Page 31 of Now or Never
“That’s what it feels like.” She pushed out a shuddering breath. “Now I’m in pieces and I don’t know how to put myself back together.”
“What is it, you say?” he asked, his voice gentle. “That you leave a piece of yourself back there, and you have to find a way to move on without it. Your mind thinks, at least in part, that you’re still in that place. It’s burned into you.”
“I want to cut it out.”
“Accepting it is there, and it will always be there, is going to help you figure out how to live with it. Because there’s no way to get rid of the memories.” He kept rubbing his hand across her back, imparting the steady warmth of his strength into her. “Working to where you can make peace with it is the only way you’re going to be able to heal the wound. Right now, it’s raw. And that’s understandable. We’re both in pain from what they did to us.”
She nodded, desperate with the need to not discount what he was feeling. Sure, she’d been captive for months before Jax had rescued her, but that just meant he’d been searching during that time. He’d faced all the fear of losing her that came with a fruitless search until he finally uncovered the place she was being held. It wasn’t about who had suffered more, but about the fact they both had to work through the aftermath.
“Doctor Buzard is dead.” She had to say it aloud. “His men. The ghost. They’re all dead. No one is coming after me from that group.”
“You’re worried there are others who might?”
“I have no idea. That’s the problem.” That, and the fact she could find out if she made a phone call. But fear of being discovered, even though they probably knew exactly where she was, kept her from making that call. “Short of faking our deaths, which might not even work, I don’t see how we can ever escape them.”
“And that might solve the problem for us, but it doesn’t neutralize them.”
She sighed. “We can’t take them down.”
“I know.”
Still, it sounded a little like he was placating her.
“They feel like this big insurmountable evil.” He squeezed her shoulder. “One we can’t possibly go up against. But can we really live with ourselves if we don’t at least try? Let’s follow this case where it leads.”
“Megan is dead, but Joseph is safe.”
“Remember the family member in the military? We can tug on that thread, see where it leads.”
Kenna’s mind filled with images of military uniforms, and she shuddered. She’d been out of it, drifting between awake and unconscious, at the time. “It hurt.”
“What did?”
“They hurt me.”
Jax slid his arm from behind her, ran his hand across where the baby was protected between them, and lifted it to touch her cheek. “Tell me.” His blue eyes had darkened, a roiling mix of anger and sadness that looked like the ocean at night in the middle of a storm.
“I don’t remember.” She shook her head. “It’s just snatches. Flashes. And the pain.”
He touched his forehead to hers and stayed there, still and quiet. Holding her.
Kenna closed her eyes, focusing on the feel of him with her and not the wash of terrible things in her mind. Hanging on to him for dear life.
That’s what it felt like.
If she lost him, she would lose everything she had, everything she was. Kenna knew in her logical brain that wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She needed a firm foundation in the Lord, and that was supposed to be what her life was based on. Jax should be a blessing, like grace upon grace. An add-on to her life, because God already filled her to the brim with everything she needed spiritually.
But when she tried to draw from that well…it was empty.
“It’s gone,” she whispered.
He shifted then, responding to her quiet statement. Moving so she could see his eyes again. “What’s gone?”
“My faith. God. All of it. It’s like I’m reaching for it, but there’s nothing there.”
“They took it from you?”
She wanted to believe that, and not that she had let go of it. Not that God might have withdrawn from her. “I haven’t been a Christian long enough to know what’s happening. It still feels like panic. Like trying to find something but it’s missing.”
