Rex stood over her, his face full of horror as he took in her predicament.
Chase was with him, and he had Odette in a hold. The woman’s body slumped to the ground a moment later, and he dragged her out into the living room.
“Police are on their way. Chase just knocked her out. She’s not dead.” With trembling fingers, he started to release her bonds.
Her eyes darted across the harsh, angular plains of his face as he loosened the straps at her wrist.
She was shaking.
Was this the drugs?
Were they fast-activating?
How much time did she have?
He moved on to her ankles. She waited until the circulation had returned to her hands and fingers enough before she helped him by releasing one as he released the other. Then he glanced at the pill bottle on the floor, empty and surrounded by the remaining pills. “How many have you taken?” he demanded.
“Th-three,” she stammered.
He grabbed the bottle off the floor and read what it was. “Fuck. You need to puke now.”
He didn’t wait for her to climb off the bed herself. He had her scooped up and was carrying her to the bathroom and lifting the toilet seat up before she could register what was happening.
Rex set her down on her knees, sat on the edge of the tub, grabbed her chin in one hand and ordered her to open her mouth. Then he stuck two big fingers down her throat until her gag reflex engaged and she peeled away from him with urgency and leaned over the toilet.
“We need to get them all out, Lydia. You have to keep going,” he said, rubbing her back as she gripped the cool porcelain and emptied the contents of her stomach. His other hand pulled her hair off her face. “Can you see the pills?”
Saliva and vomit hung from her lips. She wiped at it with the back of her hand and glanced down into the bowl. Three little yellow pills floated among her breakfast of instant oatmeal and coffee.
Thank God.
She nodded.
“Thank fuck,” Rex breathed.
Noise in her apartment filtered in through the open bathroom door.
“She okay?” an unfamiliar female voice asked from the doorway leading from the living room to the bathroom.
“Yeah, only took three and they’re all out,” Rex said.
“Good. Police are on their way to pick up Lyle Rockford as well. Your brothers have him detained.”
Rex stiffened beside her. “I’d like to talk to him.”
The woman—who was probably a cop—laughed humorlessly. “Not likely. We’d like our suspect to be able to talk, and something tells me you’d render him speechless one way or another.”
Rex merely grunted.
“Paramedics are on their way for her, too,” the officer said.
Rex grunted again.
“She okay?” Chase’s voice replaced the female officer.
Rex handed Lydia a towel, and she wiped at her mouth before sitting back on her heels. “Yeah, I think so.”
The female police officer had disappeared into the living room, and Chase leaned against the doorjamb in her place. His expression was grim as he asked, “Just a little shaken up?”
Lydia huffed a laugh through her nose. “Just a little.”
“Heath and Brock found a fuck-ton of kiddie porn on Lyle’s work computer. Along with half a dozen ongoing social media conversations with underage girls. He was grooming them, making plans to meet them and posing as either a teenage boy or a modeling scout.”
Rex ran his hand over his bald head. “Jesus Christ. Makes you wonder why he was with Odette if he was in to kids.”
“She was probably just a cover,” Chase said with a shrug. “Once she turned legal, she lost her appeal, but he kept her around to keep up appearances.”
“Fucking disgusting,” Rex growl.
“Guy’s going straight to jail. No passing GO, nothing. Same with his psycho wife.” Chase glanced into the living room, where the voices of probably four cops echoed. “Glad you’re okay,” he said, turning back to Lydia. “Sorry for not believing you and how things turned out.”
She swallowed and nodded. “Me too.”
Chase disappeared into the living room, leaving Rex and Lydia.
He helped her to her feet and stood as well, his eyes sad, mouth turned down into a deep frown.
With hesitation, he took her hands.
She allowed it.
“I’m so sorry,” he started. “Sorry that I didn’t believe in you. I should have listened to my gut, which was telling me that you were innocent. I …” He hung his head. “I will never forgive myself for what she’s done to you, for not putting a stop to it sooner.”
After what she’d just been through, Lydia was in no mood for forgiveness or reconciliation. Maybe in a day or two, she and Rex could talk, but right now, as grateful as she was for him coming to her rescue when he did, she was still incredibly hurt.
He didn’t trust her. He didn’t believe in her.
Even though their relationship had been fresh and new, they both felt the connection and the chemistry. It had gone from zero to sixty faster than either of them had anticipated, but with that intensity should have come trust, too. And with Rex, it hadn’t. And she needed some time away from him to think things through, to figure out what she really wanted and whether Victoria was even a good fit for her.
She let go of his hands, opened her bathroom medicine cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Scope. She quickly rinsed the taste of vomit from her mouth.
Two paramedics with medical bags entered her apartment and turned to see them in the bathroom.
The male paramedic with red hair spoke first. “You Lydia?”
She nodded.
He jerked his head toward the living room. “Let’s get you checked out, eh?”
Nodding again, she stepped away from Rex and through the bathroom doorway into her living room.
“Lydia,” he called after her, his tone so full of confusion and remorse, she felt it like a sledgehammer to her chest.
But she needed to be strong. If there was one thing she’d learned through all of this, it was that when the chips were down and crushed to dust, the only person she could truly lean on was herself, and she needed to have a mighty strong backbone for that. She couldn’t let Rex’s feelings of guilt stomp all over her own feelings of hurt and frustration. His feelings were not more important than hers.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Thank you, Rex.”
Understanding and despair swirled in the midnight blue of his eyes.
Odette was now awake. She was in handcuffs and being spoken to by the police. Lydia didn’t bother looking her in the eye. She’d stared into those soulless orbs enough to last a lifetime.
Chase held a sleeping Pia, and he approached her. “I’m going to run her to the vet, okay?”
She nodded and thanked him, pet her limp but still breathing cat, kissed her head and finally sat down on her couch so the paramedics could do their thing.
Rex slowly approached in the living room, his steps calculated, his face unsure.
“You can go,” she said to him, refusing to look him in the eye, instead focusing on what the paramedics were doing.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said gently.
She lifted her gaze to his, pinning him with the most determined and serious look she could muster at the moment. “Yes, you are. This is my apartment, and I’m kindly asking you to leave. I am safe now. See, they’re carting Odette away, and the paramedics are here. Please go.”
He worked his jaw back and forth.
The two paramedics were trying their damnedest to do their jobs, but they had working ears and were clearly interested in the intricacies of this exchange.
She turned away from Rex and addressed the female paramedic. “Do you think I’ll need to go to the hospital?”
The woman, with blonde hair tucked up into a bun nodded. “I think so. They’ll want to run a tox screen to make sure she didn’t inject you with anything while you were unconscious. We also want to make sure all those pills were thrown up. We can take you in the ambulance.”
Lydia nodded and waited for the male paramedic to remove the blood pressure cuff before standing up. “Okay, let’s go.”
Rex was still standing there as she stepped past him and grabbed her purse and keys from the hook and table next to her couch.
The paramedics packed up their stuff and stood to join her.
A few cops were still milling around, taking pictures of the crime scene.
“I’ll come to the hospital with you,” Rex offered.
She released a breath and closed her eyes for a moment before facing him. “No, you won’t.” Then she turned to go, one paramedic in front of her, one behind, and a cop in their wake, undoubtedly to take her statement.
Rex followed them to the elevator.
She stepped inside, hit the M for the main floor and was joined by the cop and paramedics.
Rex was about to step in too, but she shook her head and said a firm, “No.”
His breath caught, then his throat rolled, and she watched as his fingers twitched at his sides, like he was trying his hardest not to reach out for her or to stop the doors from shutting.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his gaze beseeching.
The elevator doors began to slide closed, and just before they did, she looked him square in the eyes and whispered, “Goodbye, Rex.”
He gave her a week.
And it was the longest week of his fucking life.
She hadn’t returned to her apartment, he knew that much, but he had no idea where she was staying.
Chase had offered to do some digging to see if they could find out where Lydia was living, but he told his brother to stand down.
She didn’t deserve to have any more of her freedoms or privacies tampered with. Not after what she’d just been put through.
She was staying hidden for a reason, and as much as it killed him, he knew that if he found out where she was staying and showed up, it would not go well for him—or them.
And he desperately wanted there to be a them.
After a week, though, he finally spotted her.
He’d been working as a plumber for the last five days, having told Brock he needed a break from the cloak and dagger shit for at least a month, so his hours were more consistent with a banker’s. He spotted her just as he was getting home from a long day of installing gas stoves in a new apartment complex. She was loading boxes into her car.
Was she moving?
Shit.
Slowly, he approached her, made sure she saw him long before he got to her so she wasn’t caught off guard. She’d had enough of that bullshit to last a lifetime.
She didn’t cast him a warning glance or tell him to go away, so he took that as a good sign and stopped just six feet in front of her.
“Hi,” he said, swallowing hard and resisting the urge to drop his gaze to his feet.
“Hello.”
“How are you?”
She shrugged and glanced away from him for a moment. “Been better.” A breath shook from her lips like it would a horse’s. “Also been worse.”
“Are you moving?”
Her head bobbed. “Yeah. Going to move home to live with my mum for a bit. Need to clear my head and get some things sorted.”
Fuck. No.
“How’s Pia?”
“She’s good. Was a little groggy for a day or so, but she’s back to her old self.”
He needed to keep her talking, needed to break this icy wall between them and encourage her to see that what they had, even if it had been brief, was real and intense and worth fighting for.
He glanced inside her car. It was pretty full. “Where have you been staying?”
“With Jayne. She let Pia and I crash in her guest room. But I need to give her and her hubby their space. Guests are like dead fish. They start to stink after three days.”
Even though it was April now and the sun had lent them a beautiful day of warmth, the breeze was still cool, and she was in no more than a T-shirt. He watched her shiver and rub her hands over her arms, the goosebumps following in the wake of her fingertips.
He didn’t think twice and was unzipping his hoodie and handing it to her. “Here.”
She shook her head and pressed her palm forward to resist. “It’s fine. I can go grab one upstairs. Now that they’ve taken down the crime-scene tape, I can go back into my apartment.”
“I don’t want you to go,” he blurted out, still holding the hoodie out for her. “We’re not over.”
Her brows lifted on her forehead. “We very much are, Rex.”
He shook his head, opened his hoodie, circled around behind her and draped it over her shoulders.
She rolled her eyes but didn’t shrug it off. Rather, she tugged it tighter around herself, put her arms through the sleeves and gave him a look of irritation mixed with amusement. “Thank you. I’ll drop it off in front of your door once I grab my own from inside.”
“Keep it,” he said with a headshake.
She released a breath through her nose, and her shoulders slouched slightly. “Rex …”
He faced her again and made sure they were standing less than six feet apart. “Please, Lydia. I know I fucked up.”
“You didn’t trust me, Rex. And what kind of relationship or future could we possibly have without trust?”
“I know.”
“You kept telling me to trust you, but refused to trust me. How does that make sense? Trust is a two-way street.”
“I know.” He swallowed down the spike in his throat and took a deep breath.
“I can’t be with someone who is going to constantly think I’m going to betray them. Someone who refuses to believe me when I tell them the truth. I don’t deserve that.”
“I know you don’t. Nobody does. I just …” He blew out a long breath, rubbed his hand over his head and glanced away for a moment, searching for strength from the clouds. He turned back to face her, knowing he owed her an explanation, a glimpse into his world. Into his head.
She was watching him with a patient expression, but he could tell that patience wouldn’t last much longer.
With a fortifying inhale, he started. “A few years ago, my brothers and I were working a job in Montana. There was this weird religious cult made up of a bunch of families. They lived off the grid a bit, up some mountain. Kids didn’t go to school, they kept to themselves mostly besides getting groceries and necessities in town. They had a leader who called himself Reverend Bliss.
“The men were revered and treated like gods, while the women and children were considered property and for lack of a better term, slaves. There was incest and rape like you wouldn’t believe. If a man wanted to have sex with a woman—or a child—all he had to do was ask her husband or the father for permission. If it was granted, then the wife or child had no say. Most of the women had no idea who the father or fathers of their children were, since birth control is forbidden, and anyone could have sex with anyone as long as the men permitted it. The youngest pregnant woman there was eleven, and she said the baby was her brother’s—but she wasn’t sure which brother.”
Even now, years later, the memories of it all made his stomach do a big flip. Saying it out loud wasn’t helping either.
The look of horror on Lydia’s face was nothing compared to what he’d felt when he witnessed it first hand. He’d seen a lot of shit over the years in his line of work, but that cult compound was by far some of the most fucked up shit he’d ever seen. The image of that eleven-year-old girl’s protruding belly and hearing that the baby belonged to one of her older brothers was enough to make Rex and his brothers all return to their motel rooms and puke.
“One of the wives had been brave enough to reach out for help. And that led to us being called and offered the job of extraction. A lot of the women and children wanted help escaping out of the lifestyle. Several were brought into the cult without consent. Kidnapped or runaways who were lied to and then not allowed to leave. Very few were there willingly. Our point of contact was another woman, one of Reverend Bliss’s many wives. She was close to him and fed us the information we needed to get in, get the women and children out and to safety without the men—who were all heavily armed—knowing. Only, she had a last-minute change of heart and even though my brothers were able to get the women and children out, I had been working with Ruth and was with her when she sounded the alarm.”
Lydia’s eyes flared.
“Reverend Bliss and his ‘disciples’ tied me naked to a metal pole and whipped me with a switch, demanding I tell them where their women and children were taken. Luckily, none of the women or children had been given that information prior, out of fear they might be coerced into spilling the plan. So Ruth had no idea where they were.”
“Thank God,” Lydia breathed.
“They held me for almost two days. Beat me every few hours. Kept me bound to the pole. My arms were tethered above my head, while my feet remained on the ground. I wasn’t able to lay down or kneel. I had to stay standing for the entire time. They also wouldn’t let me sleep. If I tried to sleep, they’d throw ice water on me to wake me up. Or blast some weird fucking religious music. They wanted to know where we’d taken their ‘property’. They said we ‘stole’ it.”
“Oh my God.”
He nodded and scratched the back of his neck. “My brothers eventually got me out, with the help of the cops. The organization was shut down, and to the best of my knowledge it still is. The men were charged with rape, child molestation, incest, kidnapping and probably a dozen other offences. But this is why—”
“You find it hard to trust.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded again. “And why I can’t be restrained. I trusted Ruth. We all trusted Ruth. My gut told me she wanted out just like the rest of them. I asked her all the questions I knew to ask to try to trip her up, to get her to reveal that she wasn’t an ally like she claimed to be, but she passed. Answered everything perfectly. And yet, she still turned on us. I’d been wrong. My gut had been wrong. Yes, she was brainwashed, was a master manipulator, and ‘in love’ with Reverend Bliss, but even when the cops came with my brothers to free me and arrest anyone left in the compound, she was screaming for Reverend Bliss and telling everyone that he was innocent and the one true messenger of God. The more I think about it, the more I believe she never had a change of heart but had been secretly plotting to ruin the plan the entire time.”
“I’m so, so sorry that happened to you,” she whispered. “I can’t even imagine.” A tear slid down her cheek and her bottom lip wobbled.
“I know I accused you of some pretty horrible stuff, and didn’t listen to you, didn’t listen to my gut when it was telling me that you were innocent, but it was a mistake … and I … I don’t want this to be over. I really like you, and when I listen to my gut now, it’s telling me that you’re the one. That we’re supposed to end up together. Get married. Have babies. And go on big, family vacations. That’s what my gut is telling me.” He bunched his fists at his sides to keep himself from reaching for her, but his gut gave him a swift kick in the pants, and he extended one hand and took hers.
She didn’t pull away.
He took that as a good sign.
“We can take it slow if you want. As slow as you need to. But please, give me a chance to make this up to you. To show you that I do trust you. That I do believe in you.” His thumb grazed the back of her hand over the silky-soft skin of her knuckles. With hope, he squeezed gently. “If you want to tie me up,” he swallowed, the thought of being restrained making the back of his neck itchy, “you can. If that’s what it will take to show you that I trust you, then I’m willing. I owe you at least that. I broke your trust, didn’t trust you and because of that, I almost lost you.” His shoulders slumped. “I did lose you.”
Light flared in the hazel of her eyes, and one corner of her lip turned up into a cute, crooked little smile. “You’d let me tie you up?”
“I would, yes.”
The sheer thought of being restrained had him feeling nauseous. But he pushed down the sensation and focused on the woman in front of him. On hope, and the fact that she hadn’t dismissed him yet. She hadn’t walked away and told him to go to hell.
That had to mean something, right?
“Wow.” She blew out a breath. “That’s a big deal.”
“It is,” he nodded. “But I trust you.”
Her words were quiet. “Thank you.”
“If you want to take a few steps back, and go back to being just friends, we can do that, too. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to prove to you that I trust you, and that I believe what we have is real. But please, don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on us. And don’t give up on Victoria. There are a lot of people here who like you, who care about you and want you to stick around.”
“Rex …”
“Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”
She snorted.
“Okay, well, maybe not one as big as mine, but still. We all make mistakes, right?”
That earned him a small nod.
“But then we learn from them. We grow. But I’d rather grow with someone—with you—than by myself. I want to grow old with you.”
The other side of her mouth lifted too, completing the small smile. “But you’re already old.”
Her cheekiness had him grinning.
She pressed the back of her free hand to her forehead and tilted her head back like she was swooning. “What have I said about those dimples?”
“That they should come with a warning.” His heart felt lighter than it had in a really long time. He took her other hand when she dropped it back to her side. “Can we try again?” He squeezed both her hands. “You want me to grovel even more?” Still holding on to her hands, he made to get down on to his knees. “Because I will. I will grovel right here in the parking lot, in front of any neighbor watching. I’ll do it, I swear.”
Her brows scrunched and she tugged on his hands. “Get up. You’re groveling quite well while standing. Let’s not make a scene.”
Chuckling, he stood back up, grateful that she let him keep hold of her hands, and also seemed to have regained her sense of humor.
She was serious again though, suddenly and an uneasy feeling spiraled through him. Her head was tilted down, her gaze focused on their hands, but she lifted her eyes to him, looking at him from beneath her lashes. “We grew pumpkins in our garden when I was a kid, and one year the cutest little one didn’t turn orange, but I loved it so much I wouldn’t let my mum carve it. I put it under my bed. I don’t know what I planned to do with it, but I didn’t want it to get butchered. But I forgot about it until the smell of rotting squash had my room nearly uninhabitable. My mother was not happy.”
He lifted up one brow. “Okay …”
“I make mistakes, too.”
Ah. Now he got it.
That pulled a big smile from him, but when her breath hitched, he dropped his lips into a frown and said, “Warning, dimples about to come out.” Then he smiled again.
Her laugh was like the sweetest birdsong, and he tugged her hands until she was wrapped up in his arms, her chest smashed against his.
Her hands fell to the middle of his back, and she gazed up at him, still laughing. Still smiling.
“I’m really, really sorry for what happened to you.” The way her fingers flitted across his back it was like she was searching for the scars beneath his shirt. They were barely visible, thank God, and she wouldn’t be able to feel them. But when his shirt was off, if she stared long enough, eventually, she’d see them. “If you ever want to talk about it, or—”
“Thank you. But I’m mostly okay. I have some tried and true distraction techniques that do the trick at blocking out the memories. Working out helps. Puzzles help. Sex helps.” He grinned.
She squinted and smiled coyly. “Is that so.”
He nodded. “I won’t fuck up again, Lydia. I promise.”
It was her turn to lift one brow.
“Okay, I probably will. You’re right. But I won’t fuck up this badly next time. I swear. It’ll probably be something more like I forgot to take the recycling out, or I’m too amazing of a husband and your friends are getting mad at you because your husband is making all of their husbands look bad.” He hit her with the dimples again.
She snorted a laugh and rolled her eyes, but the smile never wavered from her lips. Lips he’d really missed kissing. “Already talking about being my husband, eh? Pretty confident there, Rexworth.”
“Not confident. I’m just listening to my gut.”
“And what is your gut telling you?”
“That this is worth fighting for. What’s your gut telling you?”
She smiled up at him and tightened her hold, gripping the back of his shirt in her little fists. “That people make mistakes, but it’s those who learn from them that are the ones worth giving a second chance to.”
“And I’m worth a second chance?”
Slowly, she nodded. “I think you’re worth fighting for.”
“Is it telling you we’re worth fighting for?”
She nodded again.
Thank fuck. “My gut’s telling me something else, too.”
“Hmm? And what’s that?”
“That if I don’t kiss you right now, I’m really going to fucking regret it.”
Goddamn it, her smile had the whole day suddenly appearing brighter. “My gut is telling me the exact same thing.”
“Better listen to them then, hmm?”
Then he dipped his head low, took her mouth and held on to her for dear life, because his gut told him she was his happily ever after, and no way was he ever not going to listen to his gut again. No fucking way.