Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Regi
I slowly opened my eyes, and took in the warmth and quiet that surrounded me. Then memories snapped into place, destroying the peace and throwing everything off-kilter. I sat up straight and looked around as panic lodged in my chest.
Through the semi-darkness of the room, my eyes sliced to the window’s closed curtains, then to the chair adjacent to the bed.
I rubbed my eyes to clear away the remaining fuzziness and froze.
Someone sat there. It was too dark to see their face, and the silhouette was so still, I swore it was a ghost. Except, I didn’t believe in apparitions.
A spike of fear laced with panic sliced through me, as I swallowed the hard lump that lodged in my throat.
Then I noted the shaved head. “Krew?” I unsteadily whispered his name, almost afraid that the shadow would answer back no .
“It’s me, Krew.” He turned in the chair and moved the curtains a bit to let in a little light.
The brightness from the window temporarily blinded me.
He shifted in the seat, and I got a glimpse of his right eye. He had said he was Krew, but the amber… It reminded me of him . Krew’s brother. And I quickly looked away and my entire body froze as shame slid into my belly like a poisonous snake.
“Regi.” He reached out a hand. “Don’t be afraid.”
I flinched away, not ready for his touch. “Don’t come any closer,” I choked out, trying to reclaim the oxygen that escaped from my lungs.
“What can I do?” Panic coated Krew’s tone.
“I’m… okay.” Liar . I kept repeating to myself that this was Krew. He would never hurt me. And yet, I couldn’t move as tears blurred my vision.
Breathe, damn it.
I finally sucked in a stuttered breath, and gathered my courage to glance at Krew once more. Hurt and dejection marred his sculpted face, and that cut me to my soul. As much as I wanted to reach for him, to soothe the wound I had caused—for him to soothe me, I couldn’t move.
Krew shifted, and I flinched again. “Oh, Regi—why are you afraid of me?” He got off the chair, dropped to one knee and leaned on the edge of the bed. “I won’t hurt you.”
I didn’t want to feel this way about Krew—really, I didn’t. Yet, my brain couldn’t separate him from Teke, even though the brothers didn’t look anything alike.
“I’m not.” I assured him. But the longer I sat there, the more horrific memories from that terrible day rushed back, contaminating the present. The boy I knew—who was a man now, didn’t know what had happened after I ran from the vehicle Teke had stolen.
Even though it had been years, the trauma of that night wasn’t something I wanted to relive again. Ever.
In my head, I wanted to keep that moment locked up tight. I couldn’t imagine how Krew would react if he found out what his brother had done to me. How Teke had destroyed me. He had ripped my soul apart at the same time as my body.
Since then, my life had been nothing except loose, tattered threads, which I had slowly woven back together. One thread at a time.
I had no doubt that Teke kept what he did to me to himself. If Krew had found out, I wouldn’t have seen him at the fight, standing next to his brother.
But this was Krew—my Krew. He had never done anything wrong. I shouldn’t be afraid of him touching me.
“I missed you, Regi. So damn much,” he choked out, and bent his head down like he was avoiding my eyes. That hurt. Yet, my fear and reluctance were hurting him, too.
Gathering what courage I could muster, I tentatively reached out and touched his shaved head. “I missed you, too—I swear I did,” I admitted earnestly. My heart ached from my admission. I’d held those words close to my chest for so long, never uttering them to another living soul.
“Did?” he questioned. He raised his head and I saw the wetness that filled his handsome eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t do this, Krew. I can’t—” I dropped my hand to my side and shook my head, avoiding his intense gaze. Those eyes haunted me in my dreams. “It’s been years, Krew. We,” I gestured between us, “are the past, and I need to keep it that way.”
Krew winced as though I had struck him. He stood and stepped back as he wiped a runaway tear. “I don’t understand. It has been years since I saw you—but my feelings never changed. After I… Why did you leave Elida? Ghost me? Us?”
“I can’t explain why.” My throat strained at the admission. I needed space to breathe—to think clearly, so I climbed off the bed. The desire to touch him again was only scrambling my brain. Especially after I’d hardwired myself to accept that I’d never see him or Decker again.
He looked me straight in the eyes. “I need more than that, Regi. You owe me an explanation about why you never contacted me. Why you never answered my calls. Or any of my letters.”
Agony ripped through me. Krew wanted answers I couldn’t give him. I couldn’t wipe my tears away fast enough. “I left town right after… I couldn’t stay in that town any longer. I’m sorry that I didn’t contact you.”
“Me too,” he uttered and turned away.
“I’m a different person now, Krew. I’m not that naive little girl you knew back then. I moved on with my life.” The lie slipped past my tongue so easily, that I even believed what I was saying.
“I don’t believe you,” Krew raised his voice, which matched his rigid form.
“You have no choice, Krew” I shouted. “You have no choice.”
The door abruptly swung open, and Decker strode inside. “What the hell is going on in here? I could hear you two outside.”
“Decker,” I breathed in a gasp.
“What’s going on, Regi?” Decker asked with a frown, as his eyes bounced between Krew and me.
“Regi doesn’t want nothing to do with us,” Krew said, his voice lacking the conviction it had moments before.
“I didn’t say that.” My emotions were spinning out of control, especially around these two men.
“I want to leave—that’s all. I have a life.
A job,” I grated out, folding my arms across my chest like some petulant child, then I realized I didn’t have a bra on.
I glanced at the end of the bed and saw my backpack.
I reached for it, but Decker nabbed it first. “You can’t leave, Regi. Not without us.”
“What the hell—you can’t keep me here against my will.
” I cursed. The bottle I’d long ago poured my anger into uncorked, and everything erupted out of me like a geyser.
“I hate you both. For leaving me. For everything afterward. You have no right holding me here against my will. I have my own life and don’t want you two in it. Do you understand that?”
Every hateful word that spilled out of my mouth had Krew flinching back, and there was rage in Decker’s eyes. I didn’t care. I needed to get away from them. They were a constant reminder of what had happened to me. The rape had stolen these men—and the life I could have had with them, from me.
“I can’t do this anymore.” My anger spent; I began to bawl. Great, heaving, ugly sobs. I stood there, chin to my chest, and cried to the point where I could hardly breathe. Fat tears dripped down my chin onto the nasty gray carpet.
I was a mess. I never cried so much—so hard, in my life. Well, not in a long while anyway. The walls I had constructed to protect myself had all but crumbled to dust the moment they reentered my life.
I felt so out of control that I didn’t know what to do. These two men had ripped giant holes in all of my safety nets. I began to mentally curl in on myself and reach for that dark space in my head again.
Then Krew was there, his beefy arms wrapped around me.
With one of his massive hands, he cupped the back of my head and held my snotty face nestled against his muscular chest. His familiar scent—musk and sweat, comforted me in ways I wasn’t expecting.
Even though I didn’t want to accept his comfort, I still nuzzled in against him.
I didn’t deserve it—not after the shit I had just spewed at him—at both of them. But I was drowning in so much desperation that I didn’t see the full scope of what I was doing and fiercely grasped onto Krew like he was a lifeline, until it was too late and I was a goner.
There was heat at my back. Decker .
Decker crowded my back. His solid presence, along with Krew’s, created a sense of safety I hadn’t felt in such a long time. The surge of emotions I’d buried so deep burst from my chest, and made my throat hurt.
Decker’s face nestled into the crook of my neck. Silent, and waiting. A memory I had forgotten surfaced. He’d told me once, years ago, that being nestled next to both me and Krew was one of his favorite places to be.
With their arms around me, it was just us, in the quiet solitude of the dingy motel room.
The three of us, together again. I wanted to capture the moment, jar it up tight and put it away for those days in the future that I knew were going to be lonely and dark.
Then I’d pull it back out and bask in the memory of this time.
The bubble popped when a pinprick of humiliation reminded me that I wasn’t whole. That the damage done to me, the defeat I kept battling in my head—all of it was a giant, mangled-up mess. I wasn’t the good girl they remembered me to be. Not anymore.
No matter how hard I tried to move forward in my life, the damage to my psyche—my soul, never fully healed. My heart had been permanently shredded into pieces, and no amount of stitching was going to mend it. The scars were too deep.
As I drowned in the quicksand of self-pity, I reminded myself that Krew and Decker deserved someone whole—and that wasn’t me. I could never give myself fully to them.
“Let it out,” Krew whispered to me in his comforting way. How could he be so nice to me when I’ve been such a bitch to him?
“I’m a mess,” I croaked, wanting to push them away. Instead, I clung to them both like some limpet, desperate for their touch. They were the air I needed to breathe into my lungs to survive.
Giving false hope wasn’t fair to them or to me. Maybe this was the time to come clean. To tell them what Teke had done to me.