Because despite the anger and betrayal that had been burning in those gorgeous eyes, he’d also seen the almost unbearable pain. Knowing he was one of the causes of that hurt that had shined in her gaze was like a knife in his gut.
Well, fuck… he’d known all along that blessed numbness wouldn’t last forever. Too bad. Numb wasn’t so bad when you compared it to feeling gutted. Shifting his gaze to where Dr. Aubrey Daniels still stood beside the door, Zeke broke the silence, his voice scratchy and rough with the same feeling written all over everyone’s face. “What the fuck was that?” he growled, directing the question at the woman he’d counted on to guide Honor past her pain.
“I warned you it would be this way, Sheriff. What you just witnessed was a perfectly normal first reaction. I call it the purge.”
“The purge,” Orla echoed incredulously.
The doctor nodded. “Yes ma’am. The purge. Honor needed to get rid of some of the poison she’d been carrying around with her. Surely, you all recognized that it had do go somewhere.”
“Yeah. She just spewed it at us,” Harmony said tonelessly, staring into space as her husband, Jake, wrapped her in his arms.
“She just needed to get it out, Wildcat,” Jake murmured against his wife’s temple, holding her close.
“I know this is difficult, but everyone here needs to understand that a lot of what was just said by Honor was inflated by her out of control emotions. She felt raw. Exposed. And she struck out at you.”
“Yeah, we got that,” Zeke snapped, his jaw clenching. “The question is, what’s next?”
“Nothing,” Bree stated simply. “We wait. The ball is in Honor’s court. The most important thing is for everyone here, with the exception of Mr. Fuentes, to stick to their guns. You have to let her know that without help, you can’t keep traveling down this road with her.”
“You’re asking us to abandon our sister,” Patience seethed through gritted teeth. “And the simple truth is that I don’t know if I can do that,” she declared, looking at her family and shrugging her shoulders helplessly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. I don’t understand how making Honor feel like even more of an outsider is going to help anything. I know my baby sister. I taught her how to hold a grudge, and there is no shortage of McKinnon pride in this family. Convincing Honor that she’s wrong and actually needs help isn’t going to be the easy task you seem to think it is. In fact, I think both you and Zeke are underestimating her. This little pow wow here,” she continued to berate them as she pointed at the floor. “This just pissed her off. I don’t think it accomplished a damned thing. If five assholes that kidnapped and raped her over and over again for two and half days couldn’t break her, you two don’t have a shot in hell,” she hissed, looking from the psychiatrist to Zeke with peeved eyes.
“You think I’d ever try to deliberately break your sister, sugar?” Zeke asked softly, turning to face the pint-sized fury that was his favorite McKinnon sibling. “You made me godparent to your kids, Patience. You think I’m the kind of man that would ever put your little sister in pain if there was another option available? I’ve tried everything...everything but this.”
“Maybe that’s true, Zeke,” Patience conceded, her eyes glittering with tears she wouldn’t allow to fall. “But how successful do you actually think this was? She’s gone. She’s thrown you out of her house. Her aunt, sisters and uncle basically just told her that unless she got help, we didn’t wanna see her…”
“That’s not exactly how it went, Hellion,” Abel murmured, settling his hand around the back of Patience’s slender neck.
“That’s what Honor heard from us, Abel. You can bet your ass on that,” Patience retorted.
“Honor also finally told all of you what she felt. It was blunt. It was incredibly painful. But it was also honest,” Bree stated softly. “It hurt to hear and it’ll take you all a while to recover, but it was a start.”
“You call that a start? ‘Cause it sounded like a finish to me, Doc. I changed that baby’s diapers,” Orla whispered, clutching her husband’s hand for support. “I’ve never, not ever, seen her that mad.”
“Nobody’s ever forced her to talk about the things that bother her, either,” Bree countered gently as she looked around at the shell-shocked family members of Honor McKinnon. “I know it doesn’t feel good, but in order to take a step forward, this had to happen. Honor has to recognize that she needs help and she has to now draw that conclusion on her own. You’ve now told her how you feel and the only alternative you’ll accept. She knows the offer of help is on the table. Now, we have to wait for her to take it. It’s vitally important to give her distance now. If you’re standing in the dark with her, holding her hand, then she’s never going to be brave enough to take a step out of the shadows.”
“She’s got a stalker that’s obviously determined to cause her more harm. The shadows are exactly where I don’t want her!” Zeke spat, the knowledge that there was an unknown entity out there gunning for his woman making him feel vaguely homicidal. “I can’t afford to just stand by and twiddle my thumbs. Not if she could be hurt in the meantime.”
“Oh, please,” Patience scoffed. “Right now Honor wouldn’t serve you a glass of ice water if your tongue was on fire. You really think she’d let you in the house with her?”
Zeke frowned even though he recognized Patience was right. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that if he stepped foot on McKinnon land right now, it’s likely he’d leave in a body bag. Like Honor’s aunt, he’d never seen his Kitten so irate. “How long do we wait?” he bit out, directing his question toward Bree.
“I can’t answer that,” Bree returned. “It’s different for every patient.”
“Look, Zeke, I know you’re second guessing yourself now, man, but my sister is the best at what she does. No bullshit about that. She’s not a miracle worker, though. Right now, the ball is in Honor’s court and it’s going to take time,” Mack Daniels reminded the lawman solemnly.
“Waiting isn’t my strong suit, Mack, and time isn’t something that we have an endless supply of here. She’s got a week. Then, I’m storming the gates, putting her in handcuffs and dragging her to Bree’s office.”
“I’m not exactly sure how therapeutic that would be,” Bree remarked uneasily, shooting an uncertain look toward Honor’s sisters.
“I’m not certain I care,” Zeke retorted, lifting a hand to wrap around the back of his tense neck. “Going a week without her is already gonna be hell. I won’t agree to stay away from her longer than that.”
Bree inclined her head toward him slightly. “Let’s just agree to take it day by day.”
Zeke ran a hand down his weary face. “I need some air.” Crossing the room to squat in front of Aunt Orla’s chair, he took the elderly woman’s fragile hands in his. “Thank you for being willing to try this, Miss Orla. I know this isn’t any easier on you, Jethro, and the girls than it is for me. It meant the world that you were willing to back me up.”
“Son, listen to me. I could ask for no man better to love my Honor as well as you do,” Orla praised the sheriff gently, patting his warm cheek. “Just keep faith. Our girl will come around. She has to go now. Let her lick her wounds and think on what got said here today. She’s a bright one, our Honor. She’ll reach the right conclusion, Zeke. We just have to wait for her to get there on her own. You hear me?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. I hear. You’re right. We’ll bring her around; I’ve no doubt of that. We might have to hogtie her and drag her to the conclusion we want, but we’ll get her there,” Zeke vowed, squeezing the old lady’s hand before rising to his feet, nodding at Honor’s sisters and heading toward the door. He meant what he said, but like Honor, for the moment he just wanted to find a quiet place to patch up his own emotional injuries.
Yeah, he just wanted to find the nearest open road, point his SUV toward the sun and drive until the pain in his chest ebbed.
He had a feeling he’d be driving for a while.
Chapter Fourteen
Five Days Later
4:30 am
Honor
Running her fingers through her tangled blond hair, Honor stood, naked, in front of the full length mirror in her bathroom. Glaring at her reflection, her nose curled as she forced her eyes to travel up and down her body. God, she despised what she saw. Mostly because the image looking back at her hadn’t changed.
It never did.
It was the same flawed form she always saw when she took off her clothes. From abdomen to breast, her midriff was riddled with puckered scars. Most were old, present but faint. A couple were newer, still appearing dark and raw, compliments of her car accident several months ago. All of them, however, had one thing in common. Each one was ugly, a blatant reminder of a past she’d rather forget.
Even now, from her belly to her abdomen up to the underside of her breasts, her skin looked like a spider web of scars. Some of the cuts she’d endured had been shallow, leaving behind only faintly, barely raised lines. But the other slashes… they’d been deep, leaving behind marred flesh and roughly raised skin. Then there were all the incision marks where surgeons had operated to try and repair the damage those savages had left behind. Tracing one particularly bumpy ridged scar with her index finger, Honor’s eyes clouded as she stared at the mutilated flesh. When it had been fresh, the wound had run down to her belly button and it had hurt so badly it had kept her up at night.
Now, it still kept her up at night, just for different reasons. Truthfully, she could probably name a thousand different memories of her ordeal eight years ago that kept her awake while the rest of the world slumbered peacefully. Lately, she’d found herself jealous of those that could slide into dreamland so effortlessly. She envied their ability to sleep more than a few minutes without waking up startled or screaming.
Thankfully, her new bodyguard was a sound sleeper. In the past five days Diego Fuentes had stayed in her home, she’d only awakened him twice with her nightmares. But unlike when Ezekiel had stayed with her, Diego didn’t crawl in bed and hold her in his strong arms until her tremors stopped. He didn’t whisper gentle words against her ear until her panicked heartbeat slowed.
No, Diego had kept an acceptable distance between them as he had stood stiffly in the doorway of her bedroom, his big body on red alert, and asked her if she was alright, and very unlike Zeke, Diego had taken her word at face value when she’d said she was fine and to go back to bed. The tall, scarred man had simply nodded and gone back to the couch without a word. He hadn’t gently urged her to talk about what had woken her the way Zeke did. He hadn’t drawn her head against his chest and let the soothing sound of his heartbeat console her.
Honor sighed as she glanced at the wrist watch Zeke had given her for her eighteenth birthday. It was only half past four in the morning and she knew she’d never go back to sleep now. Not that she’d slept much at all in the past five nights without Zeke. Even with Diego here in her house with her, she was still scared and afraid to close her eyes. And while she knew the dangerous Spanish man had a soft spot for her and would protect her with his life if necessary, he didn’t have that unique ability to chase away her nightmares in the way Zeke did.
Oh, she knew it wasn’t fair of her to compare the two men. In the scope of things, while Diego had proven himself time and again to be an ally to the McKinnons, she barely knew anything about him other than the fact that he was a reformed criminal that had willingly helped the DEA bring down his father, Esteban Fuentes, one of the premiere drug lords in Mexico. Diego now worked with her brother-in-law, Jake, in his security business and the foreign man mostly kept his thoughts and comments to himself.
Zeke, however, had been around all her life and had been watching over her for years, she thought as she reached up to touch the dreamcatcher charm on the necklace he’d given her on Valentine’s Day. Until the past week, a day had never passed that she hadn’t seen him at least once. And the same was true with her family. The fact that she hadn’t spoken to any of them over the last several days was beginning to wear on her. She wanted to know if everyone was alright. She wanted to see her triplet niece and nephews and measure how much those babies had grown. She wanted to steal her six year old niece, Heaven, and spend a day making cookies with her. She wanted to gossip with her sisters and get a hug from her aunt and uncle. But most of all, she wanted Ezekiel to hold her until the noise in her head quieted. Depressingly, ever since that God awful intervention nearly a week ago, she’d avoided all of them. Partly because she was still hurt that they’d felt the need to gang up on her, but mostly because she was embarrassed over the things she’d said to those that loved her.
Especially to her Ezekiel, she thought as shame nearly choked her.
She still couldn’t believe she’d told him that she thought she hated him. God knew it wasn’t true. She could never hate a man who had devoted his own life to making sure she was safe. But she’d felt so blindsided by what he’d done, made vulnerable and exposed in front of the very people she wanted to keep from knowing how very out of control she felt all the time. Foolishly, she had struck out at the one man that she knew cared the most for her. She’d done a lot of thinking this past week. Alone, with only a silent, mostly uncommunicative Diego for company, she’d had plenty of time on her hands to mull things over in her mind. And while she couldn’t allow herself to believe Zeke was actually in love with her, she had come to accept that he did love her in a fashion. The evidence was in everything he did for her. Up to and including planning a horribly public intervention in an effort to force her to get help facing her demons.
And she’d paid him back by telling him she thought she hated him.
Certainly not one of her proudest moments.
Tiredly reaching for her warm flannel robe hanging on the back of the door, she slid it on, cinching the belt tightly at her waist before reaching for the hairbrush on her vanity. Quickly taming her tresses into some semblance of order, she drew her hair into a high ponytail, grimacing when she noticed how pale and sunken her cheeks had become. She knew she’d been neglecting herself, barely eating or sleeping, but her appetite was gone and sleeping meant dreaming. Since her dreams were exclusively of the nightmare variety, she avoided closing her eyes like the plague.
Satisfied that she looked as well as she could with only an hour and forty minutes of sleep during the night, Honor slowly and quietly made her way into the kitchen, surprised to see that Diego had beaten her up and to the coffeepot this morning. Meeting his keen eyes – eyes that saw entirely too much – she offered him a half-hearted smile. “Good morning, Diego,” she greeted as the towering man leaned against the counter beside the coffee maker. Watching him from the corner of her eye as she reached inside one of the overhead cabinets for a mug, Honor noted that Diego’s normally swarthy skin looked even darker in the early morning shadows of the kitchen. “Did you sleep well?” she asked as she poured herself some of the coffee from the pot.
“No. Sleep was difficult to find last night, Preciosa,” his deep voice rumbled as he lifted his own cup to his lips and took a sip as he seemed to clock her progress across the room as she moved to sit at the kitchen table.
Already dressed in one of the immaculate suits he seemed to favor, Honor wondered if he had some kind of meeting later in the morning as she studied him over the rim of her blue enamel mug. “I’m sorry. You know, that offer of one of the spare bedrooms upstairs is still open,” she offered hopefully. “I hate the thought of you being uncomfortable when you are staying here to help me.”
“The living room has a direct line of sight to your bedroom, Chiquita.”
“Chiquita?” Honor repeated softly, mimicking his pronunciation of the word. “That’s a new one? You aren’t calling me a banana, are you?” she asked, giving him a hard look.
Diego chuckled. “In my language it means ‘little one’, Honor.”
“Oh,” Honor remarked with a small nod. “That’s okay then. It’s still dark out,�
�� she noted, nodding toward the window above the sink. “Have you been up long?”
“A few hours,” he answered, his deep voice thick with his Spanish accent.
“My roaming throughout the house kept you up again, didn’t it?” Honor asked huskily, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. He didn’t answer her question, but she saw the truth in his dark eyes. If only that stupid phone call on her cell hadn’t awakened her, maybe last night would have been the night that she’d finally been able to sleep through until morning. And the kick in the teeth was the call had been yet another damn hang-up. Empty air followed by the sound of somebody breathing. The first couple of times it happened, she thought maybe it was Zeke, but he never would have called from an unavailable number and he wouldn’t have been able to stay silent after she started lecturing. No, it was probably some moron that had programmed the wrong number into his phone. If it kept up, she was gonna have to ask her cell company for a new number. Guiltily, she met Diego’s eyes. “I’m really sorry, Diego,” she mumbled, humiliation swamping her as she realized that now her demons were keeping more than just her awake at night.
“No te preocupes,” Diego declared dismissively. Seeing the look of confusion in her eyes, he grinned. “It means ‘don’t worry about this’ in your language.”
“Thanks,” Honor murmured, staring down into her steaming cup.
“You miss him, Preciosa,” Diego noted gently. “This, I can see clearly.”
“What?”
“Your sheriff. You miss him, mi querida. It is written all over that very pretty, but very sad face of yours. It is why you don’t sleep. It is why you walk the floors like a ghost during the night. Why do you do this to yourself? Why not go to the man who loves you so deeply?”
“I….Zeke isn’t mine, Diego. Besides, he betrayed me,” she asserted. “Ambushing me in front of half the town is not exactly the action of a man in love with a woman.”
Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) Page 23
