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“A little over six years.”
Theo did the easy math. She’d made her break from the man right before arriving in Gracemont. That was when he recalled her showing up that first day in a turtleneck, completely inappropriate for the temperature. What had she been hiding?
“Is this the first time you left him?”
She shook her head, which was still buried against her knees. “No. I tried three times before.”
Jesus.
“Look at me, kitten,” he said gently.
She lifted her head.
“Why did you go back?”
Theo had never seen tears flow so quickly. One second, her eyes were dry, the next, they were flooding over.
Every particle of his being wanted to reach out for her, to hold her. “Can I come closer?”
She nodded instantly, her lack of hesitation loosening some of the pressure on his chest.
Theo slid across the floor, keeping a few inches between them. He wasn’t touching her anywhere, but at least from here, if she reached out to him, he could.
Gretchen sniffled, wiping her eyes. Theo reached up to the desk, feeling around until he found the box of tissues there. He handed it to her, and she accepted it gratefully, wiping her nose and eyes. “I’m an ugly crier,” she said, her first attempt at humor.
Theo couldn’t laugh. “There’s not a single ugly thing about you.”
Her eyes had been darting around, from his chest to his cheeks to his forehead. For the first time, her gaze met his and held. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I would never lie to you.”
More of that pressure on his chest lifted, because for the first time ever, Gretchen wasn’t looking at him with doubt, or suspicion, or even hope. This time, he saw belief.
She believed him.
“Why did you go back?” he repeated, aware that if she started crying again, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from reaching out to hold her. Her tears killed him.
“It wasn’t my choice. I ran out of fear, and I wasn’t smart about it. I trusted the wrong people.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The first time he choked me…” She paused as her hands rose to her throat.
Gretchen had said she didn’t want to relive it. He understood that now, because he wasn’t sure he could handle hearing it.
“I was afraid he was going to kill me. When he finally let go, I slumped to the floor, and he stormed off to bed. I waited until I was sure he was asleep, and I ran. Ran to the house of a woman I thought was a friend. Destiny dated Briggs’s partner, Darryl, on the force, so we hung out with them a lot, did couples things. They lived a few miles away, and I don’t drive, and I didn’t have any money, so I ran there.”
In the middle of the night, Theo thought, the image of it stabbing him like daggers.
“I told Destiny what happened, showed her the marks on my neck. She hugged me, told me to calm down, then said I could sleep on the couch. It was the first time in a long time I fell asleep feeling safe. I shouldn’t have.”
“What did she do?”
“She called Briggs, told him I was there.”
“Why the fuck would she do that?” he snapped.
“You have to understand, the face Briggs shows the world is very different from the one I saw at home. He showed up there first thing in the morning with a huge bouquet of roses and a big apologetic show that was all for Darryl and Destiny’s benefit, not mine. He lied and told them I’d had a psychotic episode, that the bruises were the result of him trying to restrain me. And they believed him. They always believed him. Then, he drove me home, ripped the flowers out of my hands, swung them at me like a whip until they were nothing but stems. The thorns cut into my skin. I have a few scars on my shoulder from…” She shook her head. “That doesn’t really matter. He told me if I ever left him again, he’d fucking kill me.”