She shivered. “Pretty much. I spent eight years with him.”
“What was the last straw?”
She leaned forward, setting her spoon down and pulling away from the men. “He was jealous—insanely so. He hated if I had friends or saw my family. I ended up losing every person I cared about because he’d twist things and manipulate them and ruin all my relationships. It ended up just he and me, and my dog, Sparkle. She was tiny, maybe ten pounds at most, but she was all I had. She stayed by my side day and night, made me not feel quite so alone. Well, Tanner came home one day in a bad mood, looking for a reason to get angry at me. He ended up screaming that I loved the dog more than I did him.”
Trent drew his hands into fists, the story like watching a car crash, knowing it was going to happen and not being able to stop it. Given that Sunny didn’t have Sparkle anymore, he had a feeling where it was headed.
“I told him that wasn’t true, but he wouldn’t listen. He got quiet, just stared at me and said he didn’t appreciate lying whores. He got mad like that a lot, blew up and afterward things would be okay again, so I tried to put it out of my head. The next day, I had to go to the store, but there was this pit in my stomach. The thing was, I always felt like that, so I chalked it up to nerves. I told myself I was being stupid, but when I got home, I called for Sparkle—she didn’t come. Tanner walked in from the back yard with a shovel, not even trying to hide it, and said he’d handled the problem.” She didn’t cry, speaking the words as if they haunted her but she had no more tears to shed over them. “I left the next day after he went to work.”
Trent grasped her wrist and pulled softly until she settled in his lap, until he could wrap his arms around her. She had such a soft heart—he couldn’t imagine how she felt, how she blamed herself for it. “I’m sorry, sweet. That had to have been hard.”
“If I’d left sooner…”
“You know better than to play those games. How many women have you talked to? What would you tell any one of them in your place?”
She leaned against him, as if finally accepting his help as something useful. “That she left when she was able to. That anything that happened was his fault, not hers.”
“That’s right,” Trent said. “So tell yourself that, and I’ll make you repeat it each time you start questioning yourself.”
She twisted to offer him a slight glare. “You know, I can sit in my own chair.”
“You could, but I like having you here.” He reached out and caught her bowl with a finger, then pulled it closer. “Eat. I’ll put a call in tomorrow to Mitch, a private investigator I know. He’ll get a for-sure that Tanner is still in Utah, and that he hasn’t left.”
Sunny nodded and picked up her spoon again. “Okay, but I’m telling you, I’m sure he isn’t a part of this. This has to be some random break-in. I mean, it’s been five years. Why would he decide to come backnow?”
Trent didn’t answer, because nothing he said would reassure her. The reality was that the sort of man she’d described, the sort who would kill a dog out of some crazy jealousy, wasn’t the sort who would just let someone go. Even after five years and seeming to be gone, he was the type who would show back to up ruin everything.
Which meant they needed to work fast and figure out if he was behind this, because Trent wasn’t ready to give Sunny up without a fight.