Page 36 of Sniper's Pride

And Mariah’s body might have had an automatic, built-in response to him, but that didn’t mean she had to surrender to it. Or him.

Not anymore.

Alaska was real.

“Sometimes white trash comes in a big old mansion smack in the middle of Buckhead, David,” Mariah replied. Sweetly. “You never can tell.”

“You can’t hide from me forever.” And she couldseethe look she knew he had on his face then. Eyes bulging, teeth bared. “I’m going to find you. And when I do, you’re going to regret all of this, big time. People are talking. And you know how I feel about being the center of gossip around here.”

“I left you, David,” Mariah reminded him. “I understand that you’re used to getting your way. But not this time. You can threaten me in parking lots all you want—”

“That was no threat. That was a promise.Youdon’t get to run the show, Mariah. I picked you. Imadeyou. If it weren’t for me, you’d be living in filth in that same crappy town, broke and desperate like every other member of your pathetic family.”

“David.” She said his name almost sorrowfully. “Don’t you understand? I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

She wasn’t sure that was true. Or it wouldn’t be true, anyway, if he’d been standing in front of her. But he wasn’t. He was thousands of miles away, and no matter what he said to her, he couldn’t touch her.

Mariah had felt similarly when she’d moved out of the house in Buckhead. She’d packed her two suitcases, that was all. That was the sum of her ten years under David’s thumb. Two modest suitcases. But she could carry them herself, and she had. She’d walked out, gotten in her car, and driven herself away.

Such a simple thing. The only difference from any other time she’d driven out of that driveway was that she’d known she wasn’t coming back.

And once she’d made the decision, she couldn’t believe that it had taken her so long.

She’d spent the first night in her apartment lying spread-eagled in a bed she didn’t have to share with aman who had never treated her gently, or kindly, or with any respect—a state of affairs she’d taken to heart and believed she’d deserved. She’d hardly slept, because she’d been sure the cheerful apartment, the bedroom all to herself, was a dream. She kept expecting David to break down the door and drag her back to Buckhead, by her hair if necessary.

He’d convinced her that she couldn’t live without him. Not because she didn’t want to or because she wasn’t capable, but because he would do something to prevent it.

But that first night had passed. Then the following day and the one after that.

A week. A month.

And Mariah had discovered that if she didn’t give David the power, it turned out he couldn’t do a blessed thing.

She stayed where she was now, staring out at the brooding Alaskan sea and the clouds while David grew more and more abusive in her ear.

Maybe she was perverse. But the nastier he got, the uglier the things he called her, the more at peace she felt.

And when a shadow fell over her, she looked up and was unsurprised to find Griffin standing there before her, a hard look on his objectively beautiful face. Very much as if he knew exactly who she was talking to and wanted to kill David himself.

It made her feel even more... settled. Peaceful.Safe,maybe.

She wished, with her whole heart, that she could excise the sound of her own drunken, besotted voice from her memories, but she couldn’t. And she was certainhehadn’t forgotten a single moment of what had gone on last night.

But really, it was the least of the things she had to find a way to live with.

Wordlessly, she took her cell phone away from her ear, hit the speaker button, and held it there between them. At that moment she realized that she trusted this man. She’d told him every last detail of her life with David, and if he judged her for it, he hadn’t shown it. He’d treated her with a grumpy sort of kindness when she’d been hopped up on tequila. More, she’d been sloppy drunk and he hadn’t taken advantage of her. He hadn’t used anything she’d said—or any propositions she pretended not to remember—as a weapon against her today. Griffin had seen her when she was anything but at her best, he’d listened to her story anyway, and he’d taken her concerns seriously. Even though she was fairly sure he didn’t like her that much.

Maybe that was a low bar.

But to Mariah, it was a whole new world.

David kept right on going. He was spiteful. Creative and mean. Ugly straight through, the way he always was when he hit his stride.

But what Mariah felt then had nothing to do with the names David called her. If she felt flushed, or uneven, it was because of the man who stood in front of her, listening to this same old, familiar song.

It was one thing to listen to David spew his usual insults at her. She was used to it. But it was raw and horrifying to watch Griffin listen to this same tired routine. To know that he was paying attention not only to what David was saying but to how used to it Mariah really was.

She might trust him, but she still felt ashamed. Deeplyashamed, as if she’d been marked all this time by the things David called her and she hadn’t realized that everyone else could see it. All over her.

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