Page 80 of Love Me Gently

If Mom could see the still-fading bruises beneath my smeared and wiped-away makeup, she didn’t show it. If she knew the horror I lived with for so long, she didn’t balk at it.

I’d hated Jonathan for many years, despised the lies I’d believed and the foolish and disgusting choices I’d made to prove something in my life, but it was in this moment, between my parents, that my anger with him rose to the surface.

I clenched my hands together in my lap and forced down that searing pain rushing through me.

He’d taken me from these people. From people who loved me and wanted the best for me. I’d let him, but he’d done it.

He’d sliced off all the good things in my life, even if I’d put up the blockade years before we ever met. He’d completed the task.

All so I’d have no one to turn to when I was ready to be free of him.

And I’dlet him.

“I’m so sorry,” I rasped and shoved my face into my mom’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

“No apologies, sweetheart.” I was wrapped in her arms again and squeezed tight. I wanted them to keep squeezing. Squeeze all the ugly, tarred regrets right out of me.

“Someday you can tell your story,” my dad whispered in my ear. “But today is not that day. Today is a day to celebrate. Our daughter we’ve missed so much and felt so much worry for is home, and we’re so thankful.”

My mom pulled back, eyes shimmering with more tears. It was a wonder we hadn’t flooded the house.

I laughed at the thought and bit down on my lip.

“You are home, right?” She brushed wet, stuck hair strands off my face and her chin trembled. “You arehome, right?”

I nodded, swallowed a ball of tears in my throat and glanced at Cole before looking back to my mom. “Yeah, Mom. I’m home.”

Something warm rushed through me, trickled down my spine and spread through my veins.

I washome.

Now, I had to figure out what to do next.

Twenty-Nine

Cole

The last forty-eight hours had been exhausting, and I was only a witness to the healing taking place. For Trina, I was certain she’d had too much. Falling asleep during the five-minute drive from her parents’ house yesterday back to mine drove the point home to the point that once she’d taken a nap, I’d gotten food in her. After she’d had a chance to relax, I asked if we needed to push back today’s round of mayhem and chaos and difficulty.

She shocked me to my core when she blinked, looking cutely confused by the suggestion, and then asked, “Why?”

Which led us to now, where she was downstairs blow-drying her hair, and I was restless with waiting for Marie to drop off the girls.

This could go so bad in so many ways. With June’s insistence Mom and Dad should live together and Elle’s cautious and always-seeing approach to people, they could take one look at Trina and love her to pieces because she was beautiful and sweet, or they could see how I felt about her and take off screaming, never to return.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I grabbed it. It was the station and since I rarely got called in on my off days and considering this one was from the chief, I took the call.

“Good morning, Sir. You’ve got Cole.”

“Hey, Cole. Got someone here who needs to talk to you. Can you come in? Won’t take long.” There was a tightness to his tone that made my hackles rise.

“It’s Sunday. This about a case?”

I’d had a couple DUIs over the week, one home break-in, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

“Think we should talk here. Can you come in?”

It could be anything, or nothing… or it could be the worst thing, given the fact I could read our chief like a book, and he wasn’t giving me anything. “Need to get Trina somewhere safe,” I told him.

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