Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(92)

My hands curled tighter into his shirt, and I could hear the hushed murmur of his voice mixed with another man’s, the scrape of a metal door as it was opened.

Fresh air breezed across my damp, sticky flesh, wiping away the grime of the theater.

But there was no relief.

It was just another layer exposed.

Another sweep across the dirt.

Revealing my forgotten reality.

Madeline.

I hadn’t allowed her name to enter my thoughts in years. There was too much guilt. Too much shame.

Now I almost buckled beneath the weight of it.

Lyrik helped me into the backseat of the waiting SUV. The black leather was cold against my already clammy skin. Sliding in, he curled me back in his arms.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered at the top of my head.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled through the old grief. But I’d kept it in for far too long.

“Shh…don’t apologize. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Nothing. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

And I remembered that voice and those words.

Lyrik.

The night he’d first found me. When he’d first unearthed everything I’d buried like a cursed relic.

“Lyrik.” It was pain. Torment. Regret.

“Shh…baby…I’ve got you…I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he said.

The ride sped by in a blur of memories as I finally fully opened the door.

Opened it for everything to come rushing in.

Every fear.

Every hope.

Every memory.

I opened myself to every wound that had never healed.

I let every single one of them invade.

It was time. It was time. It was time.

I was so tired of being the girl I was not.

And I missed her. Tamar Gibson. The girl Cameron Lucan had tried to destroy.

Just like he’d destroyed Madeline Shields.

It seemed only seconds later when the SUV came to a stop. Lyrik opened the door, quick to slide out, hands careful as he helped me stand.

“Can you walk?”

Through bleary eyes, I nodded, and he wound his arm back around my waist, supported me as we started across the cobblestone drive.

With each step, I somehow felt stronger and stronger.

Braver and braver.

Unchecked, tears streaked down my face.

Once, I’d believed they made me weak.

But now. There was power in their presence.

And I felt a little crazed. Maybe a little insane. To feel so much turmoil and welcome it all the same.

Lyrik fumbled in his pocket and took out his keys. He opened the door to the massive house he called home. The expansive windows on the other side of the huge living area opened up to the pool and the sparkling city below.

He didn’t hesitate, just turned me to the right and led me upstairs and down the hall to his room.

I’d only been in it for a few minutes this afternoon before we’d had to leave for his parents’. But it felt so much like him. Dark and filled with mystery, the corners filled with shadows that ached to tell the same story he had written across his skin.

Releasing me, he quietly latched the door shut behind us.

Standing in the middle of his room, I turned to look at him.

For once, I was hiding nothing.

Open and free.

And it hurt and it hurt and it hurt.

And it felt so amazingly right.

He cradled my face.

Softly.

Gently.

“Tell me who you are.”

Unable to remain standing, I slowly sank to my knees.

Without releasing my face, Lyrik followed.

Tears clogged my throat. “All I ever wanted to do was forget. But I can’t do that anymore, Lyrik. I feel too real. Too much like me. Who I used to be.”

He nodded like he got it, a prod of encouragement.

I found my voice. “You remember I told you…that I escaped. When I escaped, I escaped from Cameron Lucan.”

I hadn’t voiced that name in so long.

Lyrik gritted his teeth, the sound an audible grind as he clenched and winced and fought the anger the utterance of it so clearly evoked.

Anger for me.

Was it wrong to love him more for it?

My tongue darted out to wet my lips. “Like I told you, when we first got together, it was good and then it got to where it wasn’t so bad. Looking back now, I realize he was acclimating me to his lifestyle. Desensitizing me. Convincing me his twisted desires were my own. Robbing me of all my confidence and self-preservation until I’d completely submitted to his will.”

I drew in a breath. “It didn’t take him long to persuade me to cut ties with my family. He told me they were only trying to keep us apart. I’d moved in with him before things had gone bad…back when I’d willingly let him use me, even though I knew in my gut something was wrong.”

I glanced to the floor, before letting myself look back on the severity of those eyes that had deepened to pitch. “It got so horrible, Lyrik, so bad so fast and I had no idea how to get out. I’d pray for death.”

The words had gone raspy. “For it all to end. He’d leave me tied up in this room in the dark where I’d be disoriented for days. Hungry. Not sure when he would return and when he did return if he’d come alone.”