“I’d mentioned something about it being strange to Abram. You wanting to find a job here,” she jeers, huffing. Arching a perfectly trimmed eyebrow not convinced. “I knew better, thinking it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Little dangerous, Lorna. You thinking, that is.” My expression is grim.
“Don’t get smart with me, sweetheart,” she snaps. “You see, like knows like. The wrapping on the outside may be different but it’s easy to spot when you’ve both received the sameunfortunatepresent.”
Something between a laugh and sigh falling from her mouth when I wince. My stomach muscles contracted as my body flexed.
If I so much as blinked, I was going to lose it.Lorna knew.I keep my eyes focused on her. It was the only way I was still holding it together.
She was too confident, too overbearing, for someone who wasn’t correct.
The expression on her face grew, the more mine soured. She was enjoying my discomfort. Even if we were equals in this one thing.
“You don’t forget the face of the person who does something like that to you,” Lorna says. Her own eyes darkening, growing distant as if she too was remembering her abuser.
She was right though. I would never forget the man who’d done the same to me. My fingernails dug into the soft flesh of my palm as everything else inside me stilled all over again.
My eyes close briefly. That man had hollowed me the day he attempted to take my innocence. Left to rebuild myself after the foundation was the only thing surviving.
I fight through the familiar pain as it hits me. Going completely numb once again. The sensation snapping me back to reality as a single chill races down my spine. It was slow, like wax dripping down a candle. Sparse and quiet.
Just as painful to the touch.
Lorna’s face almost softens at my discomfort before it turns canny. Her look insightful. “That’s where that money went, didn’t it?”
I gulp. It’s true. Until that day, I’d never touched a portion of that money. Wanting nothing to do with Abram or anything associated with him after he’d abandoned me.
Guess I could admit she was right about what she’d said earlier.Like knew like.Only someone who’d suffer the same fate would understand why certain measures are taken. Why we do things after the fact.
Lorna’s voice grows raspy. The truth hidden in plain sight.
“Someone hurt you. Made you feel like you were nothing.” She pauses and again I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me or herself. Either way, it still hit me hard.
I could smell his breath on me all over again. Acid sitting in my throat remembering the scent of pork rinds mixed with stale beer; his mouth too close to someone who’d barely turned fourteen. Those cold, human-less eyes made my skin crawl as they scanned my body.
I used to tell myself that it was a dream, but it never worked. Nightmares are what reality is made of.
Her eyes blazed. The words rolling off her tongue in a heated fury. “Touched you when he shouldn’t have. Forced himself onto you. You’re a victim—”
“—That’s enough!”
The deep sound of a voice behind me making me wish the floor could swallow me alive in embarrassment. My deepest shame no longer my own.
I turn slowly on my heel, and my despair grows. I swallow roughly but get nothing but dried air in return. My throat as barren as a desert. It was bad enough Lorna knew, but when had we gained an audience.
My gaze snaps back to Lorna and the surprise in her eyes tells she hadn’t been aware either.
“That’s enough,” Abram repeats, heaving out air, sounding almost desperate.
My chest thunders at the gall in his tone. His temper in check, barely.
I felt stuffed as everything started to sink in. The surprise wearing off. It was one thing if it had been Abram standing there but he hadn’t been alone.
I could feel that I was on the verge of panicking. Each of the hellhounds forming a different expression. They all separate but each of silent enragement.
The hardest to swallow was Cole’s. I don’t deny it though, letting him see. A shadow crossing over his features as his judgment fogs seeing the truth.
A tic settles in his strong jaw, looking away. Guilt consuming me when he can’t stomach looking at me. Somehow that made me feel lesser than I was.