She needed to show me she could accept the type of relationship we both needed, before I could accept her.
* * *
Dylan
After the barbecue, I set off for the sanctuary in the fading light, hoping I could clear my head. When I got back, all the lights were off and I realized I might possibly have messed up. This job should have taken three hours, at the most, and it was now almost eight.
I got out of the truck hoping I could get Betsy around the back and settled into a stable by myself. The chain-link gate was locked.
Pulling out my phone, I saw a dozen missed calls and even more messages from Lisa and Steve. I called Lisa back, because Steve would have too many questions.
“Jeez, Dylan, what happened to you? I thought you’d been kidnapped or something!” she greeted me. I sighed.
“I’m sorry. I got waylaid at Lemon Tree Ranch. I’ve got the horse, but I can’t get into the stabl—shit.” I dropped my phone when someone put a gun to my head.
“Hello, sweetness,” a man’s voice breathed. Cold ice ran through my body as I remembered someone doing this before. Getting me from behind unexpectedly and... No. It was so many years ago. This couldn’t be happening again.
“Nghhhh,” I breathed in pure terror.
“Oh, good, you’re paying attention. That’ll make things real easy, won’t it?”
“P-p-please,” I murmured weakly. I finally placed the memory. My first week at vet school. Oh, God, no. Not after all these years.
“Begging for some attention?” He ran his tongue against my cheek. “You look like you need a man in you, to loosen you up.”
His hand moved to my breast, a gentle but clumsy pawing that didn’t match with the gun against my head. I reflexively tried to shake free.
“Uptight li’l thing. I tell you what, I’m in a hurry today, because you’re late with the horse, but next time we meet, I’m gonna hold you down in the dirt and show you what you’re missing.”
“No.” I whispered the word so quietly, even I couldn’t hear it. How could this be happening again?
I felt so weak and pathetic because I couldn’t fight him. I wanted to kill him, just to stop feeling so violated, but I couldn’t even move. I was too scared of what he might do.
“You’re gonna open the horse trailer, nice and slow, and give us the horse.”
“Please, you don’t want her, she’s sick,” I told him.
“Shut up and open the trailer.” He jammed the gun against my head, harder, and I wished I could do anything other than what he told me, but I was too scared.
Shuffling toward the trailer as slow as possible, muscles rigid with fear, I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon or to signal someone to help me, but there was nothing. Blueberry was a secluded spot, intentionally chosen to ensure the equines were able to spend their twilight years in peace.
I fumbled with the lock that secured the trailer doors, my hands bloodless with fear. I didn’t want to give this man Betsy. Didn’t want to give him anything. I felt dirty inside for doing what he told me, but I didn’t want to get shot, either.
I opened the doors.
“Good girl. And remember, I’ll see you again and you’ll do just what I tell you.” He hit me with the gun and I fell to the ground as pain exploded in my skull. I couldn’t do anything, as he took Betsy, who was oddly calm, as if she knew him.
Memories of something I’d long-buried floated just below the surface. Snapshots of a terrible event that had happened years and years ago. This had ended differently, but the deep feeling of disgust and helplessness was the same. I lay on the ground and tried to get my fingers to pick up a rock, to throw at the man, but all I could find were tiny pieces of gravel.
I don’t know how long I lay there. I vomited, at one point, and my head felt broken, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. When I was sure I was alone, I got onto my hands and knees and crawled across the gravel, barely registering the prickles of tiny stones in my hands and knees, until I found my phone.
Making sense of my contacts list was too complicated. I dialed the only number I could think of.
Chapter 6
Jake
I frowned when I saw Dylan’s number flash up on my screen. What the hell was she doing, calling me? I had half a mind to ignore her, sure she just wanted to justify her actions some more, but for some reason I hit accept.
“Dylan?”
“Oh my God, Jake! Jake! He took Betsy!” She was completely hysterical and it was hard to make out what she was saying.
“Slow down. Where are you?” I asked.
“Blueberry! I’m alone and there was a man with a gun and he took Betsy!” She broke down in tears. I knew I had to get to her straight away, and I wanted to take some backup.
Lawson and Clay had gone out with Alana and Kinsley to see a movie. When I went to Barrett’s place, I could hear him doing something loud and swishy with Harper.
Fine, I’d go by myself. I jumped into my truck and headed straight to Blueberry Horse Sanctuary, ignoring a couple of stop signs and a handful of red lights. There wasn’t much traffic on the road at this time.
I made it in forty minutes, which had to be some sort of record, but the whole way I was just stressing that Dylan was in trouble. I didn’t care how we’d left things or what she’d said or done in the past. Hearing her in so much distress was too much for any man to ignore.
I saw her truck. The horse trailer’s doors were open and flapping in the light breeze. I parked and got out, taking my gun just in case anyone was still here.
“Dylan?” I called. “Dill?”
“In here!” she cried, her voice warbling. I found her huddled in the back of the horse trailer, hugging her knees to her chest. Betsy was nowhere to be seen. Without thinking, I scooped her up and held her to me, sitting down on the hard floor and leaning against one of the padded sides.
“It’s okay, Dill, I’m here. I’m here, now. You’re safe.”
“Jake!” she whimpered, apparently unable to say anything else.
“Tell me what happened,” I urged her.
Slowly, she recounted it all. Someone had ambushed her with a gun and taken the horse. And he’d promised to come back for her.
“Did you see who it was?” I asked.
“No, but that voice... I’d know it if I heard it. I can’t believe this is happening again. Do I have a target painted on me?”
“What do you mean? Has someone stolen a horse like this, before?”
“Not from me. It was the other stuff. The creepy threats. It brought back memories. I was in first year of vet school. A man—” she stopped herself and shook her head.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard,” I said soothingly. But I wasn’t ready for what she said next.
“He grabbed me when I was on a farm visit... I couldn’t fight back. I couldn’t stop him. He held me face down in the dirt and... and pulled my jeans down and—” she couldn’t finish the sentence because she was crying too hard. I wasn’t so sure she needed to. Bile rose in my throat.
Suddenly, the way things had gone south between us made perfect sense. The reason she’d called the cops on me for spanking her, after consenting to it, was starkly obvious. And why she’d made out I was the bad guy this whole time. There was a real bad guy out there, and she’d never found out who he was, so she was always looking for any signs of him.
“Dylan, did you report him to the cops at the time?”
“I tried. They didn’t believe me. Said if I couldn’t even give them a description, there was no point reporting the crime.”
“Shit. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re calling the cops about this horse thief, and when they get here, I want you to tell them everything.”
“What’s the point? They won’t listen.”
“They will this time. If they don’t, Bob Halsey, Snake Eye’s local sheriff, will have something to say about it.” I was pretty sure we were in a different district, he
re, but Bob would help out, anyway.
“I can’t go through it again. Can’t put myself out there, only to hear that I shouldn’t have worn such a low-cut tank.”
“Is that why you only ever wear those big plaid shirts?”
She nodded. Jesus Christ, how had I never known about any of this before?
“I wish you’d told me,” I said at last.
“I guess it’s one more thing I fucked up, then,” she lamented. “I didn’t want it to be the thing you remembered about me.”
I dialed the cops.
* * *
Dylan
We spent most of the night at a police station. After making me repeat my statement over and over, and taking extensive notes, they decided this was worth investigating. They got a DNA sample from where the bastard had licked my face. And I was forced to re-live what had happened. All the while, my mind was panicking and trying to link this to what happened in vet school. They got a female officer to take my statement but it was still one of the hardest things in my life, to have to tell anyone, especially when I didn’t trust the cops to believe me.
Buried memories of something I’d rather forget were dragged to the surface. I felt dirty just remembering it all, let alone having to tell the cops tonight’s events over and over again. I was so sure they’d tell me exactly what I’d been told almost a decade ago. That it was my fault and there was no point reporting it since I didn’t even know what the guy looked like.
By the time we were through at the police station, I was completely exhausted in every possible way.
Jake had waited for me the entire time, and when I emerged from the room where they’d taken my statement, he stood up immediately.
“You okay?” he asked, and for the first time in two years, I saw genuine concern in his eyes.
I nodded mutely.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re calling in sick tomorrow, maybe for the rest of the week. You’ll stay at my place—you can even have Alana and Lawson’s guestroom if it makes you feel safer, I know Lawson and Clay always looked out for you. When you’re good and ready, you can start trying to get back on with things, but not a moment sooner.”
I wanted to argue with him. Wished I had the strength to push him away because I felt like it wasn’t fair on him, to suddenly be cast into the role of taking care of me after everything I said and did to him. But honestly, I was just too grateful that he was here, and that I wouldn’t have to sleep in an empty house tonight. It couldn’t be the same man who attacked me all those years ago. It had to be two random, unrelated incidents. And yet, I kept thinking they might be connected.
“My cat needs feeding,” I managed.
“We’ll stop by your place and pick her up, okay?”
I nodded.
We were in his truck, driving back to Lemon Tree Ranch, when I finally said, “thank you,” then fell asleep.
* * *
Jake
Dylan was out like a light on the drive home. When we arrived, I scooped her out gently and carried her across the gravel to my place. Holding her felt so right.
“Everything okay?” Clay called out of a window. Even in the dark, he must have seen me carrying her, but I wasn’t in the mood for giving explanations. Dylan was my number one priority, and until she was in a better state, everyone else could deal.
“No.” I left it at that, and took her inside. Nothing was okay, but I was going to take care of her, because she was Dylan.
After carrying her up to my bed, and gently tucking her in, I wondered about sleeping on the couch. I’d taken two steps away from her when she whimpered in her sleep.
“All right, all right, I’m staying.” I shrugged with resignation and got in beside her. It was the first time I’d gone to bed in a t-shirt and boxers since I’d left home. Usually I slept naked, but I wanted her to feel safe, and that meant she needed to know I wasn’t going to take advantage of her in the night.
I lay awake a long time, thinking things through.
She’d called the cops on me two years ago not because she was an attention-seeking liar, but because someone really had abused her, a long time ago, and she’d never had closure. In the meantime, she’d created a life for herself that seemed to revolve around keeping as far away from people as she could get. I wondered how many other women had done the same thing.
It must have spooked her when she realized she cared about me. She’d let me into her heart, but before I could prove she was safe, she’d panicked and pulled away. Now, she was being confronted with history repeating itself.
Life was proving she wasn’t safe, and I didn’t know if that would make her see even more monsters where there were none. I couldn’t fully know what she was going through, but I knew, regardless of how we’d left things, I had to be there for her right now.
* * *
Dylan
The lights were too bright. That was the first thing I noticed in the morning. That, and the way the cool breeze from the air conditioner moved against my skin.
I solved both problems by pulling the blanket over my head and snuggling into it like a crab stick in a California roll.
The bedding smelled of safety, constant dependability, and home. It smelled of Jake with a slight undertone of horse. I felt more secure here than I would have done at my own place. My head ached and thoughts weren’t coming easily. I was thirsty, but I didn’t want to leave the protection of the blanket so I fell back asleep, instead.
I think my brain had just overloaded in the past twenty-four hours and was shutting down or something, because every time I awoke, I could barely keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes.
“Dylan?” Jake’s voice broke into my drowsiness.
“Huh?” I didn’t have the energy to look around for him.
“I made you some soup. It’s in a mug so you can drink it easier.”
I heard the sound of earthenware being put down on the nightstand. I mustered my energy together and hauled myself out of the sushi roll of blanket that I was hiding in.
“You’ve been asleep for twelve hours straight. I fed your cat and she’s downstairs. It’s three in the afternoon,” Jake said gently.
My brain startled into awareness at the realization of how long I’d been here.
“Three? Oh no! I never called work! They’ll fire me!”
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve taken care of it.”
“Were they mad at me? I sorta bailed yesterday, for the barbecue, and now this.”
“I’ve explained the situation. Obviously, I omitted the fact you skipped out on work to go to our barbecue for a couple hours, since you were here to get the horse.”
“Thank you.” My heart clenched with deep gratitude. “You don’t have to do all this, you know. I’m not your responsibility.”
He stroked my face, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear from where it had fallen over my eyes.
“Dylan, you never stopped being my responsibility.”
I began crying again and I shook my head. “I broke it. I broke us. And then I ran away and told myself I’d done it for all the right reasons. I was sure you were trouble, but really I was just scared of how strongly I felt for you. I was afraid of all the things you made me feel.”
“I know.”
“You do?” How could he? I didn’t fully understand it all, myself. But last night had put one thing into perspective for me. Jake was safe for me to be around. That guy who had attacked me and stolen Betsy? That was what real danger looked like. A predator. I didn’t know why I’d ever been scared that Jake might be like that, but I felt even stupider about it than ever.
“Last night set the record straight about a lot of things that never made any sense.”
I looked down at the mug of soup. “Oh.” I guessed he’d moved me into the friend zone, then. That might be worse than when I was mad at him every time I thought about him.
“You need to heal from what happened to you. Maybe you need to talk to a therap
ist or someone, I don’t know. But you can’t move forward until you put all that to rest.”
My mouth fell open at the truth of his words. I was stuck defending myself from attackers, over and over again, even in areas of my life where there weren’t any bad guys. And Jake had gotten hurt because my past was still controlling me.
“Do you think they’ll catch him?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know. But the fact he said he’d see you again implies we haven’t seen the last of him.”
“At least he didn’t rape me last night,” I said. My cheeks flushed in shame when I mentioned the r-word. I’d been brought up to believe women and men could do everything the same, if they chose, but here was the proof that women would always be left at a disadvantage.
The idea that I had been targeted twice, now, by two different men, made me feel weak. And I hated being weak. It made me fight harder to prove I was strong, but I didn’t like the prickly, distant person I became when I was defensive.
I wanted to be able to relax, like other people did. And that privilege had been taken from me. Just when I’d thought I could finally let go of my past, something similar had happened, and now I was stuck in a loop of trying to protect myself against invisible, faceless would-be attackers.
“Which leads me to believe he will probably come back to finish the job,” Jake said.
My eyes widened. It was the thing I’d avoided thinking about since the bastard had left with the horse. I hated the fact he’d found me, alone in the dark when I couldn’t fight back or get help. The idea of him observing me, knowing where I went and what I did, was terrifying. How long had he been waiting in the background of my life, before he’d preyed on me late at night while I was alone?
“I’m going to call the local sheriff and we’re also going to talk to Lawson, Clay and Barrett, and make a plan to keep you safe. You’re staying at Lemon Tree Ranch until the guy is found, arrested and in jail. I’d also like to know why he wanted Betsy.”
“Me too. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s not a racehorse or a purebred or anything else fancy. She’s not young. Her resale value would be pretty low.”
Leave Me Breathless: A second chance romance Page 4
