Beautiful Broken Promises(59)
“They couldn’t console Braden… no matter what they tried. He was only breastfed so they couldn’t even get him to eat. After what felt like a lifetime, they let Kate and I go back to him. I still hadn’t let her go. Then they just kept us there, locked away from everything, hoping that their version of solitary confinement would eventually break me. They came back every couple of months to collect Kate, but I wouldn’t let them. So they took to… marking me. Each time I refused to give them Kate… another mark. I think it was just a fun game to them; they didn’t really care about Kate anymore. They just liked f*cking with me.”
“What do you mean they marked you, Rae?” I managed to get through my clenched teeth.
“Like cuts. On my skin,” she whispered.
“What the hell?” I asked a bit louder. I hadn’t seen any cuts on her.
She slowly rolled away from me onto her stomach. I sat up on my knees and looked down at her lying there below me. She didn’t move, didn’t even point to where I should be looking so I took her in her whole body. It didn’t take me long to see what she was talking about, although I wished it had.
There, from mid-calf to her upper thigh, all along the backside of her left leg were slices in her skin, each about four inches in length. They were all healed but in different phases of scarring and looked like stripes down her leg. Only her left leg, which was strange to me.
“Babe…” I stated, at a loss for words.
“It didn’t really hurt,” she lied.
“Is this why you only wear pants?”
“It didn’t seem polite to scare anyone. I know it’s not pretty.” She turned back over, taking the view of her leg away from me but not the memory.
I pushed between her legs again and raised her left in the air. Her breath hitched as I began kissing the skin at the site of the first terrible slash, all the way up to what looked like the newest one, closest to her ass. I hated that one the most. She must have been so scared and humiliated.
“The last one was over a year ago. I think they got bored with that tactic.”
Or they were biding their time for something else.
“I never let Braden and Kate see it happen,” she added, thankfully interrupting that horrific thought. I hadn’t even thought about Kate and Braden witnessing it, but I had come to trust Raegan’s parenting instincts so fully that the thought never occurred to me.
“We can get them fixed. I know they have plastic surgeons for all kinds of things. We can have them removed.” I tried to tamper my own hostile feelings toward every guy that has ever worked under Flores. I wanted any sign of their touch gone from her gorgeous body.
“We?” She smiled coyly. I continued kissing her, not addressing what that statement meant. She let it slide and said, “Besides, those are nothing compared to this ugly thing on my face.” Her hand brushed past the now healed but puckered scar on her forehead.
She had just gotten the stitches out the day before and I could tell she was feeling self-conscious about it. The scar was bright pink and it stuck out against her tanned skin, but I still felt like her bright green eyes were the most prominent feature on her beautiful face.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded gently, releasing her leg and kissing along her forehead.
I felt like Rae and I had gotten to know one another better in these past two weeks, but we were just now talking about the important things. We’d spoken with the kids about their therapy meetings at the precinct, but we hadn’t discussed hers. Kate and Braden were cleared after one session because they had been kept in the dark about the whole situation. They never understood the seriousness of their position growing up. Raegan has had to endure a few more.
I was starting to know her little quirks. I knew that she hated the taste of soda; the carbonation gave her hiccups instantly. I still laugh at her annoyed face after she’d hiccupped for a straight hour after taking a drink of my Sprite. I knew that her long hair was starting to bother her because she was always scooping it up into a bun on top of her head. I knew that she loved a huge slice of greasy pizza from the local pizzeria down the street, even though she always complained about it going to her hips. I could lick those hips all day, so I didn’t care where the damn pizza went.
But until now, I had no idea what life was like for them during those years in captivity. If I was being honest, I’d been afraid to know, but it was nice to now fit all the puzzle pieces together.
“I was always trying to think of ways to escape. Every other thought for years was about escape. How? When? I ran so many scenarios in my head and none of them seemed to pan out, so I never attempted them. I knew we were on an island. I could see the water from the window, and I pieced it together when the guys outside of our door would talk.