Chapter 7 #2
“Just shaken up,” I admitted, especially now that the adrenaline had fled my system, leaving me exhausted, eliciting that wrung out sensation in my limbs, like they were too heavy to move properly. “I got out before I ever saw them.”
“And you came here.” Not a question, merely a surprised statement of fact.
“I can leave, if it’s a problem.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m glad you came here. My door is always open for you, sunny.”
I stilled, eyes darting around his face.
There was that old nickname again, and it hit me square in the heart. Lane didn’t seem embarrassed for the slip up, though. His gaze remained steady on mine, waiting for my reaction.
Ignoring it completely, I asked, “What do we do now?”
“Now, I call Johns out here so you can give a statement.”
Great.
When the sheriff called, whether he was on medical leave or not, his deputies came running. Though Lane lived out of town, on a parcel of the Lawless ranch land like the rest of his brothers, a department vehicle pulled up outside in less than ten minutes.
“We sent a unit by your house,” Johns said when he settled on the couch next to Lane. “Of course, your intruder was long gone.”
“How’s my house look?”
Johns grimaced. “According to Lee, it was trashed. I’m sorry, Sutton.”
“It’s all good,” I said. “It’s just stuff.”
“Gonna need your statement, if you’re up for it,” he continued, withdrawing a little spiral bound notebook from his pocket. A habit he no doubt picked up from his boss.
I nodded, pulling the blanket Lane had given me while we waited tighter around my shoulders. Boots was off roaming the house somewhere.
Johns clicked around on his phone screen until it began recording our conversation. He ran through the date and time.
“Interim Sheriff Johns interviewing Sutton Rausch…” I lost the rest of his spiel to the brief flash of hurt that passed across Lane’s face.
This had to be hell for him, being physically unfit to do his job, having to sit by while Johns ran his department.
“Walk me through what happened tonight,” Johns said to me, snapping my attention back to him.
“Before you ask, I never got a look at the guy.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“My bedroom. I was reading.”
“How did you know someone was in the house?”
“I heard glass break, and then the floor creaking, like someone was moving around. Didn’t take long to figure out what was happening.”
“How’d you get out?”
“Climbed out my bedroom window.”
“Quick thinking,” he praised, and I shrugged. “Anything else happen? You’re sure you didn’t get a look at them?”
“Positive.”
“Earlier you said ‘guy.’ Are you sure it was a man?”
“I could be wrong,” I admitted. “But I don’t know many women that could bust down a solid core door like the one to my bedroom. I heard it crashing open as I slipped out, but I didn’t stop to look back.”
“You did the right thing,” Lane said, speaking for the first time since Johns arrived. His teeth still ground together, and his muscles tensed, like his temper was barely leashed.
Lane had always had a bleeding heart. It was one of the things that made him such a good sheriff. He especially had a soft spot for battered women—something me and my own ordeal at twenty no doubt influenced.
I tried to tell myself his anger wasn’t specific to me and this situation. He’d react the same even if I was a stranger sitting across from him.
“I realize it’s not much to go on,” I told Johns. “I’m sorry. My only thought was getting me and Boots out safely.”
Hearing his name, my cat appeared and wound his way through Johns’ legs. The deputy reached down and brushed his fingers along Boots’ back, and my little boy arched into his touch.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Sutton. We’re just glad you’re safe.”
“Thanks.”
“I have a few more questions.”
“Okay…”
“So far, the intruder hasn’t hurt anyone—”
“Because he broke into houses that were empty,” Lane pointed out.
His undersheriff cut him with a glare, then seemed to realize exactly who he’d leveled with the look and once again schooled his expression.
“Can you think of any reason why they’d target you specifically? I have to assume it was obvious you were home?”
“I mean, my car was outside, but the house was quiet. I was in my room with the lights off.”
Johns frowned. “But you said you were reading.”
“Her e-reader is backlit,” Lane provided. “When she reads before bed, she turns the lights off in case she falls asleep.”
Johns and I both blinked at him in surprise. I knew how he knew that about me—because he’d witnessed it on multiple occasions when we were in college, but Johns was clearly confused, his interest sufficiently piqued.
“To answer your earlier question, no, I have no idea why anyone would target me specifically.”
Johns, changing tack, asked, “Why did you come here? It’s an awfully long walk under normal circumstances, but in the cold and dark? Didn’t you have a neighbor you could go to while you called nine-one-one?”
Why had I come here? Honestly, there was only one explanation that had driven me into the woods I knew would connect me to Lane’s house—even if it hadn’t been at the forefront of my consciousness at the time.
But how the hell did I explain that to a virtual stranger? As vaguely as possible, I supposed, not that I owed Johns anything.
“I have some…trauma,” I started slowly. “Someone hurt me very badly when I was twenty, and Lane was there for me then. I guess it was a trauma response when confronted with a similar situation.”
“Hurt me very badly” was, of course, a diplomatic way of saying I’d been raped.
During winter break of our sophomore year of college at Boise State, I’d gone to a party with some friends. Lane was working at the department here in Dusk Valley, so when my roommates begged me to go to a New Years’ Eve frat party with them, I’d agreed.
New Year’s Day also happened to be my birthday, and Lane or no Lane, I’d wanted to celebrate surviving my teens and entering the next decade of my life.
Back then, I sometimes worried I was spending too much time with Lane, that I’d lost sight of what life outside of him and the fresh bloom of our relationship was supposed to look like.
While we’d only been together for three months at that point, he consumed all my waking thoughts, and I loved him more than anything.
I knew—or rather, hoped—he felt the same about me.
Normally, I’d have contented myself with an evening curled up in bed, ringing in the new year and my birthday with my Kindle in hand, but that night was different.
For once, I had wanted to go out and have fun.
To let loose. To remind myself I was more than Lane Lawless’s girlfriend—not that being attached to him was a bad thing.
In fact, at that time, it had been the best thing.
Unfortunately, everything changed after one spiked drink, being dragged into a random empty bedroom, held down, and assaulted.
My breathing increased with the memories, flashes of agony, of hoarse cries, of the world beyond that room oblivious to my drug-weakened struggles.
I’d fought like hell—of course I had. Or as best as I’d been able to with the roofie in my system.
In the end, it wasn’t enough.
Over the years and a lot of therapy, I’d mostly worked through it, but being raped—it wasn’t something I could simply get over. That shit stuck with me, clung to me like an invisible, greasy film I could never clear away no matter how hard I scrubbed, both mentally and physically.
I hadn’t talked about it in a long time—hadn’t wanted or needed to. But now, bringing it up like this when I could’ve suffered a similar fate yet again?
It all came rushing to the surface, choking off my air supply, injecting icy fear into my veins.
Long, thick, inked fingers twisted through mine.
“Sutton,” a deep voice said softly, and I turned toward it, seeking the owner. Blue eyes met mine. Familiar. Clear and bright. Safe. “You’re okay. Nothing can hurt you here.”
All I could do was nod, clinging to his hand, anchoring myself in the here and now.
Though it continued to haunt me, Lane was right: my past couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Or maybe…it could.
A possibility I simply couldn’t entertain at the moment.
“Breathe with me, sunny.”
Nodding, I followed him, inhaling, holding, and exhaling when he did. We worked through the cycle a few times before my heart rate started to come down, bringing a shaking in my limbs along with it.
God, tonight had been a lot.
As if sensing my distress, Boots hopped up on the couch and curled himself in my lap. My free hand found his fur, fingers slipping through the long, soft strands.
“I am so sorry that happened to you, Sutton,” Johns said softly once I’d managed to compose myself.
“Thank you,” I croaked.
Johns rose, slipping his phone and notebook into his pockets. “If you want, I can bring you back to town. You can’t get in your house, but I’m sure—”
Lane cut him off. “She’s staying here.”