Echoes at Dawn (KGI #5)(40)

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” she said regretfully.

“How is your head now? Still hurt? Are you tense?”

She took a moment to evaluate and then slowly shook her head. “I’m fine. Truly. I feel…sorta empty. It’s nice. Like nothing weighing down on me.”

“That’s good. The next step is to talk about it.”

Startled, she yanked her gaze back up to him. “Talk about it? You really are starting to sound like some armchair psychologist.”

He ignored the defensive reaction and tilted his head to the side, staring until she fidgeted on the makeshift bench.

“What were you going to say earlier? When the guys were asking you about everything that happened. You implied that they didn’t really take care with you until…Until what, Grace? What happened to make them realize they were slowly killing you?”

She dropped her head, shame immediately crowding into her mind. She closed her eyes tight as if she could push away the memories. But they clung tenaciously, a cruel reminder of the person she’d become for that short time.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “They can’t hurt you now. You survived. They didn’t break you.”

“But they did!” she burst out.

Tears burned until she no longer had the strength th brto fight them. They were like trails of acid down her cheeks, and she choked back the urge to scream. God, she wanted to just yell.

Rio took her hand, softly turned it over until her palm was up, and she instantly tried to yank it back. He held firm, his grip not painful, but neither was it relenting.

He traced a path across the thin, fading line over her wrist. It had taken a long time to heal, so savage the wound had been. She curled her fingers into a tight fist, her wrist flexing in his grasp. She closed her eyes as if she would simply will him to drop the subject.

“What happened here, Grace?” he asked quietly. “You have a nearly identical mark on the other wrist. Given your ability to heal, these must have been terrible wounds.”

“They broke me,” she said again, her voice defeated and small. “Oh God, Rio, it was so terrible. I tried to kill myself. I’m so shamed by what I did. They nearly didn’t save me. If they’d been a few minutes later getting to me, I would have lost too much blood, and what shames me the most is when I was myself again, my first thought was that I was sorry that I hadn’t succeeded. But oh God, it wasn’t me. I swear to you it wasn’t me, but I still couldn’t keep from wishing that I’d been successful.”

He curled his entire hand around hers and rubbed his thumb over the still healing scar.

“What happened?”

“It was a test,” she said bitterly. “I’d already gone through so much. I was exhausted mentally and physically. I was in constant pain. I was sick from a dozen different ailments. It hurt to even breathe.”

“What kind of test?” he gently prompted.

“They brought in a woman who’d been institutionalized because of the danger she was to herself. She was mentally ill and suicidal. She’d already tried to kill herself multiple times, and she was under constant supervision and heavily medicated. They brought her to me and forced me to heal her.”

“Oh, Grace.”

His tone was heavy with sorrow. He continued to stroke her wrist, and she found she didn’t mind quite as much as she had a moment ago.

“It was hell,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt such despair. It was overwhelming, coming at me wave after wave. The voices all telling me I was worthless, that I was nothing and that I’d be doing the world a favor by killing myself. I wasn’t worthy to be alive.

“I fought it at first. I knew that it was her who’d taken over. I knew it wasn’t me. But after a while I could no longer distinguish between where I began and she ended. All I heard was that I needed to die, that I had to die.”

“I’m sorry,” Rio said, his voice husky with emotion. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“I managed to pry off one of the parts of the bed frame. It had a point on it, and I plunged it into my wrists and started tearing at the skin. It was a compulsion I was no longer able to ignore. I couldn’t fight it. It took over until I was a puppet being jerked by the ghosts in my head.

“When they found me, I was nearly unconscious and I begged them, I begged them to just let me die.”

Rio reached for her, carefully pulling her into his arms. He smoothed her hair through his fingers and simply held her as she recounted the horrors she’d endured.

“What shames me is that even though I knew it wasn’t me, I still wanted to die. I gave up. I just gave up and tried to take the coward’sowa#x2019;d way out.”

She turned her face into his shoulder and then wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight. He adjusted his position so that he could anchor her more firmly against his chest.

After a moment, he pulled her away, moved his hands up to frame her face and then leaned in, his mouth closing in on hers. She blinked and then held her breath, shocked by what was about to happen. Shocked that she wanted it so much.

His lips touched hers. Warm, sensual. Electric. A full body shiver overtook her as he pressed farther, melding their mouths as he exerted gentle pressure.

His hands were like a brand on her skin, holding her for the loving assault on her senses.