Page 47 of Nora's Kraken

In the silence, I don’t know how to read her, or what might help ease some of the tension creasing her forehead and bracketing her mouth, so I just keep my hand in hers.

“He used to leave me notes all the time.”

Nora’s voice is barely audible in the quiet of the car. I glance over at her again, and am about to tell her she doesn’t need to share this with me if she doesn’t want to, but something in the hard set of her features makes me hold my tongue.

“Daniel, I mean. He used to leave them for me all the time.”

Just the sound of his name sends a flare of anger through me. I clench the steering wheel even harder and stay silent, waiting for her to continue.

“It was really sweet, at first, when we were just dating. Love notes. Notes in flowers. Scribbled on the backs of receipts. It made me feel special. I didn’t see what it all was, whathewas, until later.”

“Nora,” I whisper, not sure what I can say to make any of this better, but unwilling to let her admissions go unacknowledged.

She shakes her head and continues speaking. I shut my mouth, giving her the space to say exactly what she needs to.

“Everything changed after I dropped out of college and moved to DC with him.” Her tone turns sour and mocking. “‘Don’t forget to have dinner ready tonight, Nora.’ ‘Don’t forget to smile at the press event this afternoon.’ ‘Remember how poorly the last gala went? Try to do better tonight. It’s important for my next election.’”

Right then, I know. Daniel Sorenson is not getting out of this unscathed. Wherever the bastard is and whatever he thinks he’s going to accomplish by further traumatizing the woman he’s already fucked over so thoroughly, he’s not getting out of this without consequences.

“Even the morning of the day I left,” Nora continues, voice raspy and strained, “there was a note taped to the mirror in the bathroom, reminding me about a dinner with his parents that evening and telling me the exact dress he wanted me to wear.”

She shakes her head, disgusted. “I always hated his parents. They thought I was trash. And maybe to them, I was.”

I can’t help but interrupt. “You’re not—”

“I know,” she says, cutting me off in a tone that’s gentler than I expected, and when I glance over at her, she squeezes my hand.

My chest tightens in response.She’scomfortingme. Even now. I give myself a mental slap and double down on my efforts to keep my own damn feelings out of this.

“I know I’m not trash,” Nora continues. “But I wasn’t a part of their world, either, and I think that’s why I tried so hard in the beginning to fit in, and why I excused a bunch of giant red flags I shouldn’t have.

“That night, though…” she trails off, eyes fixed out on the dark highway again. “That night I was just so tired of it. I didn’t want to get dressed up and go to another horrible dinner so his mom could make little digs at me and his dad could say the most inappropriate shit. I was just… tired.

“I told Daniel that when he got home. I’d deliberately put off getting ready and getting dressed, even though we were supposed to leave right after he got back from the office. I was just sitting on the couch in my sweats and no makeup, ready to make my damn point about not going, for once, tell him I could choose not to participate when I didn’t want to, and he…

“He didn’t hit me. But I thought he was going to.” Her voice is even softer now, hardly above a whisper. “The fucking selfish asshole that he was, he couldn’t understand why I was being so difficult. He gave meeverything, he said, and I couldn’t suck it up for a few hours and look nice, stay quiet, and deal with his parents’ bullshit? When I still didn’t do what he wanted, he got me by the shoulders and he shook me, not hard enough to do any damage… but it was enough.”

Nora’s hand is cold and clammy in mine, and her expression is hard when she finally looks back over at me.

“I guess it startled him, too, because he went to dinner with his parents without me. Even before it happened, I’d been thinking about leaving, but all of it… it was my breaking point, I guess. I left that night, right after he was out of the condo. Took everything I had that was worth something and bought a bus ticket with the bit I had left in my bank account.”

“And you ended up in Seattle,” I say softly.

“And I ended up in Seattle.”

Gods above, the courage it must have taken.

The idea of Nora on a Greyhound in the middle of the night, headed away from her home and her life, however intolerable that life might have been, makes me feel physically ill. It’s an ache in my chest that demands retribution on her behalf, some sort of reckoning for the person who caused it.

I’m not a violent creature by nature, and I don’t intend to do anything that would get me arrested and take me away from my mate, but my mind is already spinning. What weaknesses does a man like Sorenson have? What sort of below-board deals or shady business interests or damning secrets might be there below the surface, just waiting to be brought to light?

As much as I’d like to beat him to a pulp like he might deserve, the idea of using the considerable resources at my disposal to ruin his life entirely has its merits as well.

“I lefthima note,” Nora says with a brittle humor in her voice, shaking me out of those dark thoughts. “Saying that I wasn’t coming back, telling him to fuck off, essentially.”

“Good,” I say gruffly, and she squeezes my hand again.

For a moment, I can feel all those threads of understanding between us, the bond I’ve been doing my best to ignore. Only right now, I’m not strong enough to deny it.

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