Staring at Honor, Harmony bit her lip, twisting her hand in her longish blonde hair. “You know that I love you. I love you so much, sis. Heaven and I spent years living with you, feeling how much you loved us in return, and I can’t deny that a part of me feels like I’m standing up here, stabbing you in the back. But, I’ve been watching you the last several months. Seeing you almost die…twice. It’s definitely given all of us in the family a reality check. Tomorrow…it’s not guaranteed. And I want you to be as happy as you can be in the here and now. The simple truth is that you aren’t really happy. You’re just… I dunno… existing. And that’s in large part because of the man I brought into our family. He’s gone now, but the scars he left remain.”
“Yeah, I know,” Honor murmured. “I’m wearing a lot of them on my body. Same as you, Harmony. Nobody made you go wading down memory lane though. Nobody made you talk about how he made you feel when he’d beat you for no reason. Nobody forced your hand.”
“That’s not true. Jake did,” Harmony countered softly. “He helped me. He was my sounding board. And he helped heal my soul. The same as Zeke is doing his best to do for you. The same as we’re all here wanting to do for you. Now, what I’ve been through… it doesn’t even compare to what you’ve endured. But I know from experience how good it feels when you can finally put the past where it belongs and look out over your life and see a bright future. The kind I have with Heaven and Jake.”
“Good for you, Harmony,” Honor whispered, her tongue thick in her mouth as emotion choked her. “I’m truly glad you’ve found that with Jake.” And she was. She’d only ever wanted good things for her sisters. And she wanted what they had, too, but she just didn’t see a way to get it. Not with the way she felt every time she thought of what had been done to her. The idea of sharing her scarred, disfigured body with anyone… of allowing someone – especially Zeke- to see the marks those jackals had left all over her body…just no. No!
“Honor, with patience and the right help, you can have what I found, too,” Harmony whispered as Patience reached her side. “Just think about it, okay? I mean, what would you say if this was Heaven we were talking about? Wouldn’t you want me to get her the help she needed whether she wanted it or not?” she implored, reaching forward to squeeze Honor’s wrist as Patience moved to her side.
“Don’t! Don’t do that? This didn’t happen to Heaven, and I expect you and Jake will make damn sure it never does!” Honor clipped, jerking her arm from Harmony’s grasp.
Looking up, Honor could tell Patience wasn’t exactly pleased to be here. Dressed in bright yellow track pants and a turquoise tank top that said ‘Bite Me’ across her breasts, she noticed that today her sister’s hair held indigo highlights – a much better look than yesterday’s emerald hue. “Patience,” Honor muttered under her breath. “You wanna add your two cents, too, I suppose.”
“Not gonna lie, I’m not sure about this whole thing we’ve got going on right now, but hey, I’ve never been good at holding my tongue. So, look, I’m not sure that I agree with how Aunt Orla and Zeke chose to have this out with you, Peanut,” she remarked, using the pet name for her sister as she shot a slightly scornful look toward where the sheriff stood beside her own husband, Abel. “However, I will say that you’ve had the dark cloud hanging over your head long enough. I know you like to keep our family stuff quiet, but maybe talking to somebody could be beneficial. An impartial opinion, you know?”
“And could you see yourself confiding your innermost feelings to a stranger, Patience?” Honor asked indignantly. “Really?”
“Heck, you get a couple shots of tequila in your sister and she announces the intimate details of our life stuff voluntarily to the world at large,” Abel pointed out, winking at Honor. “Or have you conveniently forgotten that two thirds of the town was convinced I was a lousy lover before I finally got her to marry me. Patience never met a piece of information she didn’t think was for public consumption.”
“He’s kinda right. I do have a problem with the random overshare here and there,” she confessed, sticking her tongue out at her husband. “But, you, little sister, have a problem with any kind of share. I think having somebody like Bree might help. What could it hurt to try?” Patience offered with a slight shrug of her shoulders as the last McKinnon sister slowly made her way toward Honor.
“It’s not the trying that will be painful, Patience. It’s the remembering and the reliving that will kill me.”
“You’re already dying inside, though, Honor. Do you think we don’t see it?” Faith asked, gesturing between the three sisters standing side by side in front of her. “We do. Every day. And it is torture for all of us.”
Honor pressed her lips together as she fought a sneer. What the hell did Faith know about torture? Nothing, that’s what. She knew Faith had experienced pain when Cain had acted like an idiot a few years ago. He’d been hurting, suffering from PTSD and had broken their engagement for a time. With hard work, a lot of love and a little help from their family, they’d found their way back though. But nobody had ever harmed a hair on Faith’s head. Nobody had shoved her to the ground and used her as a punching bag. Nobody had violated HER body over and over again! Who the hell did her sister think she was? “Faith, I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” the other woman argued impatiently, pushing her chin length hair over one ear. “How do you think it feels to watch the little sister you have only ever wanted to protect just grow more and more distant and withdrawn? You’re 24 years old, Honor! You should be out enjoying your life, but instead you wrap yourself up in your family and work here at the café. Listen, we all know how much you’ve been through… how bad it feels….”
“Do you?” Honor interrupted sharply, unable to take hearing anything else out of her sisters. “Do you know how it feels, Faith?”
“I…I think so,” Faith said with a nod, her light blue eyes confused at her sister’s harsh question.
“No,” Honor denied with a snort and a rough, empty laugh as she rose from her chair to face her sisters and the room at large. A sea of faces tracked her as she propped her hands on her hips, the soft flannel of one of the lightweight long sleeve shirts she’d stolen from Zeke hanging around her body. “In fact, I don’t think any of you know how I feel! But you all want me to talk about my feelings, right? So,” she said, holding her arms aloft at her sides as she slowly spun around, letting everyone see her, “Let’s do it.” Taking a step closer to Faith, Honor met her stunned sibling’s eyes with a raised brow. “So, you think you’ve got an idea of what I went through, do you?”
“I…maybe I shouldn’t have said…”
“Stop,” Honor snapped throwing up a hand as Cain pushed away from the wall to take a step closer to the McKinnon sisters.
“Honor, she didn’t mean to imply…”
Turning her head to narrow her eyes at her brother-in-law, Honor shook her head. “But she DID, Cain. So, I wanna know… from any of you, really, which one of you has had their face shoved in the dirt while what felt like dozens of hands ripped your clothes off your body? Who here has had her face pushed so far into the mud that you tasted it months later? C’mon! No? Nobody?” she asked when her sisters remained mute and not a single person so much as twitched in their seats.
“How about when they pry your legs open and take what you never offered them! When they steal the one thing that was just yours – your soul,” Honor shouted, so angry and hurt that her family would stand against her and force her into this position. It was wrong and she knew she’d regret it, but she wanted to hurt them the way they’d hurt her.
“What about when they took their fists and beat you until your body was in so much pain that you thought every strike would be the one that ended you? Did any of you ever lay there and pray that you’d just die so the pain would finally stop? Oh, I know!” Honor snapped her fingers dramatically. “Which one of you can still feel the cold steel blade of a knife sl
icing your skin when you close your eyes? Which one of you gets nauseated every time you smell a man’s sweat because all you can remember is that while an animal was rutting on top of you, he dripped sweat in your face,” she screamed. “Come on, Faith. Don’t be shy! You know how I feel, right? And everybody here seems to think they’ve got some kind of claim on my memories. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?” she asked Zeke hatefully, her livid eyes meeting his wounded gaze.
Faith’s breath hitched as silent tears spilled down her face. “Oh, God,” she whimpered.
“Damn it, Honor,” Cain cursed, shrugging off Zeke’s restraining hand when the lawman went to hold him back. “That’s cruel and unfair.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about fair, Soldier Boy! But you are right, Cain! It is cruel! This whole orchestrated event was cruel from the start, but you all wanted to pursue it. Especially our wonderful local Sheriff standing beside you,” she barked at the other man before pivoting back to face her sisters. “You’re crying,” Honor noted dispassionately, taking a stumbling step backward and bumping into her empty chair. “You’re all crying,” she said, her eyes slowly traveling from one sister to the other and finding each had tears rolling down their faces. “Tears don’t help, girls. They don’t stop when you cry. They laugh,” Honor whispered painfully as everyone stared at her in shock, devastation etched in their faces.
“Honor, I’m so sorry,” Harmony began shakily.
“Too late for an apology, Harmony. You all asked for this. Now, you have to hear it. Every single ugly detail. And you all need to just accept it. Not one of you have any idea what it’s like to wake from the nightmares, open your eyes into the pitch black darkness of your bedroom and lie there, terrified to move, convinced that every shadow in your room is a monster just waiting, poised to tear away another hunk of your soul. You don’t understand what it is to feel like one of those ghouls is waiting for you around every corner you turn, ready to rip another pound of flesh away from your body! Quite frankly, none of you know shit about this or about me. Not a single blessed one of you,” she breathed, shaking her head from side to side as she looked from face to face, each one appearing more staggered than the last.
“You don’t know how this feels. You can’t fathom how dirty and ugly I feel every day. I haven’t felt clean in eight years and I don’t hold out a lot of hope that the next eight will be any different! You don’t know how I have to work up the courage to look at myself in the mirror each morning. How I try to avoid it so that I don’t have to see the stranger looking back at me. Do you think it’s easy? That I want to be this way? But unlike you, I’ve accepted the way things are. I am as I am. ‘As is’, people! So, do me this one favor. Don’t you ever try to tell me you know how I feel because you don’t! You don’t and I’m grateful that you don’t. I wouldn’t wish this kind of awful on my worst enemy. You’ll all go home tonight with your perfect husbands to your perfect homes to be with your perfect babies,” she informed her sisters with blunt honesty. “From the outside looking in on it, those seem like pretty perfect lives. Congratulations. I’m happy for you. Now, let those of us that don’t have that live their lives the best way that we can.”
“But…” Faith began.
Honor nailed her sister with a hard look. “Just don’t, Faith. You said that I don’t live my life, but the fact is that I’m just not living my life the way you want me to do it. The way any of you want me to do it. What you don’t understand is that the fact that I have been living it…I AM living it….is a miracle. There have been so many freakin’ times that I just wanted to close my eyes and not get up again, but McKinnons don’t do that. We rise. We get up off the damn floor even when we’ve been kicked down. I know I did! But how I choose to live MY life after enduring the flames of Hell ought to be my business. I work so hard because if I slow down, I’ll crumble! I’ll remember! I’ll have to think about all that’s been taken and all I’ve lost, and I do my best to never do that! So, I stay busy. I work hard. I love my family. I find joy in the things I have left. My business. The babies. And up until now, my family. You people are not my judge and jury.”
Turning to look at her aunt and uncle, Honor took a deep breath. “If you feel like you need to cut ties because I won’t do things your way, do it. I can’t stop you. After today, I don’t even want to stop you,” she admitted wearily. Looking around at the sea of faces… her aunt and uncle, her sisters, her brothers-in-law, Diego, Maggie, Ice, Slade, Mack, Bree, Sunshine, Verlena, Bale, and so many more...it all suddenly became too much as her eyes came to rest on Ezekiel.
Slowly walking toward him, each step was more painful than the last as every bit of pain, anger and hopelessness boiled in her chest, coalescing into a throbbing mass of heated rage she’d never experienced before and never wanted to feel again. “You did this to me,” she whispered, staring into his eyes. “You!”
“Honor…”
“No one that says they love me could have put me through this,” she went on, each word tasting more bitter than the last. “You don’t love me, Ezekiel. You want to turn me into someone you want to love. I’m not her and have no desire to be. Even more so after today.”
“I do love you and all I have ever wanted to do was help you,” he swore solemnly.
“Then you failed!” she sneered, needing an outlet for her hostility. As the tall man stood over her, Honor knew she’d found one. He was, after all, the reason all of this was happening. “You did accomplish a few things here today, though,” she informed him with an unpleasant smile. “Things that I would have sworn were impossible.”
“Yeah?” Zeke said huskily, his pale gray eyes soft on her face. “Hit me with them, Kitten.”
“Oh, I’d love to hit you, Ezekiel. In fact, I’d like to run a knife through your guts just like those assholes did to me…what was it? Nine times?” she asked, maliciously enjoying the direct hit she’d landed against him when he flinched. “But, I won’t. I’m going to let you suffer. Just like the agony you just inflicted on me. See, you managed to take away the one thing I valued the most: my family. You made them choose a side and they chose yours.”
“Honor, there’s only your side here,” Zeke replied raggedly. “We all love you.”
“Bullshit,” Honor cursed, recoiling. “Don’t you dare tell me this was for me, Zeke. This was for YOU. It was about what YOU wanted for me. But, you showed them all… you let them see how weak and pathetic I feel most of the time. Thank you so much for that! You’re a real hero!” she screamed, slamming her fists against his chest. “You made them all look at me,” she shouted, gesturing behind her at the gathered friends and family. “You made them hear the ugliness that makes up my life. I don’t share that shit for a reason!! And it was all pointless. I STILL don’t want any freaking therapy!”
“Baby,” Zeke whispered, reaching out to her.
Honor recoiled. “No! Don’t you touch me. I think you made me hate you today, Zeke,” she wept brokenly. “You!”
“You need to listen…”
“I’ve done enough listening. I’m through talking. I want you out of my house. I want you out of my life!” she ordered, furiously wiping her tears off her face, which was a lost cause since more just reappeared seconds later.
Zeke shook his head. “Honor, I refuse to leave you unprotect…”
“Diego!” Honor whirled to find the scarred face of her upstairs tenant sitting in the corner, looking worried.
“Si,” he said, rising as he exchanged a look with Zeke.
“Can you stay with me? Apparently, I’m in danger. I don’t know for how long I’d need you, but since local law enforcement suck at their job, it could be a while,” she said with a disgusted look over her shoulder at Zeke,
Diego waited until Zeke nodded unhappily. Slowly nodding, he murmured. “I’ll stay, Preciosa.”
Turning to face Zeke again, Honor shrugged. “Problem solved, Sheriff. Now, since I’ve obviously upset everyone here with the truth about my feelings, I
think I’m going home.” Looking around at the people that were supposed to care most, Honor shook her head. “It’s ironic really. You all look like you just went through a war, but it was one that you asked for. That whole ‘be careful what you wish for’ really does work, doesn’t it?” she asked before storming out the back door, Diego on her heels.
Chapter Thirteen
Zeke
Ezekiel Monroe had never really understood what it meant when victims described themselves as feeling numb. He’d heard that account from victims countless times over the course of his career. He’d listened to victim after victim report those feelings. He’d just never really gotten it.
Until now.
Numb meant the absence of all feeling … and Zeke finally understood the sensation well.
Because as he heard Diego’s footsteps following Honor out the back door of the I Don’t Care Café, there was no other way to depict how he felt.
He was numb.
He was almost grateful for the feeling.
Because he knew, when the numbness ebbed, the crippling pain would replace it. And he wasn’t sure how he’d survive that.
Her words echoed in his ears, the agony in them threatening to split his skull into two halves.
‘I think you made me hate you today, Zeke!’
Yeah, being numb was definitely the mind’s way of protecting the body’s heart. Running a shaking hand down his face, he inhaled deeply. Christ, if that woman didn’t hold his heart in the palm of her hand, he’d walk away. Fuck, he probably should walk away. He should probably run after the hatred he’d seen in her livid blue eyes.
He wouldn’t, though; he couldn’t.
Even though he felt as if he’d had his heart carved out and all that remained was a hollowed out cavity in his chest, Zeke still knew she was exactly what he wanted. Scars, secrets, and all.
Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) Page 22
