by Amy Andrews
Della fell into the intense whiskey of his gaze. She wanted nothing more than to go to sleep with Tucker beside her, to lie all night next to the man she loved. But she shouldn’t. Now more than ever, she should be keeping an emotional distance. If he stayed tonight, he’d stay every night, and that would only make the goodbye harder.
Because she’d promised him an end to this, and she wasn’t about to renege. He might have given her faith tonight that maybe someone could love her despite her challenges, but that didn’t mean him. Tucker had spent three years of his life propping her up, being there for her in dozens of different ways, and she loved him too much to lumber him with her forever.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t strong enough right now to deny him something she also craved a little too much. She’d find that strength tomorrow.
“Okay,” she said around the huge lump in her throat. He smiled at her, and Della didn’t think her heart could possibly get any bigger, any fuller. Her ribs already felt stretched to capacity.
“C’mon,” he whispered, his lips brushing her forehead. “Lie down.” Slipping his arm around her shoulders, he eased them gently back.
Della settled on her side again. Pushing her hair behind her, she snuggled her head into the crook of his neck, his whiskers scratching her forehead. His fingers trailed slowly over the flat of her shoulder blade, goose bumps following in their wake. Silence settled over them—and not the kind of silence that made her nervous, made her want to fill it up, like in those early days with Selena. But the kind of silence two people who knew each other well didn’t need to fill up.
Still, part of her felt she owed him an explanation for her meltdown. He hadn’t asked, and she assumed he wouldn’t, because Tucker Daniels was that kind of guy, but, surprisingly, the thought of telling him what had happened to her didn’t break her out in a cold sweat.
To date, only Arlo, Selena, and the police who took her original statement knew the full story. Thankfully, Todd had pleaded guilty, and she’d been spared exposure to a courtroom full of strangers. The fact she wanted to open up to Tucker told her a lot about the depths of her feelings for this man.
“I wasn’t always like this, you know?” Her voice was low and husky as her fingers absently caressed the sweet curve of a pec.
His drugging caress halted for a beat or two before resuming. “Yes. I…figured.”
“Todd…he used to…he forced me to—”
“It’s okay.” His hasty assurance cut her off abruptly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know. But I feel like you deserve an explanation, and—”
“No.” His hand stopped and didn’t resume the caress this time. The ropey muscles of his neck seemed to tense. “You really don’t have to explain anything.”
Flattening her palm against his heart, she noticed the tension in his chest as she pushed up onto her elbow to look down at him. Gratitude welled up. Knowing there were men like him in this world made her so damn thankful. She understood he was trying to spare her from reopening old wounds, but she wanted this. “I know. But I’d like to.”
“Then of course,” he said with a smile.
Della returned his smile before resuming her position from earlier, his fingers resuming their lazy pattern on her shoulder blade. He was more relaxed than he had been, but she could still feel residual tension in his body—or maybe it was new tension as he mentally prepared himself for this conversation.
Hell, if her own pulse wasn’t fluttering a little at the import of what she was doing.
“I met Todd in my final year of high school. He’d been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Iowa because his father was going through some financial hardship. I’d been at school with the same boys for years, and none of them looked at me sideways because my father—or not my father, as it turned out—was strict to the point of controlling. But Todd smiled at me like I was something new and interesting, and I fell hard.”
Della smiled as she remembered those few heady weeks of attention. Todd had been told her father was a tyrant, but he hadn’t grown up in town and he didn’t seem to care.
“After about a month, we had sex. It was okay, I guess—quick and fumbly. I didn’t know any different, and the fact he loved me was enough. We’d probably had sex about a dozen times when I realized I was pregnant.”
“I’m guessing the shit hit the fan about then?’
She laughed at the apt description. “You could say that. Neither of us wanted to get rid of the baby, so we told my father and then his father—neither of us had moms anymore—and there was absolutely no choice, as far as they were concerned. We got married. I was ecstatic, finally out from under my father’s austerity, and I went to live in Kentucky with Todd and his dad.”
If only she’d had a crystal ball.
“They lived in the mountains miles from anywhere on some land with a rundown house, and the nearest neighbors were…well, I never met them. I didn’t know another soul, but it was a palace to me. I was free and in love, and we were going to raise our baby in the pure mountain air of Kentucky.”
God…she’d been so naive.
“His father worked in a coal mine. He was a lot like mine, big and overbearing, except he was also oppressively religious, and he never let a moment go by without pointing out our sin. Todd never tried to be intimate with me while I was pregnant because, according to his father, a woman’s body is sacred, particularly when she’s been chosen as a vessel for the Lord’s holy gift. And then I had a late miscarriage at nineteen weeks, and things went downhill from there.”
“Nineteen weeks?”
Della rubbed her nose against the scratchy growth of Tucker’s whiskers, touched by the concern in his voice. “Yep. I was in the hospital for two days, and all I wanted was to get back to Todd. Only…he was different. A stranger, almost. I think his father spent those two days pumping his head full of fire and brimstone and a whole lot of guilt.
The change in the boy she’d married had been bewildering.
“Todd was convinced the miscarriage was our punishment for succumbing to sins of the flesh. He didn’t comfort me. He barely talked to me. He went to work with his father every day and left me home alone too grief-stricken to do anything but stare at the walls most days. I made their meals, I did their washing, and kept the house tidy, but mostly, I was invisible. Todd certainly didn’t touch me anymore. In fact, he moved out of our bedroom. Until one night about four months later, I woke to…”
The memory flashed on her inward eye, and it took all of Della’s willpower not to flinch. The roil in her gut was as potent now as it had been then. Tucker’s hand slid around her shoulder. “You don’t have to go into the details.”
Della shook her head. She’d come this far. “His hand was at my throat,” she continued. “He was straddling my chest, pinning me to the bed with his body. His…penis was pushing into my mouth.”
She shuddered, suppressing the urge to gag. “I tried to scream and thrash, but I couldn’t shift him, and I could barely breathe. He kept saying it was all my fault for tempting him. That sex was bad, that it had made him a sinner, and that God had punished him by killing our child and now he had to punish me.”
“By abusing you?” Tucker demanded, disgust in his voice, his hand tightening on her shoulder. Della could feel the tempo of his heartbeat pick up. “Isn’t that a sin also?”
She stared at a point on the wall as those days closed in. “It was divine punishment, as far as he was concerned. And as long as he wasn’t having the traditional Biblical interpretation of sex, he could justify it.”
“Fucking…bastard.”
The anger in Tucker’s voice could have smashed granite, and Della absently stroked his chest, trying to soothe him. She understood his rage intimately. There wasn’t one single word Tucker could call her ex that she hadn’t already used.
“It happene
d a lot after that. I used to dread the night. Dread going to sleep.”
“Did his father not intervene?”
Della snorted. “Pa was an Old Testament kinda guy. He believed in women being subjugated to their husbands and in sins being punished.”
She hadn’t lost any sleep when Arlo had informed her of her father-in-law’s death a few months after Todd’s.
“Was there no one you could turn to?”
Della shook her head. “We lived in isolation. Pa had a phone that never left his side, but there was no house phone or computer. My father visited once. I begged him to take me home, but he just looked at me with cold, cold eyes and told me I’d made my bed.”
She hadn’t lost any sleep over her father’s death, either. Her mother had tip-toed around him all her life, and while he’d never been overtly abusive, he’d been a quiet menacing force.
“I tried to run a few times, in the beginning. But as I hadn’t grown up in the area, I didn’t know where I was or where to go for help. And they found me every time. That’s when Todd started shackling me to the bed in the basement whenever they left the house.”
That had been more frightening than the abuse at times. It had been so dark, and she’d been chained like an animal.
“God…Della.” He hugged her tighter. “I’m so sorry.”
Della shut her eyes, clinging to the raw empathy in his voice as she remembered. Her fear of the dark had started with Todd’s abuse and been compounded by her captivity in the cellar. “That’s where Arlo found me that night.”
“Thank God he came along,” Tucker muttered.
“I was out front picking some tomatoes from the vines when he first called by. He asked me my name, then introduced himself—said he thought I might be his sister. I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was trying to tell me, but he had the kindest eyes. I panicked, though. Todd was home, and I knew he’d be furious if he saw me talking to someone.”
Della had been so beaten down she hadn’t even thought of Arlo’s sudden appearance as her ticket out.
“Then Todd came out on the porch and told me to go inside. He and Arlo spoke briefly, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Arlo handed a card over and left, but Todd was furious when he came inside, waving Arlo’s work card around. Todd accused me of calling the police somehow and dragged me down to the basement. Just until the cop stops sniffing around. That’s what he said. Lucky for me, Arlo’s spidey senses were pinging like crazy.”
“Yeah. He’s a suspicious sonofabitch.”
Della laughed. It felt good to laugh in the midst of all this horribly heavy history. “He came back twice in two days, and on the third day, he kicked the door in, cuffed both of them, and found me in the basement. I’d never been so pleased to see anybody in my life.”
Her wrist had been in a state, and, to this day, Della still remembered the sting of her raw flesh. Lifting her arm, Della found the ligature mark that circled her right wrist. It was faint now, but three years down the track, it was still there. Tucker slid his hand over hers, bringing it to his mouth and pressing a kiss against the delicate blue veins on the underside. Then he tucked it against his chest, his thumb gently caressing where he’d just kissed.
“How did it feel? To be free like that?”
“It was…” Even now, Della struggled with words adequate enough to convey her feelings about that night. “Stunning. Within half an hour, there were blue lights and cops everywhere. Four years of hell, and suddenly it was…over. Thanks to Arlo.”
“He was like a man possessed after his father’s deathbed confession of your existence. He’d made Arlo promise he’d find you, even though all he had was a name and the town where he met your mother. It took him about five months, but he finally tracked you down. He was pissed at his old man, though, for stepping out on his mom and for not having checked on you sooner. But his father had said that your mom had been adamant about no contact, that she wanted nothing from him other than the child she couldn’t have with her husband and that she was happy. She’d begged him to leave things be, and he’d reluctantly agreed.”
Della knew this part of the story already because Arlo had recounted it in those days after he’d swooped in and changed her life. But she knew deep in her bones it hadn’t been love for her husband that had made her mom desperate for secrecy but fear of what he’d do if he discovered he wasn’t the biological father.
“I wish I’d known him. My real father.” Della drew circles around Tucker’s left nipple. “I know he cheated on his wife with my mom, and Arlo is still pretty pissed at him about that, but I’ve seen the family photos. They looked happy, and there’s a lot of affection in Arlo’s voice when he talks about his dad.”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess he…had his flaws, but from my perspective he was a good man. He wasn’t around much because he traveled a lot, but he had this way about him that made you feel like what you said was important. That your contribution to a conversation was important and he respected it.”
A tiny spike of jealousy pricked at Della’s heart. How wonderful would that have been? “Well…flaws or not, he sounds way better than mine. And Todd’s. God…Todd never stood a chance.”
Tucker moved his head to the side and angled it slightly. As he looked down his nose, his gaze found hers and held. “You sound like you’ve forgiven him.”
Della raised herself up on her elbow. His words had been deceptively relaxed, but his jaw was tight. “No.” She shook her head, her hair brushing her bare shoulders as she ran the pad of her index finger along his bottom lip. “I’ll never forgive him for what he did, and I’m not sorry he went to prison. Or that he’s dead.”
The prospect of Todd getting out one day had been like a yoke around her neck those first few months in Credence. It had her jumping at every noise, every shadow. His death had been the first hurdle she’d knocked over in her long road to recovery.
“But if three years of therapy has taught me anything,” she continued, “it’s that parents can really screw you up. So no, I can’t forgive, but I can see how people like Todd are made.”
Tucker slid his hand along her cheek, pushing his fingers into her hair, cupping her face. He gave her a half smile. “You’re a remarkable woman, Della Munroe.”
Della’s heart grew a little more in her chest. People like Selena and Arlo had been telling her that for three years. Hearing it from the man she loved, though, as he gazed at her with awe and respect, seeped right into her marrow.
But right now, she was done talking about the past. Right now, she desperately needed to affirm that she’d come through the other end and she was doing okay. That she was capable of feeling again, of loving again. Even if it could never be.
“You’re remarkable.” She smiled as she ran her finger down his chin and his throat and lower still. “Now…do you think you’re sufficiently recovered to—” Her finger stopped just above the line of his pubic hair. “Go again?”
A frown flickered briefly across Tucker’s face like he was having difficulty flipping the switch from their serious conversation to something purely carnal. But then it cleared, and she saw empathy and understanding before he pushed her backward and rolled on top.
“I can go all night.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Well…” Selena blinked as Della finally finished spilling everything that had happened between her and Tucker. “You have been busy since I saw you last.”
She turned from the window to look at Selena. That was an understatement. It’d been ten days since she and Tucker had first made love. Yes, made love. Maybe it was stupid, given the temporary state of their arrangement, to think of their sex lessons as making love, but, as far as she was concerned, it was what she was doing with Tucker.
Being with Tucker in the most intimate way possible was an act of love for Della. Every time he held her, every time he joined his
body with hers, it was more than a physical experience. It was an emotional connection. And every time he settled his hips into the cradle of her pelvis and stared down into her eyes, she felt he must be able to see it, too. Her heart so full of love it was actually brimming out of her eyes.
She should be calling it off. She knew that. Prolonging this liaison was only going to make it harder when it was over. Every morning, she told herself she’d end it tonight. And every night, she welcomed him into her arms and said nothing.
Frankly, she didn’t know how to give Tucker up.
“It’s been…” Della shook her head, still marveling at how good it was between them, how…intense. “Wonderful.” And torturous.
Selena laughed. “That good, huh?”
“God…Selena…” If only she’d known at seventeen sex could be that everything. No way would Todd have ever been able to get a foothold in her psyche. “The man’s some kind of…” She searched around for an appropriate word. “Orgasm whisperer. He should rent himself out by the hour.”
Selena laughed again. “I’m very pleased to hear that. And you haven’t had any issues? Apart from the panic attack you had waking up in the dark? No triggering or flashbacks?”
“No.” Della shook her head. Tucker had been the most considerate lover. Maybe a little too considerate. He kept such a tight rein on himself she doubted he’d ever do anything remotely triggering.
Selena pursed her lips and regarded Della for a moment or two, her head tipped to the side a little. “So why do I feel like there’s a but?”
For a moment, Della considered avoiding Selena’s question, because did the woman seriously need to know every detail? But the vague niggle that had been yammering in the back of Della’s brain since her first time with Tucker wasn’t going away, and Selena was there to be a sounding board. “I think he’s…holding out on me.”
Selena frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe out is the wrong word. Back is probably better.”
