Chapter Twenty-Three
Skye was still at the office, and his plane had landed three hours early, still technically late, but he wasn’t about to complain. Noah stood in his apartment, alone.
The scent of Skye lingered in the air, and it helped calm him. He’d left his suitcase in his bedroom and made his way toward the replica cell room he’d kept locked. It was still locked as he held the key, and he wasn’t willing to leave it for anyone to see. He never had any intention of using it on some poor, unsuspecting woman or couple. This was his sanctuary and hell.
No one shared this.
Opening the door, he stared into the past. That’s what he did whenever he came in here.
It transported him back to the past in ways memories never did. Seeing the truth of what he’d been through, it was hard for him to distance himself from that reality. This had been a defining moment in his entire life, what changed him.
Nights when he woke up completely drenched in sweat, panicking, he’d come here to know that he wasn’t the one at their mercy anymore. He’d taken their lives from them, and in doing so, he’d given back his own and Skye’s.
Just thinking about her filled him with a happiness he couldn’t understand. She was part of his life, his future.
Why had he built this … shrine?
Was that what it was? A shrine?
Stepping into the room, he looked around at the walls, picturing himself and Skye as they’d been then.
He’d done it … to remember her.
Leaning back against the wall, flashes of her growing up, but then of her in that room, the tears in her eyes, the hope, the pain, the fear, and above all else the strength. Being married to Scarlett, he’d missed Skye.
How had he not seen it before?
None of the women he’d been with had ever come close to being the strength that Skye was. She was in a league all of her own. One no one could ever compare to.
Running fingers through his hair, he couldn’t believe it, and yet, this was exactly what it did. He didn’t come in here to think about work or to contemplate his troubles. He came here for Skye. To remember her.
It would have been easier to find her, to seek her out, but he’d not done that because he’d been a fucking coward.
What if she looked at him with horror? Disgust? Hatred?
When they were alone in this tiny cell, their lives, who they were in high school, they didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the two of them.
Moving out of the room, he went to his small supply closet. One of the builders years ago had left a sledgehammer, and he’d kept it for a moment just like this.
Lifting it up, he walked back inside the memory of his past and began to attack the room.
This was in the past.
Mitch was dead.
Their tormentors were either behind bars or dead.
There was nothing and no one from that time.
Bringing it down on the floor, he began to attack, to decimate, to demolish the one final piece of his past.
He knew why he built it, and now he didn’t need it.
Noah didn’t know how much time had passed, but Skye appeared in the doorway.
“What the hell?” she asked. “What have you done?”
His expensive suit was covered in a fine dusting of cement. He dropped the hammer and walked up to her, cupping her face and pressing her back against the wall.