Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(26)

“I feel like I shoved my whole face against it,” she admitted.

Tilly put down her stuff and sat next to her on the couch, her tone now totally lacking snark.

“What we do,” she said, “isn’t exactly in the realm of the norm. We take risks. Sometimes, really big risks. The vanilla population doesn’t always take those same risks. Sometimes, they do. Sometimes there are vanilla guys who beat the crap out of—and even kill—their partners. This isn’t solely a kinky-person problem.

“But I want you to promise me that you won’t let this experience turn you hard and cold, either. To take away your ability to eventually trust again. I’ve been there, done that, and honey? Let me tell you something. That’s a cold, dark, lonely f*cking place I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy into. Having come out on the other side of it, I can tell you, it was absolutely no fun. Unfortunately, at the time, it was the easier choice to make. So please, don’t make that easy choice to lock yourself away out of fear and regret and mistrust. Deal?”

Betsy had listened to all of this as her left eye stared down into her bowl of oatmeal. “I’ll try,” she whispered, “but I can’t promise.”

Right now, she felt torn between wanting to burn down the world and bury herself in a hole. She understood, logically, that those feelings, too, would pass. But for now, her emotions were freely pinballing around inside her, no longer restrained.

“All I’m asking is that you try,” Tilly said.

Betsy nodded.

Tilly left her alone for a few minutes to go talk to the men in the kitchen. Betsy didn’t turn when she heard them walk down the hall, followed by the sound of a bedroom door opening. The office, if she had to guess. She really hadn’t had a tour of their house.

Not that she’d been in much of a mental or physical condition to get one.

Tilly’s words still rang through her mind. When she thought back to her previous relationships, she’d guarded herself. Smartly, yes, in retrospect. Still, back then, she’d willingly stepped onto and off of a very slow-moving carousel filled with all the sweet and pretty—and safe, and boring—characters one would expect of such a ride.

Nothing with teeth that could bite, or claws that could rend.

Nothing like the monster she’d escaped from.

A kind of functional numbness had set in since she’d limped out the door of that apartment Saturday night. Instinctively, she wanted to cry, to scream, to rage, and yet she stared down at those emotions from some higher vantage point, as if looking at a different person.

She was a different person.

Damn sure wasn’t who she thought she was.

The others returned a few minutes later. “Well, I think I can work that thing,” Tilly joked as she reached for her computer bag and pulled her laptop out. “I’ll make sure I can access the Internet and printer while they’re still here, though.”

“Do you need anything else before we get our showers?” Kenny asked Betsy.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Tilly had her laptop open and booting up. “They’re good men,” Tilly said, still in that non-snarky tone Betsy knew she’d need to get used to.

She suspected this was the real Tilly, the one Landry and Cris got to see, or some of her closest friends, but a side of her that Betsy had never experienced before this.

The Tilly she knew could be prickly, frank, snarky, and while never deliberately mean and on the offensive without damn good provocation, was someone who never hesitated to throw herself to the frontlines of the battle in defense of the people and friends she considered her responsibility.

“Yeah,” Betsy said. “I feel badly I’m putting them out.”

Tilly looked at her. “Stop. Now. We get it. I’m not trying to be a bitch, but we understand you feel badly about this. The next step is you need to move forward and not wallow. Show them your gratitude by kicking ass and taking names.”

“Is that your motivational speech?”

“Yeah, and I think it still needs some work.” She smiled. “Look, I’m not saying this is going to be easy. At all. I feel more than a little guilty that I didn’t push you harder to wait to get involved with that guy. I feel badly that I didn’t personally start looking into him sooner the way Tony did later on. I feel badly that I didn’t try to reach out to you more often after you ended up with the guy. I feel damned guilty that I could see the signs of abuse there and I didn’t step in a lot sooner and say whoa, what the f*ck.”

Tilly tapped on her keyboard for a moment. “That night at the club, when Loren gave you our numbers, she stepped outside and called me immediately before she did it. Unfortunately, by the time I got my ass in gear and got moving to get over to the club, you two had already left. Loren said that when she went to go into the bathroom, Jack had stepped forward to stop her and she told him if he didn’t get the f*ck out of her way, he’d wish he had.”

Betsy’s heart thumped. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m sure he didn’t tell you. But Loren said it wasn’t long after that he hustled you out of there.”

That was exactly what had happened. At the time, Betsy hadn’t known why. He’d asked her if Loren had said anything to her while she was in the bathroom, and she’d flat-out lied and said she’d heard someone come in and wash their hands, but hadn’t spoken to them.