Page 51 of Some Saviors Can Break You

Florence was getting used to the feeling she got whenever they kissed, the idea of her and Eli as a couple was starting to sink in, feel more natural. “You stayed the night.”

Eli frowned at her. “Of course I did. I told you I was staying. You think I'm the kind of guy who would leave an injured woman alone?”

Right.

He’d stayed because he felt obligated.

“Whoa, what was that?” He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and wouldn’t let her turn her face away. “I said something wrong then, but you're going to have to help me out because I have no idea what.”

“It’s just,” she started, averting her gaze since she couldn’t turn her head, “did you just stay because you felt obligated?”

“Obligated?” His dark eyes grew round. “You really think that I would spend the night here just because I felt obligated?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. He’d spent the whole night sleeping in her bed, and yet he hadn't pressured her for sex. In her history, sex was all men cared about.

“What's running through your pretty head, princess?” Eli asked, his voice was tender, and his hand that swept across her cheek was gentle.

He was breaking every preconceived stereotype she had of men like him. Boring men were meant to make her feel safe, not wealthy playboys, and yet here she was, in Eli’s arms, feeling more secure than she ever had in her life.

“I want to understand, sweetheart. Tell me, tell me what’s scaring you.”

Eli sounded so sincere that she found that words started tumbling from her mouth. “You know that my childhood wasn't great. My mom always had a new man in her life—ourlives—most didn't last more than a few months. They weren't the kind of guys to take an interest in a couple of kids with trust issues and emotional problems. A couple beat my brother up before he got too big and could fight back.” She paused to drag in a breath because what was coming next wasn't easy to talk about.

“I’m right here,” Eli said as he settled her against him, snuggling her head under his chin, he rubbed circles on her back.

“One of the men my mom picked up in a bar was a serial killer. Little girls under the age of ten. I was eight. He was called the Coffin Killer because after he assaulted them, he would sedate them then put them in a coffin, leaving them to asphyxiate.”

Instead of asking questions like she thought he was going to, Eli picked up her right arm and pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt up, revealing a tattoo of a branch of cherry blossoms. “You survived.”

She curled her fingers around his and clung to them. “He didn't put the needle in properly, when he put the drugs in my system it didn't knock me out like it was supposed to. I was woozy but not out, he put me in a coffin, left to do something, and I ripped out the IV and ran. The house he’d taken me to was right in the middle of town, I ran out onto the street where a passing car stopped. By the time cops arrived on the scene he had fled. There was a scar on my arm from the ripped IV, when I turned eighteen and got out of River’s End I wanted to do something to cover it up.”

Eli’s arms tightened around her until his grip was almost painful, but she welcomed it. She’d never been held like this before like she mattered, like someone cared that she was hurting. “Did they find him? Arrest him?”

“No. His name was just an alias, no one knows his real identity. I'm his only living victim, he’s been killing for nearly thirty years now, over fifty known victims. He still contacts me, I think he might have been the one who broke in here.”

“You think?” Eli demanded.

“I didn't spend much time around my mom’s boyfriends, I didn't know that man, I couldn’t identify him, he drugged me and most of what happened is hazy. He’s never made contact with me like that before, he just writes me letters. I'm the one who got away, and it’s his way of making sure I never forget him. But I won't,” she said softly. “I can never forget them.”

“Them?”

Realizing her mistake too late she tried to tug herself free from his hold. “Him, I meant him,” she mumbled.

“Uh-uh, sweetheart. Another of your mother’s boyfriends hurt you, didn't he?”

What did she have to lose? She’d gone this far, she may as well go the whole way. “I was sixteen, my brother was off at college. My mom was passed out drunk, her boyfriend wanted sex, he couldn’t have her so he took me instead. Fletcher doesn’t know, if he did he would have blamed himself, and I was worried about what he would do. But it wasn't his fault, he looked after me as best he could when we were kids. He’d joined the military, he was happy, he had broken away from that life, and I didn't want to drag him back into it. You’re the first person I've told.”

“That was very selfless of you, but what about you, Florence?” Despite Eli’s calm voice, she could feel his body vibrating with anger beneath hers.

“What about me?”

“You needed someone to be there for you, so you didn't have to go through it alone.”

“I made the best of things, I worked hard in school, got out, went to college, and now I have a job where I save lives, where I stop things like what happened to me happening to other people. And if I can't, then I at least get the person who hurt them off the streets.”

Lips pressed to the top of her head. “Thank you for trusting me. This is why you think that I'm just interested in sleeping with you? Because in your experience, men only have one thing on the brain; sex.”

Florence nodded.

---