Pieces of Me Read online

  An extensive search revealed nothing.

  Mr. Stockman had offered rewards for any clue leading to her disappearance, but none of the information led to her discovery.

  The officer who found Mrs. Stockman said she stumbled into the street, “looking like a war refugee”. While the hospital will give no information, sources reveal that she has had multiple bones broken and will need extensive surgery to repair the damage done to her face.

  The accused in this case is her husband, Stefan Stockman. Our sources reveal that she has told the Boston Police Department that she was held against her will in the basement of a house destroyed during the March 22 tornado and that was what had allowed her to escape. During those months, she reports she was raped repeatedly, beaten, and often starved.

  There has been no comment from the Stockman family, but the law firm retained by Mr. Stockman assures us that he is innocent and that Mrs. Stockman underwent a horrifying experience at the hands of an abusive lover. Her husband claims will be there to support her as she recovers.

  The sound of the phone being placed on the table was horribly loud. It wasn’t, not really. But just then, the sound of a pin dropping might have shattered me.

  “How long did this go on?” he asked quietly.

  I looked at him blankly. “How long was I trapped?” I frowned, trying to think.

  But he shook his head. “How long did you…were you…how long did he hurt you?”

  “A lifetime,” I whispered. “And he’s still doing it.” Shivering, I thought about the basement. Jenks wrapped his arm around me. “Years, though. It went on for years. It started almost right after I married him. It was June when I told him I was leaving him—I told him in the morning and he left for work without saying a word. I went to a hotel and lay down to sleep.” Haunted, wanting to scream, I shifted my eyes to Jenks and focused on his face. I was here, I was safe. “Then I woke up in the basement. It was days before I even realized he was the one who’d taken me. There were no lights. It was completely dark. He’d painted over the windows and he only came over at night.” My voice had faded down to a whisper. “Lights hurt my eyes for days after. Now I can’t stand the dark.”

  I looked back at the phone, vaguely aware of Jenks as he started to pace. Then, as something shattered, I flinched, biting back a scream.

  Jenks stood there by at the end of the couch.

  There was a wet spot on the wall, and the shards of glass, all that remained from the bottle of beer he’d been drinking, lay on the ground below it.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, following the direction of my eyes. “I’m sorry, Shadow. Sorry… I just…”

  He turned away, his shoulders rising, falling on a ragged breath.

  I just shook my head and turned back to the ocean. One might think that violent outbursts like that would freak me out, especially with Stefan’s proclivity to violence. But even when he beat me, he never lost control. He would break my arm and smile as he did it.

  I’d rather see some outburst, some expression of anger any day.

  It was the lack of emotion that scared me more than anything.

  Shivering, I ran my hands up and down my arms.

  “You saw nobody, nothing, that entire time?”

  “Stefan would come. But I never saw him. He’d grab me, push me down…” I rubbed the back of my neck. The memory of my hair, how he’d twist it around his hands like a rope and use it to pen me in place made me want to vomit. And I had. I’d done that. There had been times I’d lie there, on the floor, choking on my own vomit as he hurt me. All I had wanted was to die. And Stefan wouldn’t give me that.

  “It said there was a tornado?”

  Closing my eyes, I nodded. “It destroyed the house. Eight people died. I was able to get out. I saw lightning. It…” I forced my lashes up, stared at the sky. “It had been so long since I’d seen light, I thought I was going crazy. And I was weak, so weak. He’d bring food. Peanut butter, crackers. Old bread. Awful stuff. And a bucket of water. I had to use that to drink and wash myself. There was a toilet and shower, but the showerhead stopped working after a few months. He hadn’t been there in a few days and I’d run out of food. Then water. I was so weak, I could barely walk, but I saw the lightening and I realized that was my chance. Maybe my only chance. It was so hard to leave.”

  “Why?”

  Turning, I stared at him. “He could have been waiting,” I said simply. “To trick me. To see if I’d try. If he was…”

  Then I shook my head, blocking out that thought. I couldn’t think of that. It did no good, now. And he hadn’t been waiting. Stefan had gone to Chicago for a show and the storm had grounded his plane. That had freed me. He hadn’t had any chance at all to stop me. All of his arrogance, all the control he had over me, and all it had taken was Mother Nature.

  And a cop with a bottle of Aquafina.

  “There was a cop. He lived two streets over and was out because of the storm. He saw me, yelled at me. I didn’t understand what he was saying. It had been so long since I’d heard anything. Stefan hadn’t even spoken to me the last few months. He’d just…” I stopped, plucked at my shirt. He knew, didn’t he? He’d said as much. “He would rape me. Beat me. But he never said a word. All of it in silence. I saw nothing, I heard nothing. All I could do was feel and all I could feel was pain. And then I was free. On the street while the rain was still coming down and there’s this cop, staring at me like I’m crazy. He sees the bruises left over—Stefan had beaten me badly the last time. Maybe a week earlier. And my face…” I touched my cheekbone. It wasn’t noticeable now, but it had been crooked then. “My face was wrong. He’d hit me, broken the bones in my face and they didn’t heal right. The cop knew something was wrong. Nine months in hell and all it took to get me out was a storm. Eight people died, Jenks.”

  The strength drained out of me and I went to the floor. “Eight people died, but I made it out of hell. Why did it happen that way?”

  A moment later, I was wrapped in his arms. He kissed my cheek and started to rock me. “It just did. It was a tornado. It could have killed you just as easily. Don’t go taking that weight on when you already have enough horror inside you.” His chest rumbled against my back as he spoke. I wanted to take comfort in his words, but I didn’t know if I could. If I should.

  We sat like that. Staring out over the dark water of the Atlantic. I lost track of how much time passed.

  Then he reached up and pushed my hair back, pressed his cheek to mine.

  “Why, for fuck’s safe, isn’t he in jail?”

  “They declined to prosecute. It was my word against his and he’d had already painted me as this…unstable woman who had issues with alcohol and depression. His friends backed him up. They…” I bit my inner cheek and looked up at the ceiling until the ache faded. “In the end, a few cops believed me, but the DA said no jury would ever convict him. There was no evidence. He would either blindfold me or wear a mask. I never saw him. Nobody ever saw him near the house,” I said simply. “And the house isn’t listed in his name. It belongs to one of his former administrative assistant—it was on the market, had been for a year. But strangely enough, nobody ever came out to view it. This woman, his former assistant, had been dating a man who I was supposedly having an affair with. A dozen people will claim they saw us flirting. I worked with him on a committee. That was it. But people would swear they’d seen us together. And Stefan…well, everybody believed him. Nobody believed me.”

  I felt drained and tired. I wanted to sleep, but I had to get this out.

  “I hadn’t seen him. There was no evidence. The DA said no jury would ever convict him.” Staring at the wall now, I said, “He just got away with it. All of it.”

  Jenks’ arms tightened around me and his voice was a low, ragged growl. “I want him dead.”

  “I just want him out of my life. Forever.”

  He took me to bed.

  Fully clothed, the two of us stretched out on the massive sprawl of h
is king-sized bed and he didn’t turn off the lights.

  I lay down first, all but hugging the edge of the bed and Jenks stretched out next to me, on his side, facing me. “You going to stay there all night like that?”

  I just stared at him.

  He sighed. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Um…”

  Then he held out his hand.

  I inched my way over to him.

  Eventually I worked my way into his arms and pressed my face to his chest, breathing in the scent of him. I found myself tracing the lines of the tattoo that spread out down his right arm, visible under the sleeve of his shirt. “Why are you still here?” I asked him softly.

  “I live here,” he said reasonably. Then he pushed his hand into my hair, his fingers seeking out my scalp. My lids drooped as he started to massage. “Maybe you should close your eyes and get some rest, sugar.”

  “I don’t mean that.” Sleep sounded nice. “Why are you even around me? I’m a mess, Dillian. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed that. I’m not remotely normal and I don’t know if I’ll ever even come close to being normal again. I have nightmares. I can’t sleep without light. I have to drink one kind of water and I can’t leave my apartment without checking the locks four times over. Sometimes even five or six or ten.”

  “There were worse things in the world, Shadow. I’m where I want to be.”

  I swallowed and then shifted back enough to look at him. The next part was going to be hard but I needed to say it. “I want to…”

  That sounded lame. It sounded so lame. I was already with him, wasn’t I?

  “I wanted to…” Have sex? Fuck? Make love? Darting a look up at him, I saw a dark, hooded expression in his eyes and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was hunger there. I reached up and touched his mouth. “I want you,” I said, forcing the words out through my tight throat. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But I don’t know if I even can.”

  He startled me by rolling me onto my back, settling between my thighs, the solid, heavy weight of him tucked hard against me. His gaze held mine, confident and steady as he started to rock against me. Through the material of my skirt and the petticoat, I felt him, the thick heavy ridge of his cock and I could almost imagine him inside me.

  “I think you can. And I bet, if you close your eyes right now and let yourself try, you’d think the same,” he whispered, reaching up and stroking the rough pads of his fingers across my collarbone, left bare by the low-cut neck of my dress. “But…now isn’t a good time. You’re upset and you’re not in a good place.” He lowered his head, rubbed his lips across mine. “When it is a good time, you’ll be ready. You’ll want the same thing I do and that’s to feel me come inside you so deep, you’ll never want to be without me again.”

  I shuddered at the low, raw sound of his voice stroking over my skin like a velvet glove. And the look in his eyes was one of confidence and heat. Sliding my hand up his chest, I touched his jaw. “Are you so certain it will be that easy?”

  “Yes.” He turned his face into my hand and pressed a kiss against my palm, a hot, open-mouthed kiss that sent my pulse climbing up to a rhythm that just couldn’t be healthy. And I didn’t care.

  Moments later, he rolled away and tucked me up against him. It had been a very long time since I’d had a man wrap himself around me in bed. The guys I’d been with in college had been more for doing the deed, then getting to sleep.

  This was new.

  I didn’t know how to handle it.

  I liked it—a lot.

  But it was…weird.

  “I’m here, I’m with you, because it’s where I want to be, Shadow,” Jenks said softly and I felt him smile against my brow. “You caught my eye almost from the first and then I kept seeing all these little things that just draw me in. You looked so shy and nervous every time I saw you, but then you forgot that sketchbook of yours and I saw all the dirty little pictures. I don’t think there was enough cold water in the entire state to cool me down by the time I was done looking through that.”

  He surprised a laugh out of me and I poked him in the ribs. “Stop it,” I mumbled as blood rushed up to stain my cheeks. Embarrassed, I kept my face tucked against his chest even when he continued to laugh, trying to get me to look at him.

  “You have no idea how many times I wished I had just kept that damn thing.” He pressed his lips to my ear. “I’m getting in a bad state right now, just thinking about it. You know which one I’m thinking about?”

  I groaned. “Would you stop?”

  His hand slid up my back, toyed with the ribbons that tied behind my neck. “Stop it? Are you nuts?” His voice was a hot, low murmur against my skin.

  “You’re probably are all hung up about that one at the end.” I squirmed around and put my back against his chest. I was so hot, I couldn’t breathe.

  But I couldn’t look at him either.

  He laid his hand on my hair and stroked it up, then down. “No. There was one about halfway through. Of you. You’re standing in front of a mirror, staring at yourself, and it’s like you’re trying to figure out what you see when you looking at your reflection.” He cupped my left breast in his hand and pushed his thigh between mine. “I have this idea in my head, of me standing behind you, and you’re naked, just like you were in that sketch. And I’ll tell you what I see, so maybe you can rethink how you see yourself.”

  “I didn’t want to see myself at all. I looked in the mirror and just saw the thing I’d been reduced to, in all those months when I was trapped. Then as time passed, I slowly started to see somebody else, but the woman I saw wasn’t strong. Just a broken, tired victim. I wanted to be more.” Sighing, I closed my eyes. “I still want that. I just don’t know how to get there.”

  “I want you to see what I see.” He brushed my hair back and his thumb traced along the faint scar left over from surgery, all but hidden in my hairline. “I’ve seen this before, wondered what it was from. Now I know…and it makes it that much easier for me to tell you what I see.” He touched his lips to the scar. “I see a survivor.”

  That sounds better than victim, I guess.

  He caught one of my hands and lifted it to his lips. His tongue touched my palm and I gasped at the contact. “I see your hands and I think beautiful…think of all the beauty you make with them.”

  He lowered my hand to the bed and then brushed his lips against my shoulder. “I see these and I think strong. You carry too much.”

  Something that felt like tears pricked at my eyes. Turning my face into the pillow, I bit back the tears.

  I didn’t want to cry.

  Not anymore.

  He guided me around and when he cupped my face, his thumb stroked over my lip while he kissed my closed eyes. “I look at you now,” he said softly. “And I see a woman who’s tired. We should sleep.”

  Sleep.

  Yeah.

  I needed sleep.

  But even as much as I needed it, I also feared it.

  I feared the nightmares.

  A storm was breaking over the water when I woke.

  I woke alone.

  The scent of coffee teased me out of the bed and I padded out of the bedroom. The cottage had one of those open floor plans and from the doorway of the bedroom, I could see across the living room, clear into the kitchen. Jenks was standing at the stove, wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung workout pants.

  The scents of bacon and coffee flooded the air and my belly growled.

  Without turning around, he called out, “I’ve got a cup over here waiting for you.”

  I guess that meant I needed to join him.

  Nerves chewed at me, gnawed at me.

  I’d been nervous like this before, but only once.

  Maybe even not quite like this. The one thing that might have compared had been my wedding night and although Stefan had been…proficient as a lover, he hadn’t been overly proficient at giving a damn about me.

  I’d had less talented l
overs before him who had been…well, better lovers.

  But I’d never been in a position like this. Maybe that was why I felt so much more anxious as I crossed over to stand in the kitchen, wearing the wrinkled dress I’d been so worried about yesterday, my hair a matted nightmare. Any attempt to look nice for him would be futile.

  Jenks turned to look at me and the smile he gave me, that slow one that tugged up the corners of his mouth, lit up his face and it seemed as if he didn’t care that I wasn’t wearing perfectly applied makeup or that my dress looked like hell.

  “Did you sleep?” he asked, taking the coffee from the counter and holding it out for me.

  “Yeah. Better than I’d thought,” I said, shrugging. I took a sip and sighed as the caffeine hit my system and started to sing. Plucking at my dress, I murmured, “I need to go home. Shower. Change.”

  “You can shower here. I can lend you a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.”

  I stared at his broad chest and then down at my body. “Nothing of yours would fit me.”

  “The shorts will be long on you, maybe a little snug in the hips, but they’ll fit. You wouldn’t have to wear the dress home.”

  I shrugged, about to dismiss the idea. But then I realized, if I wore his clothes home, maybe I could keep the shirt. I could sleep in it. Have his scent wrapped around me. It was foolish. It was silly. And the thought of sleeping in something that smelled of him filled my heart with something hot and twisty and soft. With a jerky nod, I moved to the table. “I might.”

  “Okay. Let me know after you eat.”

  Worrying my lower lip, I folded my hands in my lap and looked around. “Do you work today?” I’d never asked him, I realized, what he did.

  His hands stilled, one gripping the skillet, the other holding the spatula. “Work?”

  “Yeah. I don’t even know what you do. You’re at the beach a lot. Do you work somewhere around there?”

  He shot me a look over his shoulder, an off-handed smile on his face. “I do software consulting for the most part.”

  “Software consulting?” I guess my surprise must have shown in my voice because he shot me an amused look.