Page 72 of The Way Back Home
Teagan turned her face back to the window. The words had cost her more than she wanted to admit.
She wasn’t ready to see anyone. She wasn’t sure she ever would be.
But part of her … part of her already missed his hand around hers. The steady warmth. The quiet strength.
She wasn’t dead. But inside, she might as well be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
NOAH
Noah sat in his cabin. Alone.Finally.
He got it. His family was worried about him. Why wouldn’t they be? The last time he’d felt this bad, he’d shut them out and gone to lick his wounds elsewhere. A fresh start—or so he’d told himself. A chance to reflect, away from the well-meaning but unwelcome “help.”
In reality, he’d been hiding in a place where no one knew him well enough to call him on his bullshit.
Thenshecrashed into his life. Gave him something to focus on besides himself. Subtly—and without intending to—she’d opened his eyes to several truths. Things he knew, but hadn’t fully accepted.
One of them was: bad things happened, and sometimes, there was no way to prevent them.
Another: changing the past was impossible, nomatter how many times you replayed things in your head. The important thing was to learn from it.
Also: running away from your issues didn’t solve them. It only prolonged the inevitable.
And finally, asking for help didn’t make you weak. It made you human.
He grabbed a pillow from the sofa and buried his face in it. It smelled like Teagan. He’d been frustrated by her unwillingness to let him in, but he’d done exactly the same thing, hadn’t he? He hadn’t shared his darkness. Hadn’t fought harder to see hers.
Now she was alone in a sterile hospital, broken almost beyond repair. It was a testament to her inner strength that she’d survived at all, but then Noah had already known she was strong.
That didn’t mean she had to do it alone.
His mom had said she needed some time to work through things. Maybe that was true. He’d done the same. But what he’d come to realize was, it didn’t have to be an all-or-nothing deal. Yes, he was currently alone in his cabin, but he knew his family was close by, willing to support him in whatever ways he needed them to.
Couldn’t he do the same for Teagan?
He punched the sofa and stood, too restless, too angry to sit still. He couldn’t begin to understand the horror of what had happened. At his insistence, Alex had reluctantly told him the gist of it, but after seeing Teagan’s injuries and reading her medical charts, he knew it was much worse than Alex had let on.
And, apparently, it wasn’t the first time. Teagan’slife had been filled with abuse. Physical. Emotional. Sexual.
Those who should have protected her, who should have listened, had let her down. No wonder she found it hard to trust.
Except that, this time, she didn’t have to face it alone. This time, she had him, and he would move heaven and earth to bring her back from whatever dark place she’d retreated to. His hands shook as he tried to control the rage that threatened to overwhelm him when he thought about what that bastard had done to her in the name oflove. That wasn’t love. That was evil.
Josh Graner was locked up now, and he would never touch her again. Teagan was alive, and she was safe. If nothing else, Noah was thankful for that.
It was far from over though. Teagan had a long and painful recovery ahead of her. The media would continue to hound her night and day. Not for the first time, Noah wished Alex had killed Graner instead of just shattering his jaw. Or better yet, that Noah had had the foresight to take a gun with him and shoot the fucker himself.
Noah rubbed his eyes and exhaled heavily. How had Teagan managed to burrow so deeply under his skin in such a short amount of time?
He kicked at the Christmas tree, toppling it over. Regret washed over him as the ornaments, so carefully placed by Teagan, came crashing down with it. She’d put so much time into making it perfect, spent so many hours just looking at it, and he’d just destroyed it.
“Damn it,” he muttered, reaching down to start setting it right.
Then he saw it. Tucked beneath the fallen branches, a tiny, wrapped square. A napkin, folded neat and small, tied with a single strip of ribbon.
Picking it up, he turned the bundle over. No name, no note.
