"It was your training," my uncle Jacob says. "Your training saved you."
"I don’t know what the fuck it was, but at one point, I just wanted to let fucking go. I could barely fucking see out of one eye. Every single time I took a breath, it felt like I was being stabbed over and over again. Every time I moved, I felt the stab wounds in my legs rip open even more. Forget about the bullet wound. Forget about the gash in my head or the fact that one of my eyes was swollen shut," he says. "I got to the truck, and the only place I could think of was making it here. For five days, he beat me and tortured me. He wanted me to beg for my life." The words pour out of him so painfully. "He wanted me to beg him and bow down to him. The more I fought it, the harder the hits came, but there was no fucking way in hell I would bend to him. There was no fucking way I was going to let him win." He shakes his head, and now the tears roll out of me over and over again. "I was not going to let him fucking win!" he roars out. "Not then and not fucking now. If I was going to die, I was going to die on my terms." I turn now, walking out of the room straight to the bathroom.
"Chelsea." I hear my father calling my name, but I close the door and make it just in time to throw up in the toilet. "Honey," he says softly, and I get up, walking over to the sink. Turning on the tap, I cup my hands under the stream. I wash my face, then open the bathroom door just a touch, seeing my father standing there with worry all over his face. I push open the door, letting my father come in. "Honey." He whispers my nickname and holds out his arms, and I run into him, my sob muffled in his chest.
His arms go around me, and I know that I’m safe. I know he has me for as long as I need him. "It’s okay," he whispers in my ear.
"His father did that to him," I say, my eyes open and are focused on the wall. "Beat him to an inch of his life." I let go of him now. "How? How can someone do that to their own child?"
"I can’t explain that to you," he says. "I mean, my father was no walk in the park, and he definitely never helped me with homework." He has never really spoken about his father. He was dead before I was born. I do know from the stories that people tell me, that he was not a nice man. He was the reason that Ethan left us when he turned twenty-one.
"That man is lucky to be alive," I say softly. "You didn’t see the wounds, Dad," I say softly. "You didn’t spend over six hours stitching him up. You didn’t have to fix a man whose own father did that to him."
"I didn’t." He leans now against the doorjamb of the bathroom, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Now that you know what he’s up against, you still want him gone?" I hear Ethan say from behind my father.
"What if his father finds him here?" I ask him and then look at my father. "Are you going to be okay with me being a sitting duck until his father comes back and finishes the job?"
"He won’t get close enough," my uncle Casey says from behind Ethan. "I would never put you in harm's way." I shake my head, not listening to what he has to say. "I promise you that."
I look at my father, then to Uncle Casey, who just smiles shyly at me, and then to Ethan. "Fine," I say, not believing I’m going to say these words. The thought of letting my family down is too much for me to handle. "He can stay."
Chapter 9
Mayson
I watch her run away from the room, and I have to look down at my arm, blinking away the tears that will come for her. Her face was riddled with tears as I told them how my own father tied me to a fucking tree for five days and tortured me. I take a deep breath, the pain a little less than it was yesterday but barely. "She going to be okay?" I ask, looking up to see Jacob and Quinn left in the room.
"Not a chance," Quinn says at the same time that Jacob says, "She’ll be fine."
I laugh at both of them. "Well, that sounds convincing."
"It was a hard story," Jacob says, looking at me. "For anyone to hear."
"I can imagine, especially with the way this family was brought up." I look at them both, and I’m going to admit that I envy what they have. It’s what you read about in story books, and then to see that it actually exists, it’s a gift.
"I want you to know," Jacob says, coming toward the bed. "That we are going to stand by you."
I nod my head, not sure I can say anything when Ethan and Casey come back into the room. "Sorry about that," Ethan says, and I look at Casey.
"Is she okay?" I ask, knowing that this is too much for her. It’s too much for me, and I lived through it. It also kills me that I brought this to her front door, and she got involved with this.
"Beau is with her," Casey says to me, and a second later, they both come back into the room.
"Chelsea," I say her name, and she just looks at me, and the redness of her eyes stabs me in the heart. There is so much I want to say to her, but here in the middle of her family is not the place, so I say the only thing that comes to mind. "I’m sorry." I leave out what I’m sorry for.
"Okay, so now that we have some answers," Casey says, and her eyes never leave mine. "I’ll fill you in on what I found.”
Chelsea now looks over at him. "The car was reported stolen."
"I called Mr. Harvey," Ethan says to the room. "Told him you had an emergency and your car didn’t work."
I shake my head. "He is never going to believe that."
"He didn’t," Ethan laughs, "but he said to tell that son of a bitch he better put gas in the tank."
I laugh now; we didn’t always get along, but we did share a couple of moments where we respected each other. He’s a veteran and fought in the Vietnam War, so we bonded over surviving and serving. "I’m sure he did."
"I got a copy of the fire report," Casey says. "Arson."
"Wait, what?" Chelsea asks, looking around at all the men in the room and then looking down.
"I’m already in this," she says. "So if you guys want to suddenly protect me, should you have not brought him to my house?"
"She’s right," I say to the room. "She deserves to know what we know." I look at her and see her beauty, and then I tell myself to back off. She is too young for me, and besides, she doesn’t need someone who has nothing.
"Fine," Ethan says. "The cabin was burned to the ground."
"Did you find his father in there?" she asks, hopeful that this is all over.
"No," Casey says. "And." He looks down. "Your gun is missing also."
"Of course it is," Chelsea says. "How do you think he got shot?"
"We have eyes everywhere," Casey says. "We have this house wired up tight."
"We can take shifts," Quinn says.
"Why?" Chelsea asks, and we all look at her. "If no one knows he’s here, why would everyone be here? We need to act as normal as we can. So it’s suspicious if Quinn is spending the night or Ethan isn’t home with Emily at night."