Samantha
My whole body hurtand there was an insistent beeping that had my head pounding. I slowly opened my eyes, but it hurt like hell to do it. I couldn’t get them open all the way, so I just laid back down and tried to fall back asleep just so I could escape the pain.
I felt a gentle sweep across my hand that was very different from the pain that seemed to be radiating from everywhere else. I turned my head slowly and cracked my eyes as much as I could to see who was with me.
“Hey Beautiful,” Dax said softly. “Do you remember what happened?”
What happened? What was he talking about? I closed my eyes and tried to think back to the last thing that I remembered. Someone grabbed me from behind and slammed my head against the car. When I fell, I felt blows to my body from someone kicking me. I tried to protect my head and body as best I could by curling into a ball.
The memories made me start to panic as they flooded back, the heartbeat monitor beeped louder and faster as my heart rate rose.
“Shhhh Sam, it’s ok honey. I’m here. You’re safe.”
His voice was level and soothing. I felt a rush of something as my body began to sink back into oblivion. I remembered who did this. I’d only gotten a small glimpse of his face, but I remembered.
“Josh,” I whispered before letting the darkness take me under.
***
Mom? Dad? I woke upto the sound of my parent’s voices and Dax’s. The tense conversation was low, but I recognized who was speaking and what was being said.
“She’s coming home with us, Son. My daughter doesn’t belong in this town, she belongs with us in DC where her life is.”
“With all due respect, if she wanted that life, she wouldn’t have run away from it to be here with me.” My heartbeat skipped, the machine monitoring the activity gave me away and three pairs of eyes turned to look at me. No time like the present to face the music and my parents.
“Hey.” My voice was horse and airy, and I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sorry, Mom. Dad. What are you guys doing here?”
“Samantha.” Mom came to my side, grabbing my hand, tears filling her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
I winced. Mom thought she was a world class actress, but she wasn’t—at least when the cameras weren’t running and dad’s political career wasn’t on the line. That was what everything had been about, but it took me way too long to see it. Their aspirations meant more to them than I did. They’d told me to go back to Josh and put his indiscretions aside. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.
“Did they get him?” I asked Dax, completely ignoring my dad. I didn’t want anything to do with their goals or their family anymore. I saw how Dax treated Bow: messes, glitter, and unconditional love. He would never push her toward any relationship, especially if he knew what kind of person the man was and that he didn’t deserve his daughter.
Dax’s hair looked a mess, like he’d been sleeping here, and the scruff on his face suggested he hadn’t shaved in a few days at least. He looked disheveled and heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
“Yeah, they got him. He was caught on camera, so it’s a slam dunk case. He’ll go away for attempted aggravated assault if not attempted murder.” I sighed with relief and closed my eyes, overcome with emotion. He was egotistical and an asshole, but I never would have believed he would do this to me. I never thought he would ever put his hands on me.
I nodded and let out a relieved breath. Dax came to the other side of the bed and took my right hand in his bigger one. He pulled it up to his face and gently kissed the back of my fingers before flipping my hand and putting it to his cheek. A tear glistened in his eye and slid down his cheek, and unlike my mother’s tears, I knew his were real and unrehearsed.
“I’m sorry, Samantha. You never should have been at that hotel. You should have been at home with me and Bow.” Dax’s voice was gruff and thick with emotion. “Where you belong.”
“She belongs in DC, young man.” My mom’s voice cut through the tension building between Dax and me.
“No I don’t, Mom.” I pulled my hand from Dax’s cheek and looked toward my parents. “I don’t know where I do belong, but I can’t live the life I used to. I can’t live that lie anymore. As soon as I can, I’m going to sell my townhouse and everything in it. I don’t want any of it. Whether I end up staying here or moving on somewhere else, I don’t know. What I do know is I’m never going to let you and Dad run my life. Succeed or fail, I’m going to be the one driving my own life.”
After I said my piece, my parents were pretty much done with me. They told me not to come crying to them when things blew up in my face. I told them I wouldn’t. When they left, I looked back at Dax. “I think you know I love you.”
“Yeah,” he replied, taking a seat beside my bed and reaching for my hand again. I pulled it away and he put his hands on his knees.
“I love you and I’m willing to take a chance on us, but I need the truth about your past, Dax. I need to know what demons I’m fighting, because otherwise there’s no way I can possibly win.”
He swallowed and stood up, going to the window and staring out at nothing for so long I was afraid he wasn’t going to tell me. The silence stretched so long that I figured that his silence was my answer. He wasn’t going to trust me enough to tell me. My eyes filled with tears and one slipped down my cheek because it was over. I couldn’t trust him if he didn’t trust me.
“Bow’s mom, Rayne, she moved to Eagle Wind and brought with her a lot of hatred.” He took a deep breath. “She was my neighbor, kept to herself, and she was exotically beautiful. Bow looks just like her, and it scares me that maybe she’s like her in other ways too.”
I stayed silent as he continued the story. “By the time she moved into the house next door, she had already committed her first murder. It’s hard because I understand why she did what she did. The men she killed gang raped her cousin when she was in college, and one of their father’s was the sheriff before me.” He took a deep breath trying to get his composure together, “The sheriff forced drugs into her cousin’s system and threatened if she didn’t leave, nobody would believe anything she said. Rayne’s cousin left to go back home. She didn’t tell anyone what happened and coped by continuing he drugs the old sheriff started her on. Eventually, she took her own life. Rayne’s aunt died not long after that.”
“I thought she was sick and dying, but the truth was she was telling me all along she wasn’t worth loving because she knew what she was going to do. I was the sheriff, and I was in love with a murderer to the point I didn’t see it.
“When she killed my predecessor, the last man on her list, she came into my office with tears in her eyes and holding a gun. She confessed it all, everything she’d done and why she’d done it.
“I arrested the woman I loved, testified at her trial, and sat there as she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. It wasn’t until she was about three months into her pregnancy that I found out about the baby. She asked me to raise Bow and not let our daughter get sent into the system.
“Shortly after Bow was born, I got a call that Rayne had killed herself. That’s when I left Washington. I resigned as sheriff, and I left. I no longer trusted my own instincts or my own judgments. I named my daughter Bow as a symbol of something good coming after a storm, and so I would remember her mom each time I said her name.”
When he turned around to look at me, his eyes were cloudy with tears. “I broke the vow I made to myself, Samantha. I promised myself I would never love again, but I love you and it terrifies me how much you mean to me in so short of a time.”
“I’m so sorry.” My heart ached at what he’d gone through. I couldn’t imagine the hell he’d been living with over the last six years. “I love you, Dax, and I will gladly spend the rest of my life showing you how much and facing our demons head on. Thank you for telling me. My heart hurts for what she and her family went through. I can’t imagine being in that much pain and going through that situation.”
Dax moved back to the bed and leaned down, kissing me gently. It didn’t matter how soft his kiss was, I felt it straight down to my soul. He was the man I was supposed to be with for the rest of my life. My desperate measure brought me to the man of my dreams.