Waking hadn’t been the same.
The light had been different, for one. In spite of the basement’s dark corridors, the rooms they always kept Sara in were brightly lit, too bright most of the time. There had been no stab through her eyelids when she’d woken up this time, and when she’d opened her eyes and been greeted by the soft shadows of Josh’s face, she was convinced she was dreaming.
Those dreams turned very quickly into a nightmare when she saw the face of the man who held her close.
Instinct took over, and she battled as best she could, clinging to the one who at least hadn’t hurt her yet. If that was their intention, if they wanted to catch her off guard to force her allegiance to a new captor, it succeeded, at least temporarily. She couldn’t look at Cameron’s face and not feel every burn and every cut and every shred of agony he’d inflicted over the past two years. She was half-convinced she would bleed just by his presence. She couldn’t even think about relaxing until long after he’d gone.
Except…her captor wasn’t what he appeared. Or rather, he was exactly as he appeared. For the first time in months, a faint glimmer of hope flared inside her heart. It blinked out almost immediately, of course, because hope was too fragile to risk revealing. They always used whatever chink they could find. Sara wouldn’t be so foolish to hand over an opening even now.
It took repeating words back to her only Josh would know for hope to return. She searched his face, noting how he looked different than the dreams she’d concocted to save whatever humanity she had left. His brown hair was longer, the ends curling, and there was a scar snaking along his jaw, but stubble he had never worn before hid it mostly from view. The eyes, though…
The eyes were exactly the same.
She cried in relief. She cried in joy. She cried simply because she truly felt something other than anguish for the first time in a very long time. All the while, his reassuring hands never stopped stroking her back, and his voice stayed soft in her ear, and Sara thought she could stay like that forever.
But she didn’t. Because the one lesson she had learned was that it was better to give something up rather than have it torn out of her bleeding hands.
She pulled back, reluctant to separate from his warm body. Lifting a hand to her face, she wiped away the last of her tears. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t. Don’t apologize.” Josh looked at her with glistening eyes. “Please don’t apologize.” He sniffed and wiped his nose, a gesture that made him look about five years old. “I was so…” His words faltered and he tightened his arms around her, like he was afraid she’d disappear.
With the rush of adrenaline now abating, Sara lacked the energy to resist his embrace, even though that was the farthest thing from her mind. She didn’t remember his arms seeming so long before, and it took a few seconds of staring at them for her to realize Josh wasn’t the one who had changed. She was thinner. There was less of her to hold. There was less of her everywhere.
She lifted her heavy head to look at him, and the sight of his reddened nose brought a ghost of a smile to her face. “You need a Kleenex. You look like one of my kids.”
His smile matched hers, and he reached for a towel abandoned on the foot of the bed. He wiped his eyes and nose with a corner, then gently cleaned her face. Watching her carefully, he said, “Are you hungry? Cam went to get some food.”
His words brought back the tension, erasing her lightening mood at the blink of an eye. “No. No…that was Cam?”
“It was.” He frowned. “Who…who did you think it was?”
She shook her head. Talking about it was as bad as it seeing it. “I’m cold,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself as her shivering grew worse.
Josh reacted immediately, reaching across the short space between the beds and pulling the ruffled blankets off the mattress. He wrapped them around her shoulders, engulfing her completely. “I’m sorry. Is that better?”
Sara nodded. It was only partially true. The heat that still warmed the fabric brought with it reminders of who she’d woken up next to, and she ducked her head, hoping Josh didn’t notice the panic in her eyes.
“Sara…” He brushed his lips across her forehead. “I’ll do anything I can for you. Would you like it if…you only shared this room with me?”
The possibility brought her more to life than anything else he’d said so far. It wasn’t so much about not having to face those eyes as it was the implication the offer carried. “We’re not…going home?”
“No, we can’t right now, sweetheart. I want to take you home, but it might be too dangerous for a while. So we’re going to do a little traveling.”
“We. You, me and…”
Josh looked ill for a moment before saying softly, “I’m not going to leave Cam behind. It’s too dangerous. We’ll work something out. We’ll have separate hotel rooms. Get a second car, if you want. But we’re all in this together, Sara.”
“Are we?” The accusation came out without thought. “Where were you the past two years?”
All the color drained from his face as soon as she spoke, and his cheeks looked ashen and waxy. If she had struck him, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. Or hurt. “I know that I…I let you down…” His mouth worked silently for a few moments before he found his voice again. “To put it mildly. But I’m not going to let anything else happen to you. I’m not.”
“Don’t make me face him then.”
Josh swallowed. “You don’t have to. But we will not leave him behind…He took you out of that place, which means they’ll be after him, too.”
It was a mild balm, but Sara nodded in agreement anyway. Her Josh wouldn’t turn his back on Cam, either, and if she’d had any lingering doubts about whether or not it was really him, this banished them. But that didn’t make it any easier. It only raised more questions, crowding inside her already befuddled head.
“I thought…Who rescued me?”
“We both did. It was a two-man job. You know, I can’t do the things he can do.” Josh’s voice faded on the final two words, and he looked at her like he was trying to work through a riddle. “Sara, why don’t you want to see him?”
How could she possibly explain? Images too painful to process offered themselves, but that meant facing what she had finally escaped. “Do you know what they did to me?” she asked instead.
“No, I don’t. And you don’t have to talk about it now, or ever, if you don’t want to. Just answer one question for me, okay? Did one of…them…look like Cam?”
Leave it to Josh to be smart enough to save her from having to say it out loud. Sara nodded, watching him carefully for his reaction.
The sadness in his eyes only deepened. “You don’t have to see him. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he reassured her again, “but you do know our Cam…your Cam…would never hurt you. He’s going to do anything he can to help you, too, and keep you safe.”
Sara pulled the blanket more tightly around her. She heard the words, but it was hard to believe in them, no matter how much Josh might want her to. “I thought he was somebody else.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “When I woke up. And all I wanted was to…get away. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To go home.”
“I know. I know. I want to take you home. I promise I will as soon as it’s safe. Tell me what you need. Are you thirsty?”
“No.” She rested her cheek against his chest, breathing in his scent. “Because that means you’re going to leave.”
“I won’t leave,” he murmured. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”
If he said it often enough, maybe sooner or later she could let herself believe it. Her hand ghosted over his chest, not quite touching, and she turned her head just enough to graze her lips along his shirt.
“Lie down with me?” Sara asked. “Please? I want to fall asleep without being forced to, and I want to wake up…and not be there.”
Josh nodded, turning to lower her to the mattress. He made sure the blankets were still covering her before lying on his side beside her and pulling her against him. It seemed like he was touching every inch of her, gently warm and familiar. He even smelled right. He put his arm around her protectively, and positioned his other arm to pillow her head.
“Are you comfortable?”
“Yeah.” With her last ounce of energy, she snuggled deeper into his arms, already welcoming the thick cloud looming on the horizon. “The only thing that would make this better is being in our own bed.”
She was asleep before he had time to respond.
* * * *
Part of Cam knew he should be out getting the food Josh had instructed him to retrieve, but the force of Sara’s screams had kept him glued to the door, his hand on the knob as he fought every instinct he had not to break it down and go back inside. She was in pain. She needed him. Nobody understood Sara like he did, not even Josh.
It had been easier to stave off the urges after hearing the fear in her voice when Josh brought him up. She couldn’t even say his name. Sara. Didn’t want to see Cam.
Because she thought he would hurt her?
He loved her. The only thing that had gotten him through the past two years without her was having Josh at his side, having someone with him who loved Sara as much as he did, who was as determined to get her back as he was. It was inconceivable that she could ever doubt Cam or his intentions. The one thing they had always treasured was how much they understood each other, without having to speak or offer explanations.
The bastards who had ripped her away from them had destroyed far more than he had imagined. The vengeance that had burned in his gullet since finding her surged anew.
When the door opened, he was sitting on the floor next to it, his head buried in his hands. He didn’t look up, but instead blinked away his tears and asked, “Is she asleep again?”
“Yeah.” Josh slid down the wall, sitting beside him. “It didn’t take her long to drop off once she laid down.”
“Once you laid down with her, you mean.”
“Yeah. I guess you heard everything.”
Cam snorted. “She was screaming down the building, Josh. It was kind of hard not to.”
“I mean the parts she wasn’t screaming,” he said softly.
His head was pounding. “For what she was saying, she might as well have been.”
Josh put a comforting hand on Cam’s thigh, but otherwise, they weren’t touching. “We just need to give her some time.”
Time. Two years of their lives, dark and desolate and desperate, should have been enough. All his Pollyanna comments to Josh before she’d awakened, that she was alive, that all that mattered was she was with them now, made Cam want to retch. It wasn’t all that mattered. It was so far from all that mattered that he couldn’t see it anymore.
“How can she hate me?” he wondered aloud. His voice was rough from the tears that still wanted to come. God, he was so fucking tired of crying. He had actually believed it was all behind them now. “How could she ever think I’d do anything to hurt her?”
“She doesn’t hate you, Cameron. Not really. Somebody who looked like you hurt her very badly, and right now, the very large part of her mind dedicated to self-preservation can’t tell the difference. They’ve conditioned a certain reaction from her that has nothing to do with you,” Josh pointed out. “I know how much this must…hurt…”
“Do you?” He finally lifted his head, meaning to glare at Josh in fury, but the first sight of his lover’s swollen face tamped the rage. Sara hadn’t been the only one crying inside. Cam took a deep breath and tried again. “She asked you to hold her, and what did she ask from me?” His voice grew bitter. “‘Don’t make me face him.’ Yeah, you really understand what I’m going through right now.”
Josh’s cheeks turned a bright red, and his eyes flamed. “Do you think I’m happy about this, Cam? Do you think every second in there wasn’t killing me? You belong in there. More than I do. And we both know it. How do you think it makes me feel to soothe her to sleep, knowing the entire time that you’re out here, hurting just as much as she is? Knowing there’s nothing…nothing I can do…”
Cam gripped Josh’s arm, heedless of his strength. “Help me get her to understand. Don’t let her shut me out.”
“You know I’ll do everything I can,” Josh said, the anger suddenly gone from his voice. “I think making her understand I’m not leaving you, and that you helped with the rescue, is a step in the right direction. The safer she feels, the easier it’ll be.”
“She was fine with me when she was asleep. She knew me then. She let me hold her without a problem.” With a fresh burst of hope, he reached for his wallet and tossed it into Josh’s lap. “You go get something for us to eat. I’ll go back inside and slip in next to her.”
Josh grabbed his shoulder and pushed back against the wall with surprising strength. “No. Are you crazy? If she wakes up and you’re in there, it’ll ruin everything. She’ll panic and she won’t trust me anymore. I promised her she wouldn’t have to see you. It’s horrible, but there it is. Right now, we have to do our best not to upset her further, or give her any reason to doubt me.”
In his heart, Cam knew he was right. Somehow, the thought doubled his pain. “So you can see her, and I can’t. You get to hold her, and all I have are memories. You get to talk to her, and I get to remember her screams.” He sagged against the wall. “How? Tell me how I can do this, Josh. Because I don’t have the foggiest clue.”
“Maybe for now, I’ll worry about taking care of her, and you focus on finding out who did this. Whoever it was, they have a shapeshifter working for them. Or maybe they’re all shifters. And they know what you look like, apparently well enough to trick the person who knows you better than anybody.”
So caught up in his own hurt, Cam had completely forgotten about how such conditioning could’ve been possible with Sara. Another shifter. It was hard to believe that in their small numbers, one would turn against another in such an awful way, but it was the only explanation for what had happened to Sara. For what purpose, though, remained a mystery.
Josh had given him exactly what he needed, just like he had every time over the past two years when the need had arisen. The ache was still there, and there it would remain until he could hold Sara, and kiss her, and tell her he loved her without seeing terror in her eyes, but he could ignore it if he concentrated on the one emotion burning even hotter. His anger.
Settling his hand over Josh’s, Cam squeezed it, grateful when the other man tightened his fingers and returned the gesture. “Do you think she’s really going to be all right? None of this is worth it if they’ve stolen her spirit from her.”
“I think she’s going to be all right. I do. I saw a few hints of her old self, and she does know who I am. That’s definitely a step in the right direction. She’s going to be herself again, someday. She is.” He picked up Cam’s wallet. “If you promise to stay out here and wait for me, I’ll go get some food and take care of everything else.”
Cam shook his head. He hadn’t even been able to get away from the door; without Josh around to stop him, he couldn’t promise he’d be able to stay away from Sara, even if it was in her best interest. “We look like shit anyway,” he said. “Unless you’re starving, I say we wait. Let her sleep.” He paused. “We have to get another room for me. And move my stuff out.”
Josh pushed himself to his feet slowly and then offered his hand to Cam. “Why don’t you go get your room and I’ll get your stuff? She’ll probably be asleep for a while, if you don’t want to be alone. I don’t think she’s had any real rest in a very long time.”
Cam accepted the help to his feet. He didn’t want to be alone, but the thought that Sara might wake up and find herself without even Josh around was even more painful. Tugging on Josh’s hand, he pulled him against his body and held him close, kissing the soft spot below Josh’s ear.
“Only for a few minutes,” he said. “Just enough for you to tell me whatever you can about how you found Sara. She’s been alone for too long. I don’t want her to be alone again.”
Josh leaned against him for a moment. “I don’t want her to be alone either. But I hate to leave you, too.” Taking a deep breath, he stepped away. “So we better hurry.”
Cam nodded and watched him slip back into the room. There had been plenty of purpose over the past two years, months spent in resolute searching as they fought to find the woman they both needed, and there was still purpose now. The hunt for whoever had done this. The need to return Sara to health. But for the first time in two years, he was floundering. They were a family, him and Josh and Sara. They had always worked best together. In fact, Sara’s forced absence had only driven Josh and Cam closer.
Now it was different. Josh and Sara on one side. Cam on the other. For the first time, he was terrified his worst nightmare might come true, in spite of Josh’s assurances to the contrary.
He could lose both of them.
His steps were heavy as he headed toward the lobby.