Can a soul be delivered from hell?
That’s where mine resides, dying a blistering death in the torture of Conor’s tears.
We’ve been at this for an hour, and I’ve only succeeded in triggering back-to-back anxiety attacks.
Tying her wrists with rope to the headboard shoved her straight into hyperventilation. Covering her back with my weight spiraled her into another sobbing, breathless breakdown.
While prolonged exposure to the triggers benefits her in the long run, it doesn’t help us tonight. She’s not using her voice or addressing her emotions. She’s just trying to keep her lungs filled with air.
I’m starting to convince myself she doesn’t need to do this. But I know that’s panic talking. It’s killing me to see her like this.
“Conor. Look at me.” Stretched out beside her on the bed, I tuck her tear-drenched hair behind her ear. “Tell me what those men did to you.”
Her gaze darts to the rope on her wrists. Her face scrunches in agony, and a pained keening sound erupts from her throat.
I wrap my arms around her and kiss the track of tears along her cheek. I could endure her misery if I knew it was helping her, but she seems to be retreating deeper inside herself.
Her memories aren’t completely repressed. Fragments of them surface in strobe-like bursts of words. It’s as if her mind is protecting itself by disassociating from the complete picture.
When I bound her naked, face down, and covered her back with my body, I hoped it would rewrite the script in a safe environment.
But maybe she doesn’t need that night rewritten. What she needs is to get in touch with her feelings about it and bear witness to it.
I’m going about this the wrong way.
“Hang on, girl.” I drop a kiss on her lips and reach for the knots on her wrists, untying her.
“You’re giving up on me?” She lifts her damp face, tracking my movements.
“No. Never.” I release her hands from the rope and guide her off the bed. “We’re trying something different.”
I yank off my shirt, slip it over her head, and straighten it around her legs. Then I unbuckle my belt and slide the leather strap free.
“Hold this.” I fold the belt in half and press the ends against her palm. “Like that.”
“What are you doing?”
Unzipping my jeans, I let them slide midway down my ass and kneel on the bed with my back to her.
“I’m giving you permission to be angry.” I turn my neck and find her eyes over my shoulder. “I’m empowering you to let go of every emotion, thought, and memory you’re suppressing. Channel it all through that strap and onto my back.”
“What?” She gasps. “No. I’m not going to—”
“Hit me, Conor!” I shout in a tone that makes her jump. “Let it out.”
She paces behind me, twitching the belt and breathing heavily.
“I’m right here.” I stretch my arms out to the sides. “I want everything you’re holding in, no matter how ugly or painful. Every bruise, fracture, ache, tear, scratch, and torment. What’s yours is mine. Give it to me. Beat it into me. Do it!”
Her hitched sob penetrates my ears and grips my heart.
Facing away from her, I sit on my heels on the edge of the mattress, hands braced on my thighs and back straight.
Then I wait her out.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
She’s not going to do it without motivation.
I draw in a breath and release the first painful shove on my exhale. “I fucked those women at the bar. All the girls we went to school with. Shannon, Tina, Courtney—”
The strap whips across my back with a stinging burn, and she cries out, a seething, gut-wrenching sound. “Damn you, Jake.”
I slide my tongue across my lips, tasting her rage. “I fucked you in a barn and didn’t tell you it was me. I let you believe you were forgettable.”
More strikes, one right after another. She has a strong arm, but it’s just surface pain. She’s not breaking skin.
“I left you in the ravine.” I close my eyes against the acidic memory. “You had just been raped and sodomized, and you begged me not to leave you. I did it anyway, too occupied by my own needs.”
Her fury explodes, unfettered and shrieking from deep in her chest. I soak in her pain and knot it with my own as she drives the belt against my back.
Every bite on my skin burns hot with her trust, branding me, possessing me. She would never raise a hand to another person. She hits me because I commanded her to do it, because she knows I’ll protect her in the fire of her anger.
I keep talking, keep spurring her with reminders of my deceit, omissions, and manipulations.
Until her shattered whisper cuts me off.
“The first one pushed me into the dirt, and he… He…” She swings the strap, pelting my ribs. “He forced himself inside my b-b-butt. He raped me there, and it… God, it hurt. So fucking bad.” Her voice breaks with tears, and she hits me again. “I lost my virginity back there, before I lost it the other way, and I fucking hate him for that. I wish I would’ve been the one to kill him, because I hate him so much for hurting me. It was excruciating, and I bled, and he wouldn’t stop. The pain was so deep…” She releases a soul-crushing cry. “It was so deep I felt it cramping in my belly.” She falls still. “Then the second one climbed on top of me.”
Levi Tibbs. As she describes the trauma he inflicted on her, my eyes burn. My chest aches, and the world seems to slow beneath my fuming breaths.
She drops the belt and comes at me with her fists, pummeling my back as she furiously recounts the tragedy of her sixteenth birthday. Inconceivable emotion pours from her lungs, her voice shaking with anger and tears. She doesn’t stop hitting, doesn’t stop shouting, until every horrifying detail singes the air and every pound of rage breaks free.
I immerse my entire being in her words, in the images they conjure, and relive the brutality of that night with a hot ember charring my throat.
In that moment, I make the decision to forgive myself. I failed to protect her that night, but I’ve walked through hell since then, doing everything in my power to keep her safe. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure she’s never harmed again.
Eventually, her fists open, rubbing over my back as she cries. “I’m so sorry, Jake. I’m sorry—”
“No sorries.” I twist around and gather her in my arms. “No shame. Do you hear me? You gave us exactly what we needed.”
I tuck her against me and roll us to our sides, with her back against my chest. Her body sags, arms slack and breaths shredded. I run my fingers through her hair until her eyes drift shut. Then I sit with her in the grief.
Sometime later, she stirs from the silence. “Jake?”
“I’m here.” I turn her in my arms and caress her pale face. “How are you feeling?”
“My heart feels like it’s beating differently. Clearer. Brighter. Like it’s waking after a long hibernation.” She stares up at me with puffy, bloodshot eyes. “I think that might’ve been an enormously healing experience.”
“For you and me both.”
“Are you okay? Your back…”
“I’m good, Conor. Relieved.” I kiss her forehead, her nose, her lips. “We’ll still have some hard days ahead. Grief doesn’t just come and go in a night. But now we know how to work through it.”
“Okay.” She rests a hand on my cheek. “You’re going to give me answers now, right?”
“You’re exhausted. We can wait until—”
“Tonight.” Her eyes plead as she sits up.
“Tonight, then.”
“Thank you.” She slides her arms around my shoulders, hugging me while stroking her marks on my back. “Thank you for helping me. For not giving up.”
I ache to kiss her, but once I start, I won’t be able to stop. The quicker I tell her everything, the faster I’ll be inside her. That’s if she absolves the things I’ve done.
She’ll forgive me.
I think she already has.
Turning my head toward her arm, I ghost my lips along colorful sunsets and horses until her inked skin shivers with goosebumps.
“I need to get something.” I reluctantly unwrap us and set her on the bed against the pillows. “Stay here.”
In a few brisk strides, I reach the dresser and remove a large envelope from the bottom drawer. The seal is still intact, which means she hasn’t snooped. Not that she’s had the opportunity. I haven’t let her out of my sight since the first night she returned home.
“What is that?” She twists her fingers in my t-shirt, where it gathers around her thighs.
“The deed for the land.” I return to the bed.
“Julep Ranch?”
“No. The ten-thousand acres the ranch sits on.” I set the envelope on her lap. “You can read through all the documents later. For now, just focus on the highlighted sections on the pages I marked with tabs.”
I leave her to pick through the legalese and head to the bathroom to prepare a bath.
When the tub is filled, I shut off the faucet and turn to find her standing in the doorway.
“Lorne and I own the land? All of it?” The deed trembles in her hand as she stares down at it. “How? I thought my dad sold it to yours? And this other document?” She shuffles the papers. “It’s a trust signed by my mom. I didn’t know she had anything like this. Is it real?”
“Yes. I had everything verified by an attorney. Before your mom died, she gave the land to you and Lorne. She put it in your names, and that copy of the deed is documented by the county recorder. She handled everything through the proper channels.”
“What about your mom? She owned half of the ranch.”
“She owned half of the cattle business. Not the land. The acreage belongs to you and Lorne and no one else.” I crook my finger, motioning her closer. “Come here.”
“I’m so confused.” She steps toward me.
I take the documents from her, set them aside, and test the temperature of the water.
“Did you read the highlighted clauses in the trust?” Sliding my hands up her thighs, I catch the hem of the shirt and inch it up, up, and off.
“Yes, but the verbiage is incomprehensible.”
Naked Conor makes conversation incomprehensible.
Toned legs, sinuous curves, raveled red hair, perky tits, and goddamn, that freckle… My jeans aren’t big enough for the length of my reaction to her.
Giving her a bath right now was a terrible idea.
I scoop her up and lower her into the tub. “I couldn’t make sense of the trust, either. The attorney spelled it out for me. Dunk your head.”
As she slips under the water, I reach into my jeans and adjust. The belt is gone. The zipper’s undone, and I have nowhere to go with my erection, except…
She comes up for air, clears her face, and her gaze falls directly on my lap. “Are you joining me in here?”
“Not if you want to finish this discussion.” I grab the shampoo and focus my hands on washing her hair. “Your mom’s trust created hoops for you and Lorne to jump through, meaning you have to meet certain requirements to revoke the Power of Attorney.”
“Revoke what Power of Attorney?”
“Rinse your hair.” I pick up the conditioner and wait for her to resurface.
“I’ll do this.” She takes the bottle from me. “Keep talking.”
“You own the land, but your mom created a Power of Attorney that appointed our dads as the agents in the event of her death. This granted them the power to manage any and all business transactions and decisions related to the property.”
She finishes washing as she absorbs my words. “You’re saying Lorne and I own ten-thousand acres, but we have no power over it?”
“You can sell it. That decision still belongs to you and your brother. Not my father.”
“We wouldn’t.” She rubs her brow, frowning and nibbling her lip as she thinks.
Christ, I love watching her cunning mind at work.
“The drilling.” Her head pops up, and her jaw tightens. “The Power of Attorney allowed your dad to turn the ranch into an oil field without approval from Lorne or me. Approval we would’ve never given.”
“Exactly.”
“But you said we could revoke his power?”
“Not until you meet certain requirements. Those are the hoops I mentioned.”
“What are they?” She grips the edge of the tub.
“You must be eighteen, pass a drug test, and show proof of your residency on the property.”
“Residency on the property,” she echoes quietly, her gaze clouding, turning inward.
“You have to live here, Conor.”
“Oh my God.” A whisper. She grabs the plug for the drain and yanks it hard. “Is that why you kept me away? To stop me from revoking his power? For what? So he could drill the land? And you—”
I spear her with a glare that ends her accusations. “I kept you away, because there were multiple hits on your life if you returned. My father, among others, would’ve killed you before they allowed you to live here and file that revocation. And you would’ve filed it. The moment they started drilling, you would’ve looked into land ownership and discovered what everyone was keeping from you.”
Her eyes stay with mine, tunneling into me as I help her out of the tub and dry her off. Then I wrap the towel around her and guide her into the bedroom.
She sits on the bed, staring at her scarred palm. “The night of my sixteenth birthday…”
“Lorne was the concern.” I lower onto the mattress beside her. “He just turned eighteen and met all the requirements to revoke the power from our dads. Dalton and John couldn’t let that happen, because they made some crooked deals over the years with some dangerous men. Deals that involved borrowing money they couldn’t pay back.”
“Money for what?”
“Their extravagant lifestyle and poor business decisions.” I sweep an arm around, indicating the estate. “After our moms died, they lived like oil barons, with the finest furnishings, countless luxury trucks, new outbuildings and equipment. They spent and spent, as if the cattle operation was booming. But it wasn’t. The ranch was barely breaking even. This went on for fourteen years and reached its snapping point around the night of your birthday. They weren’t just going to lose the ranch. They were going to lose their lives at the hands of the men they owed money to.”
“But they were sitting on land rich in oil and natural gas.”
“Yes.”
Her nostrils flare. “Land that didn’t belong to them.”
“Land they could drill on and profit from as long as you and Lorne didn’t live here.”
The air clots in my lungs, so heavy and thick I wrestle with it.
“Dalton was involved in this?” The pain in her voice cuts me.
“Your dad made bad decisions with bad men, but he wasn’t involved in the threats against your life. He was going to tell Lorne about the Power of Attorney. My dad was not okay with that.”
“Because Lorne would’ve never allowed the drilling. So your dad hired men to kill us. Problem solved.” She closes her eyes as a violent quake crashes over her tiny frame. “Do you know how fucked up that is?”
“I’ve had a couple of years to come to terms with it.” And it still keeps me up at night.
“How did he think he would get away with murder?”
“Sheriff Fletcher was in his pocket. He and my dad share a history I haven’t been able to work out. What I do know is they were in it together. Fletcher got a cut of the profits in exchange for making the murders go away.”
“Except we weren’t murdered.”
“When my dad hired that hit on you and Lorne…” I grip her hand, lacing our fingers together. “Jarret and I weren’t supposed to be there when it happened. That was the first miscalculation. The second fuck up was their decision to rape you before they killed you and Lorne.”
She flinches, clutching the knot of the towel against her chest.
I shift our intertwined hands to my lap and capture her eyes. “Sheriff Fletcher tampered with the evidence and testimonies from that night to make sure Lorne went to prison. That took your brother out of the picture.”
“Why didn’t Dalton turn in your dad and Sheriff Fletcher?”
“Your dad was scared.” I grind my teeth. “He owed debts to violent criminals, and your lives were at stake. Yours and his. So he forfeited his shares of the business and took you to Chicago to keep you both alive and allow for the drilling on the land.”
“Did the debts get paid back?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?” Her voice bites with suspicion. “Why haven’t you turned them over to the authorities?”
Our eyes lock, and our breaths spool out in the space between us. She’s not going to like this part.
I adjust my position on the bed to face her and touch the curve of her cheek. “Jarret and I killed a lot of men. Bad men.”
“What?” Her throat wobbles with a hard swallow.
“We killed every debt collector and hitman that knew your name and buried the bodies in the ravine.”
“No.” She shakes her head rigorously, and tears topple over the rims of her eyes. “You’ll get caught, Jake. They’ll find the bodies, and you’ll go to prison and—”
“They won’t find the bodies, and Sheriff Fletcher is highly motivated to make all this go away.” I hold her face in my hands and catch an errant tear with my thumb. “I have evidence against the sheriff. Conversations between him and my dad. Confessions of his plans to cover up your murder. The payments he received from the drilling. I have enough to put him away for a long fucking time.”
“You threatened him.”
“Damn straight. If he keeps my sins buried, I’ll keep his buried.”
“That’s dangerous.” She stands from the bed and paces through the room.
“Dangerous for him. I never admitted to a crime. He has nothing on me, and my threats ensure he won’t come around sniffing for evidence.”
“How many bodies?”
“I’m not telling you who, how, or how many. There’s no good reason for you to know the details, and I don’t need to talk about it. I have no regrets.”
“You’ve lost your mind.” She pulls at her damp hair, twisting it around her fingers. “You risked everything, Jake.”
“And I’ll do it again. In two days.”
Her breath holds. She doesn’t release it, as if she’s afraid she’ll say something that proves my point.
I rise from the bed and approach her. “When we made the blood oath that night, none of us hesitated. We didn’t hesitate when we sliced open our hands. We didn’t hesitate when we uttered the words we had every intention of honoring.” I lift her chin with a fingertip. “Jarret and I killed your enemies with that same vehemence. The instant I learned someone was watching you at school, we killed him. We picked them all off, one by one, until we were certain it was safe for you to come home. There is no one left with vested interest in this land.”
“Except John Holsten.”
“We killed my dad’s debt collectors. That means he has no debts. Then we blackmailed him with the evidence I used against the sheriff. I promised not to turn him in if he signed over the ownership of the cattle business and left town.” Regret twists my stomach. “I should’ve killed him.”
“But if he doesn’t have debts or any reason to return…”
“Revenge can be a pretty big motivator. He was looking at making a shit ton of money off this land, and Jarret and I took that away. To say he was livid when he left is an understatement. But he also knows that if he returns, we’ll end him.”
She chews on that for a moment, pacing, contemplating.
“Now that you live here,” I say, narrowing my eyes when she opens her mouth, “we’ll start the process that gives you full power over the land.”
She nods, continues to pace, then jumps into a barrage of follow-up questions.
We spend the next hour rehashing it all again. As I clarify every detail, my eyes never stray from hers. Where does she stand on all this? Her thoughts are inscrutable.
It’s after midnight when she sits on the edge of the bed and sighs. “One thing’s for sure. You never do anything half-assed.” She looks at me with the same scrutiny I’ve been giving her. “When you protect those you love, you do it with every breath in your body.”
“The same can be said when I hurt those I love.” I stand over her, shirtless, exhausted, and saddled with sins. “I abandoned you when you needed me in Chicago. I broke your heart when you returned home. I withheld vital information to manipulate you into obeying me.” A jagged breath drags from my chest. “I don’t deserve you.”
“The one who believes he doesn’t deserve me is the only one who does.” Her gaze drifts away for the span of a thousand unraveling knots. Then she meets my eyes again. “I forgive you.”
I breathe in, and my chest expands with the enormity of those three words.
“I forgave you ten days ago.” She reaches for my hand. “When you held my wrist in the truck, I knew I would accept everything you’ve done to bring us to this point. Right here. Together.”