Page 38 of Knox

I dissociated until Knox returned. When he dragged his chair closer to mine and dropped into it, he was in fresh clothes, and his hair was damp and clean. Even that was a stark difference from the hell he looked like last night. He could still use a shave, maybe a haircut, but he was still attractive.

“Clean ear,” he announced. “Ready to listen at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”

“Um…” Put on the spot, I had no clue where to start or what he was even expecting.

As if Knox read my mind, he urged gently, “Start with your da—Walter.”

Somehow, that was all the encouragement I needed. I started slowly, testing what it felt like to voice dark memories and even darker thoughts. And with every confession, the air between us grew heavier.

“He’s just unhinged,” I said, staring at my shoes as if they were the ones listening. They were expensive boots ruined by everything I’d dragged them through since the poker den. “More than ever before. It’s never been this bad. He’s taken his rage out on me before, but it was never with physical violence. It’s not just about me anymore, either. The other club members? He…”

My throat tightened again as the memory of Kyle rose to my mind’s eye. I told Knox what happened just days ago, how my father killed one of his own men—a teenager. It occurred to me a second too late that the kid had only been three years younger than Knox when his father was killed.

It wasn’t the same, but somehow it was similar.

The haunted look in Knox’s eyes made my heart clench. I didn’t know what that meant.

“And then he left you bound to a chair with a man who wanted to hurt you.” Knox’s voice was gravelly, his hands fisted tightly at his sides like he was trying not to punch something. “Vane.”

Vane was a monster. Walter Bates was a worse monster. He always had been, but I had been too devoted to him to see his actions as wrong. I couldn’t truly trace back to a single moment where he snuffed out my humanity, but it happened, and it left me a doting, cruel daughter eager to please and commit violence without remorse. He made me a monster, and now I was a monster with a mind of my own, and it was so damn hard to even begin to acknowledge that. Much less come to terms with it.

I was blindly loyal, and in my desperation to love-seek, I aligned myself with him and his plans rather than ever question the destruction they caused.

Following blindly, mindlessly, was easier than facing the truth. Because the truth hurt like a bitch.

It was gnawing away at my insides right that second. And it hurt more than I ever imagined it would.

The earth felt like it was moving under my feet. I gripped the armrests as I fought the rising emotion in my chest.

Knox seemed to sense it because his intensity suddenly softened and his brows creased together. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

The word came out in an ugly, strangled sob. I slapped my hand over my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut. “No.” My throat closed. “No, I’m not. No, I’m?—”

“I’m sorry, Caroline.”

Through a film of tears, I jerked my head up to stare at him. That was the first time he said my name without a hint of sarcasm. He spoke it like it meant something.

“But your father,” Knox said, quieter. “He has to be six feet under. For all our sakes.”

Fear burst out of me in anger. “Don’t think I don’t know that! I?—”

My voice cracked again, and then I just lost it.

I sank out of the chair onto the damp dirt floor and sobbed.

I heard and saw Knox stand and hover over me in my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t do anything but keep breaking open, even though I did register he was standing there only because he didn’t know how to deal with a crying woman. Most men didn’t. I wouldn’t blame him if he just went into the trailer and blocked the ugly crying out with a slammed-shut door.

But then he took a knee, scooped me up into his arms, and carried me inside the trailer. He set me on the bed like I was made of glass. I curled up on myself immediately. But when he lay beside me, it felt like instinct to curve into him. When his arms wrapped around me and pulled me close, I finally allowed myself to come apart fully.

CHAPTER 15

KNOX

I woke up to the late afternoon sun shining in my face through the window, whose blinds I had forgotten to pull down. The trailer was warmed by it, and my sides began to feel sticky with sweat. But the real warmth was from the woman asleep in my arms.

Caroline was facing me, looking unguarded for the first time since I first encountered her—and probably ever. She was never allowed—couldn’t afford—to ever be anything but guarded, her walls up and ironclad. But she had cried herself to sleep in the arms of a Devil, and that meant more than I could describe for both of us.

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