She was propped up against something, and something else nudged her dry, cracked lips then cool water was sliding down her throat.
It felt so good.
She was too hot.
Burning.
Like she had been thrown into a fire.
Only the fire was inside of her which meant there was no escape.
Abigail moaned in relief when something cool touched her. She had no idea what it was nor did she have the mental energy to figure it out, but she was so grateful for this minor reprieve.
Something brushed against her wrist and panic filled her.
Images flooded her mind.
Voices taunting her, arms holding her down, pain.
So much pain.
It started in her head, she wasn’t sure what it was.
It wasn’t until something came flying toward her face that she figured it out.
Fists.
Someone was hitting her.
Over and over again, not just in her face, her chest and her stomach too, until her whole body burned with pain.
A harsh cough seared her throat and tears streamed down her cheeks as she coughed over and over again, each one felt like her lungs were trying to leave her body through her mouth. She didn’t want to cough anymore, she didn’t want to hurt anymore, she just wanted peace.
Peace and quiet.
You would think after so many months alone in that cell that the last thing she would want was peace and quiet, and yet it was what she had become accustomed to. The idea of being surrounded by too many people and too many sounds left her feeling panicked.
“Shh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” a soft voice murmured, and it felt like someone was stroking her hair.
The voice sounded like Ryder’s.
He couldn’t be here though because …
No.
He had been there.
He’d appeared out of thin air and carried her out of that prison. He’d killed to protect her.
Ryder would make sure she got back home.
Unless …
Unless she had imagined the entire thing. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d hallucinated since she’d been abducted.
“Honey, drink some more water, and I need you to swallow this pill for me.” A finger touched her lips, urging them to part, and the pill was placed on her tongue before the bottle of water was at her lips again. She drank greedily and cool water flowed down her throat going a small way to ease some of the burning.
It was Ryder, he was here, she could feel his strong hands on her shoulders as he laid her back down. She remembered what those hands felt like touching her bare skin, teasing her, stroking her, buried deep inside her. She also remembered what it felt like when she had woken up alone in bed the morning after losing her virginity to him to find out that he had left without a goodbye.
The pain of that day had never really faded, and yet stupid woman that she was she had forgiven him and given him a second chance only for him to do the exact same thing to her again.
Two disappearing acts were enough, she would never trust him again.
“Go away,” she mumbled weakly, pushing at the hands that lingered on her shoulders.
“Ah, baby, I’m sorry,” he whispered, and she could have sworn that she felt his lips brush across her forehead. “You’ll never know how much it killed me to walk away from you, how much I hated myself for hurting you.”
Abigail might believe him, but he’d said those words to her before.
The night of her high school graduation was the night that her brother’s irritating best friend, the man who teased her relentlessly and scared away any boy she liked suddenly morphed into something else. Despite his teasing, Abigail had loved Ryder since she was twelve years old, and when he finally kissed her and then made love to her, she’d thought that he had reciprocated her feelings.
That had been her first mistake.
She hadn’t seen him again until she returned home after college, almost four years later. He had shown up out of the blue at her apartment with flowers and an apology. Of course she’d told him to get lost but he’d been persistent, sending her flowers every day, each bouquet accompanied by a note with an apology.
Eventually, she’d been worn down, let her guard down, and let him back in.
That had been her second mistake.
For a while everything had been perfect, she and Ryder had gotten to know each other as two adults instead of the kids they had been. They’d had fun, gone on some dates, had the best sex of her life. She’d been falling in love with him.
Then one day about a year later he was just gone.
He didn’t answer her calls, didn’t respond to her texts, didn’t come around again, and she hadn’t seen him again until he appeared beside her in her prison.
There would be no mistake number three.
How could she ever trust him again?
No amount of flowers and sweet apology notes were going to convince her to let her guard down this time around. Once they were back home, she would be the one to walk away this time. Part of her wanted to give him a piece of her mind, he definitely deserved it, but she had shed enough tears over Ryder Flynn, she’d wasted enough anger on him, and she’d worked hard to get over him.
His hand was still touching her, and she suddenly couldn’t bear it. It was worse than the awful burning up feeling. Jerking herself away from him, she felt something painful tug at her hand.
Looking up in fear she saw a large man standing above her.
It wasn’t Ryder, this man was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t remember where she had seen him, all she knew was that he felt evil.
He had a bald head, eyes as black as night, and lots of muscles, he radiated strength and she knew that he would use that strength against her.
“No,” she pleaded, shying away from him. “Please don’t hurt me again.”
“I won’t, Abby,” Ryder said.
Ryder?
Where had he gone?
She scanned the room but couldn’t see him, all she could see was the bald man.
No wait.
That wasn’t true.
There were more men standing behind the bald man, at least half a dozen of them.
They were going to kill her and Ryder.
No, before they killed them they were going to torture them.
Beatings.
Fists.
Pain.
“No,” she sobbed, “I don’t want to do that again.”
Images of herself tied to a chair assaulted her.
Strong hands held her down, and she bucked and twisted against them, desperate to get away.
Abigail cursed her own weakness. How many times had she heard as a kid that she wasn’t as strong and tough as her grandfather, as her father, as her mother, as her brother?
Each time she’d been told that another piece of her self-confidence slipped away.
She was strong.
Okay, so she didn’t know how to shoot a gun, and she couldn’t carry double her own bodyweight, she couldn’t survive if someone dropped her on a deserted island, and she didn’t know a hundred ways to kill someone, but she was strong in her own way.
Only now she didn’t feel so strong.
She felt weak and helpless and pathetic, the exact same way her family had made her feel with their thoughtless words and unrealistic expectations.
As a child when she’d felt inadequate, she hadn’t given up, she’d worked harder in school, she’d worked harder in ballet class, and she’d taken self-defense classes. She hadn’t given up then and she wouldn’t give up now.