotten over it a long time ago, but…the things he did to me—Ryder, there are some things in life you never get past. He was it for me. My own personal demon that destroyed something inside me that I never got back. It was only because of your mother that I didn’t take my own goddamn life. ”
“You never said anything,” I croaked out, devastated by what he was telling me.
“I was so angry for so long,” he murmured. “Even now…I look at you, and I see someone who wanted me dead, who hated me so much that if it weren’t for your mother…”
I stepped forward, slowly raising my hand to his shoulder, gripping it tightly.
“She was my lifeline, Ryder. And I never could manage to get past your similarities—until now. What happened to Ellie will haunt her forever, and she’s gonna be scared for a long time.
She’s gonna need someone strong like you by her side.
Don’t let her fall into the same trap I did. It’ll eat you alive.”
And with that, he walked out of the room, leaving me along with a revelation I never saw coming. It didn’t make the way he treated me any better, but knowing what he suffered helped me to understand why our relationship had always been so strained.
Heading back to her room, I swiped the tears from my face and steeled myself for when she woke up. I didn’t have the first fucking clue how to handle this, what to say, or if I should even touch her.
“Just let her guide you,” Caroline said softly, as if she could read my mind.
Nodding, I sat back down beside the bed, taking her hand in mine once again. Dad followed me into the room, hanging back.
“Do you want me to leave?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t want her waking up with an audience, but I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting here alone with the demons swirling in my head, telling me I had fucked up.
Dad didn’t wait for an answer. He took the seat across from me, leaning back in his seat. “Just tell me when you need me to leave.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded, my eyes never leaving the woman I loved.
I sat there for hours, just watching her, cataloguing every bruise on her body, thinking about how terrified she must have been. I didn’t have the full picture yet. When we found her, she’d been too traumatized to talk about it. But I knew it had been horrible.
How did I help her through that? When I closed my eyes, all I saw was her broken body. I could only imagine the horrors waiting in her dreams, threatening to pull her under every time her eyes closed.
When the early morning light started to peek through the shades, Dad stood and headed for the door.
“I’ll get you coffee.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, though I doubted I could handle keeping anything in my stomach right now.
My eyes drifted to her wrist, to the bandages that covered the damaged skin from where she tried to free herself from the ropes binding her in that basement.
I didn’t need to hear the words from her lips.
It was written all over her body, every fucking thing he did to her was painted on her in bruises.
And I didn’t know if she would ever recover from it.
“Ryder.”
That one broken word nearly undid me, but I forced myself to remain calm as my eyes drifted to meet hers.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I smiled.
Her lip quivered as tears filled her eyes, and in that second, I was on my feet, climbing into the bed with her. Wrapping my body around hers, I held her as she broke, crying into my chest.
It took everything in me to hold back the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks, and when she clutched my shirt, I lost it and the first tear fell.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, my hands rubbing her back.
She didn’t show even the slightest sign of hesitation as she curled her body into mine.
“I love you,” I cried, pressing kisses to her cheek and anywhere else I could reach. “I love you so much.”
Shuttered, gasping cries muffled against my chest. “He—Ryder, he—”
“I don’t care,” I hissed, kissing her even more as our tears mingled. “It doesn’t fucking matter to me. You’re here. You’re alive, and that’s all I fucking care about. The rest, we’ll get through.”
“But I…” She pulled away from me, barely able to look me in the eye. Her lip quivered as she struggled to put her thoughts into words. “I made him think I liked it.”
I cupped her cheeks, careful of the damaged skin. “And you survived,” I said fiercely. “You escaped because you did what you had to do. You are a survivor, Ellie. A fucking beautiful, amazing survivor. We will get through this.”
“But…” Her eyes dropped in shame. “How could you ever—”
“Hey.” Tilting her chin up, I made sure her eyes were on mine when I said the next words. “There is not a single piece of you that I don’t love.”
“I’m dirty,” she whispered. “He’s inside me.” Her voice cracked as she squeezed her eyes closed. “He put his—it was in my mouth.”
“Ellie—”
But once she started saying the words, she couldn’t stop. It all spilled out of her like a waterfall.
“He had a knife in his pocket,” she whimpered. “And he was there, forcing me to take him in my mouth. And I just kept telling myself that if I could get the knife, I might make it out of there.”
“And you did,” I said soothingly, forcing myself to ignore the rage coursing through me.
“But even after I got it, it wasn’t over. He wanted more.”
Snot and tears mingled on her skin as she described everything he did, how he laughed as he took her. How he called her his filthy girl and told her he knew she wanted it.
And the whole time, she thought of me.
“You were there, Ryder,” she sniffled. “And maybe that makes it bad because you shouldn’t be part of that, but—”
“Hey,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to hers. “If it got you through it, that’s all I fucking care about. If I could have traded places with you, I would have done that so you didn’t have to feel a fucking second of what that asshole did to you.”
I swallowed hard, my hands shaking as I gently brushed my knuckles along her cheek.
“I would give anything to make it better, Ellie.”
“How can you still love me?”
Her broken words shattered every piece of me. This beautiful woman, who had only shown everyone around her love, thought she wasn’t good enough.
“There is not a single thing that could ever make me stop loving you. I know you can’t see that right now, but someday, he won’t haunt you anymore. And you’ll see you are still the same strong, beautiful woman you’ve always been.”
Hope shown in her eyes, but was quickly clouded with doubt. It was nothing I could fix today or even this week. It would take time for her to see that I would never leave her.
I was in this forever.