by Nashoda Rose
Free? Was I, though? Physically I was, but mentally, I was trapped within my body. Afraid of shadows, of what was around the next corner.
Jedrik got up, cleared his throat, and then punched Hack in the shoulder when he continued to shovel food into his mouth. “What?”
Jedrik raised his brows.
Hack looked at me then Anstice. “Right. Yeah.”
They picked up their plates and left the dining room.
As soon as they did, Anstice leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. “I don’t know what happened to you. All I know is what Quill told us last night and what my husband told me from when Ryker was held captive.” She reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. “And what my body tells me.”
I slipped my hand out from under hers and placed it in my lap. The Wraith woman, Genevieve, was able to get into my head when she touched me, and I wasn’t chancing Anstice being able to do that, too.
Anstice continued, “You know about us and our abilities?” I nodded. “Well, I’m a Scar Healer.” Anton had talked about Healers a lot because he’d wanted to get his hands on one. “I’m able to heal wounds and I feel when a body is hurting.” She paused. “Your body is hurting, Rayne.”
I knew my body was hurting, but I was screwed up and self-destructing. It had been too long living this way, and now I couldn’t find my way back. I didn’t know if I wanted to.
She stood. “Come on. I’ll show you the movies.”
Anstice laughed while tapping her finger on the computer screen to a movie called Mr. and Mrs. Smith. “Look at this.” She pointed to Jedrik’s comment and rating below. “This is so him. Triple ten and, ‘She can shoot me anytime.’” She rolled her eyes. “He’s harmless, but a total player. He and Delara are best friends. You’ll meet her soon. Right now, she’s living at my best friend’s place above her art gallery.”
I kind of guessed that about Jedrik by his wink and cocky smile. My eyes shifted down the screen and stopped on Hannah’s name. There was a ten rating and the comment, ‘Now he is one hot guy.’ A bold line stroked out the word ‘he’ and Hannah had replaced the name with ‘Ryker.’
Oh, my God. “Hannah,” I whispered.
Hannah had been Ryker’s wife. My husband’s men had killed her and kidnapped Ryker when they raided the house in Newfoundland. I still heard Ryker’s haunted, anguished cry in my dreams as Hannah’s name tore from his lungs.
Anton had strapped him to a cold steel table and made me watch as they stuck needles in his arms to give him drugs, forcing him to submit.
“Hannah stayed here a few days a number of years ago. I never had the chance to meet her, as it was before I met Keir,” Anstice said.
Ryker’s rage had emanated from every pore—the dark vengeance in his piercing eyes and the insanity in his screams. I’d stood in the far corner of the laboratory, my trembling hand covering my mouth, eyes wide with horror. When Ryker’s eyes locked on me, he became a crazed, rabid animal.
I’d run, ignoring my husband’s furious order to stop. I’d hid in the sub-basement, crawling in the small space between the fridge and the counter in the kitchen. I huddled into a ball and covered my ears, trying to block out Ryker’s screams.
Roarke was the one who found me hours later. He’d crouched in front of me and held out his hand, not smiling, because Roarke rarely smiled, but there was gentleness in his eyes, gentleness he only showed me.
I took it and he pulled me out, but he didn’t make me leave. Instead, he sat on the floor, propped himself against the fridge, and pulled me between his bent knees so my back was against his chest. Then he wrapped one arm around me and eased my head onto his shoulder while he gently stroked my hair.
He held me like that for a long time, silently, until I finally relaxed.
When he helped me to my feet and took me to my bedroom, he told me he’d upped the sedation on Ryker as soon as Anton left.
I never understood Roarke. He was a CWO, a Grit, and deadly. Everyone at the compound was leery of him and gave him a wide berth. But with me, he was kind.
Anstice’s voice cut through my memory and I jerked my head up to look at her. “Hannah was the love of Ryker’s life. The other half of his soul.” She paused to look at me before continuing. “His angel with one hell of a kick-ass punch, I’m told.” Anstice sighed and closed the laptop. “Ryker loved her more than anything. Now anger eats away at him. I don’t know if he’ll ever recover from the loss. Scars are much more connected to those we love than humans. It’s rare once a Scar finds his or her maite that they separate. It’s too painful to be apart.” She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I know it must be uncomfortable for you, with him being here, but Ryker would never hold you responsible for—”
“He’s here?” I staggered backward until the backs of my knees hit the couch. Anstice reached for me. “Don’t.” I held up my hand. “Please.”
He was in this house. Ryker was here.
His anguished screams.
His raw horror.
The pained, drug-filled sound of his voice as I was forced to stand beside the table he was strapped to, pretending I was Hannah.
I put my hand over my mouth as my stomach curdled. Air. I needed air. I couldn’t breathe.
I turned and ran for the door.
“Rayne?” Anstice called.
I lost my balance and fell into the wall, my head hit a picture and it crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. I righted and kept going.
It was as if someone had a grip on my lungs and slowly squeezed until I had no breath left.
I had to get out of this place. I couldn’t stay here.
I OPENED THE DOOR to the movie room and Rayne crashed into me. “Whoa, babe.” I wrapped my arm around her trembling body.
What the fuck? I glanced over her shoulder to the shattered glass on the floor then to Anstice and back to Rayne.
I put my hands on her shoulders and gently eased her from my embrace. Fuck, she was pale normally, but she looked even worse now. “What the hell happened?”
“I need to leave,” Rayne murmured, the flats of her palms pushing at my chest. “I have to get out of here.”
“Kilter, maybe we should call Waleron?” Anstice approached.
“No. I will ease her panic,” I said. “She’ll be fine. Go.”
“I don’t think…” I scowled and Anstice stopped. “It had something to do with Ryker being here.”
Anstice hesitated as if she was going to change her mind about leaving me alone with Rayne, but then sighed and brushed by us.
“I want to leave,” Rayne whispered. “Please, I can’t stay here.”
I stroked her hair; the instinct to soothe her too strong to ignore. “You can’t leave. You have no place to go.” Shit, maybe that wasn’t such a soothing thing to say to a woman who felt trapped. I sucked at nice.
But I’d never been one to bullshit, and I wasn’t about to start now, even if the girl needed some bullshit right about now.
“Ryker,” I said. “You avoided touching him when we were in the compound getting the straps off him. Why?” I bent slightly so I could meet her eyes. “What is it, babe?” She tried to escape my arms and I tightened my hold. “Damn it, don’t run from this.”
She went still.
Shit. I paused, hating to bare any part of me, but knew I needed to get her to confide in me. “I left you in that place when it was obvious you needed out.” I paused. “Then I heard you scream and I couldn’t get back. I fuckin’ couldn’t get back.” I closed my eyes for a second. “I don’t make mistakes often, but with you, I did. I won’t make the same mistake. I can’t. It’s against my code.”
Eyes downcast, she said, “I want to be alone.” I reluctantly released her from my arms, but I wasn’t leaving her alone like this. Fuck that.
“Not happening, babe. I leave you alone, you’ll disappear on me.” I saw the indecision in her eyes whether to trust me or not. She pinched the sides of her pants like I’d see
n her do in the air duct when I first met her. Someone else did that—Delara.
“Tell me about Ryker?” I urged.
The energy around her rose again and I knew, whatever it was, it would eat her alive with panic. Without asking—because if I did, she’d only refuse—I grabbed her hand and pulled her close again.
It took a good two minutes, which was a hell of a long time when I was impatient as fuck, before she spoke.
“My husband’s men watched the house for months.”
“The Scar house? My house?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes downcast. “He had Roarke—”
“Who’s Roarke?” I interrupted. Fuck, I should just let her speak.
Her body tensed and I knew she was wondering how much she should tell me. Why she needed to protect anyone from that hellhole was beyond me. He’d be dead now anyway. No one survived Quill’s blasts.
“He worked for Anton. I don’t know exactly what he did though.” She took a breath and the trembling eased. “He watched the house for weeks, giving my husband reports on each of you. I don’t know what was in the reports, just that he decided on Ryker.”
“For what?” When she hesitated, I urged, “Ryker? What did they want from him?” Here I was grilling her after giving the others shit for wanting to, but fuck, this was for her, not for me or the Scars.
She shifted her feet. “He drugged Ryker heavily.” She swallowed. “Roarke had notes on Hannah. I had to…” I caressed her back in slow, gentle strokes. “I had to pretend I was her.” Jesus Christ. “They put me in her clothes, did my hair like hers and I learned to talk like her.” A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and landed on my T-shirt. “I made Ryker believe I was Hannah. The love I saw in his drug-filled eyes, his words…” Rayne drew in a ragged breath. “It calmed him when I was her,” she whispered.
“Why did your dickhead husband want you to be Hannah?”
“I made him use his abilities,” she said. Her eyes refused to look at me and her body flinched as she said the words. She was avoiding something. “It felt like I was raping him,” Rayne said. “I hated it. I hated looking at Ryker and seeing his confusion, pain, and then his love for Hannah, and I knew… I knew he’d never see her again.” I’m going to be sick. I hate this.
I tensed as her thoughts filtered into me.
“Please, I can’t face him again. I need to get out of here.”
“Babe, Ryker doesn’t hold you responsible, and neither should you.”
Why did I have this need to protect this woman? She was everything I despised—fearful, untrustworthy, submissive, and thin as a railroad track. Christ, she was an utter mess.
But I also saw courage. That determined look in her eyes when she’d held my knife to her throat, daring me to kill her three weeks ago. That flicker of rebellion when I told her to come downstairs and eat. The problem was, she had so many issues from living in that place. Issues I might never comprehend or be able to help her with.
“Kilter?” Rayne’s voice quivered.
“What?” Nicer, asshole. “Yeah, babe,” I corrected.
“Can you tell Ryker that I had no choice? That I’m sorry he lost Hannah.”
“Shit.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Yeah, sure. But you don’t have to worry about him. He’s here, but contained in a private room. You won’t see him.”
There was no question she was hiding something. Whether anyone could reach the depths of her mind where she lay entombed, I had no fuckin’ idea. What I did know was I’d protect her from ever getting hurt again. I owed her that for leaving her behind the first time.
A niggling thought of Gemma rose, and I quickly pushed it aside. This wasn’t about my fucked-up past. Rayne had nothing to do with my failure to protect Gemma.
“Can I go upstairs now?” she asked.
I felt an ache in my chest, something I hadn’t felt in years. “This isn’t a prison.”
As soon as I let her go, she ran for the door. I wanted to bring her back, demand she stop hiding. Fuck. I wanted her to fight, damn it.
“She’s not eating,” I shouted as I paced the length of the library two days later.
It was Keir’s domain with floor-to-ceiling cherry bookshelves. A Persian carpet lay underneath the large oak desk in the corner of the room. A laptop was open on the polished surface next to a framed picture of Anstice and Finn. Keir sat in the leather swivel chair behind the desk, his eyes on the computer screen.
Anstice leaned up against the rolling ladder, hands clasped together and her foot resting on the last rail.
“Are you listening to me, damn it?”
“Yes, I heard you,” Keir said in a calm voice, a mere flick of his eyes toward me then back to the computer. “I’m sure the entire house heard you.”
“She ate nothing today. She shuffles the food around, but doesn’t eat. She needs to eat.” I slammed my fist into the door.
“Yes,” Keir replied, “but no one can force her, Kilter. Not even you.”
“Jesus Christ.” I had no recourse when it came to someone refusing to eat. I couldn’t very well shove food down her throat. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t eating. She should be diving into the food with the way she looked.
“Something else is going on,” Anstice said. “She could have an eating disorder. I don’t know, but she has some of the signs. There are many reasons why a person can develop one.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I retorted.
She pushed away from the ladder, walked over to the desk, and picked up a book, tossing it to me. “Read it.”
“I don’t want to read a fuckin’ book. I want answers.” I tossed the book on the chaise lounge. “Is she dying?”
Keir leaned back in his chair. “She’ll die if she continues to lose weight.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “So, what do we do?”
Anstice raised her brows. “Do you care enough to listen to anyone’s advice?”
“Of course I fuckin’ do.” I’d avoided listening to any of them since the day I stepped into this house, but this was Rayne’s life, and I was at a loss as to what to do.
“He’ll listen,” Keir said.
Anstice rested her butt against the front of the desk, her hands curling around the edge on either side of her. “Anorexia nervosa is a psychological disorder. It’s emotional. There are numerous explanations as to why it occurs. For Rayne, it could’ve been brought on by her husband. He may have instilled the odd comments in the beginning about her weight, or maybe he monitored what she ate when she was young. We know from what Quill said about the look of the compound that Anton was organized and methodical, so Rayne may have been in an environment where she needed to be the same way.
“At first, she may have discovered that by losing weight, she gained something, in a good way, but what she gained I don’t know. Later, it may have been more about her control. He may have told her what to do, what to look like, how to act, and she couldn’t find control in her life, but maybe she felt she could at least find control over her body.” Anstice paused. “No one can force someone to eat. It may sound odd, but maybe she felt like she lost control every time she ate. Or that she failed.”
“But she’s a toothpick. How can she not see that?” Fuck, none of this sounded good, and it was way over my head.
“From what I’ve been told, when Rayne looks in the mirror, she sees a failure. In her head, that may relate to her being fat.” She held up her hand when I went to interject. “Let me put it to you this way, she could never please Anton, so her mind may have created something she thought she could succeed at because she believes she can control her food intake. Starving herself does two things, she can win at it and it gives her control.”
“Why the hell would she care about pleasing that asshole?”
“He’s all she’s had, Kilter. No matter what he did to her, he was her lifeline. I don’t think we can even begin to understand what she’s been through or what it was like.”
“But she’s fuckin’ weak as hell.” I paced back and forth, hand repetitively running through my hair. I hated feeling helpless. I did what had to be done, but suddenly there was nothing I could do.
Anstice nodded. “Not eating is her power. She can slip inside herself and not feel. No emotions, no pain.” She sighed. “I’m not a psychologist, but I talked to three therapists yesterday and read the book.”
“The bastard is dead. She doesn’t have to do this shit anymore,” I said.
Keir sighed, the creak of leather sounding as he shifted in his chair.
Anstice shook her head and raised her eyes heavenward.
“What?” I said.
“She needs therapy, Kilter. You don’t recover spontaneously. It’s much deeper than that,” Keir said. “I’ve investigated several different eating disorder clinics, and I think sending her—”
I stopped pacing, my heart pounding. “Whoa, what? No. She is not being put into another compound. Fuck that.”
“They aren’t compounds. They’re first-class institutions. More like a spa with people who can help her. And she always has the choice to leave,” Anstice said.
“No!”
Anstice looked at Keir and he nodded. “Waleron knows of the situation. He’ll have the final say, Kilter.”
“You told him?” Christ, now I’d have to deal with that asshole. “She’s not being locked up. I’m not doing that to her.” I grabbed the book off the chaise lounge. “I’ll find another way.” I stormed out of the room.
Fat? She thought she was fat? I wanted to strip her down, force her to stand in front of a mirror and point out every single bone. Maybe then she’d see what everyone else did.
My hand tightened around the book. I was no saint, and getting involved with a girl who had serious issues was ludicrous. This was supposed to be simple. Rescue her and walk away. Now, I was going up to my room to read a fuckin’ book.
I SAT AT THE bar, hands cupped around my third pint, ignoring the subtle movements of what I suspected were alcoholics sitting at the bar with me. Who else would be drinking at this time in the morning?
