Page 29 of Winter
Icestorm #2
Inca had already decidedto go into the city when her cell phone rang. She’d gotten up late, rested but distracted, disturbed by vivid dreams. She stood under the shower, trying to unravel the parts she could remember. Olly. And her husband, the one she’d never told anyone about—Kevin. Then a choking, suffocating terror. Pain. Despite the heat of the shower, she shivered.
It’s just a dream.
But her stomach was cramped up with tension. After a few minutes, she gave up and ran a bath, hoping immersing her whole body into the water would help. She kneaded her stomach muscles with her fingers, feeling how knotted and sore they felt.
Ever since she’d told Olly about Kevin, she hadn’t been able to shake the fear that ran bone deep. It had been when she was abroad, in England, during her time at college. She’d met Kevin in the student bar of her college and the attraction had been immediate. Kevin hadn’t had the preppy good looks of his cohorts, but he had seemed genuinely besotted by Inca. Even then, though, she had been reticent about telling him everything about her. And when it came to sex, she had refused him.
“I’m not ready,” she had told him, “if you need to go elsewhere for that, I’m okay with it.’
She had never known if he had taken her up on that and slept around. For Inca, that had not been the foundation of their relationship; to her, she had found a good friend. To Kevin, however, it was more. He had appeared to fall in love with her and, when he had told her he wanted to relocate to the States, he had asked her to marry him so he could get his green card. Inca wasn’t keen on the idea, but Kevin had manipulated her into agreeing to it and they had had a five-minute ceremony at a London registrar’s office.
Then, when they had gotten back to the States and moved into a little apartment in New York, that was when he had turned nasty and Inca had realized that was why she had held back from fully committing to him. The menace that lurked underneath his outwardly friendly appearance was now all on the surface. He watched her every move, pressured her to have sex, and got nasty when she backed off.
The first time he had hit her, she had known she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. What had she been thinking? She had planned to leave less than a month after the wedding and get the marriage annulled. But Kevin had made sure she knew that he would never allow her to leave.
“I’ll kill you,” he had raged, and Inca had barely made it out of the apartment. She’d taken the bus across country and arrived back in Washington State, relieved she’d never told him where her hometown really was. Getting the marriage annulled would be difficult without Kevin finding her, so she’d stuck her head in the sand and pretended he didn’t exist.
Except, now, he might have found her. Inca had no doubt that Kevin was capable of killing and that his obsession with her would lead him to try and terrify her into submission. But, God, she really didn’t want to deal with that.
She leaned backin the water. She couldn’t shake the dream. It was sparks and discordant flashes of memory. Kevin. Was he kissing her? She remembered a feeling of resignation. It wasn’t a good feeling. She was resigned to the fact that he was going to hurt her, that she would die. Kevin was killing her—and Olly walked away.
I told you what he was, Inca. I told you.
She screamed for him, but he didn’t look back. Kevin was holding her and she couldn’t move, couldn’t escape. All of his limbs turned to blades, freakishly oversized knives, machetes. His grin was a terrifying rictus; it stretched and stretched until his whole mouth was impossibly large, a gaping maw. Then came the pain …
Inca shook herself.A freaking child’s nightmare. Ridiculous.
She pulled herself from the bath and wrapped a towel around herself. She wanted out of this town for a day, away from everybody. The realtor had arranged for people to come put up aSoldsign today and she didn’t think she could bear to be around them. With everything that was going on, the pain of knowing she was going to have to move out of her ‘safe’ space was eating at her.
She dressed quicklyin a plain T-shirt and jeans, pulling her wet hair into a ponytail, sliding her feet into her favorite old sneakers. When the phone rang just as she was going downstairs, she glanced at the display and debated not answering. She hadn’t spoken to Tommaso since she’d confessed Kevin’s existence to Olly. Guilt won out.
“Hi, Tommaso.”
“How are you this morning?”
Inca opened the door of her car and got in. “I’m good. On my way out, is all. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. Going anywhere interesting?”
“Just into the city.”
“Would you like some company? I was intending to go to the city myself at some point.”
Inca leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.No, I really, really don’t.But she tried to keep her voice neutral. “Of course. I’ll pick you up on the way. I’ll be five minutes.”
When she pulled up outside the Winter mansion, Tommaso was waiting. He smiled and opened her door, leaning to kiss her cheek.
“I thought I might drive us.”
Inca opened her mouth to protest, but Tommaso was already walking to his car. She sighed and followed him, sliding into the passenger seat of the sleek Mercedes. He smiled at her.
“Ready, my darling?”
Despite herself, the sight of his handsome face and his obvious delight at seeing her made her feel better. She leaned over to kiss him. “Ready.”
He stroked her face. “I’ve missed you,bella. We should see more of each other.”
