Page 37 of Handling Skylar (Hope Parish #5)

His eyes were wild and he started pacing and gibbering again about how he had to do what he did.

He turned on me again. “The same thing with your brother. He caught me, you know. I had to make that go away, too. He threatened to call the police. I couldn’t have that. They would have kept me away from you. All it took was a little push.”

“Oh, God, no,” I moaned, grief and guilt washing over me in a black torrent.

He ran both hands over his face so hard it stretched his skin, his face contorting at my reaction. He pointed a finger at me and shouted, “This is your fault. If you had run away with me when I asked you to, none of this would have happened.”

He was completely delusional, thought we had some kind of relationship.

He’d barely spoken to me in high school and had never asked me to do anything.

I needed to get calm, talk him down and find some way to escape.

When I saw the gas can, the blood in my veins froze.

Gasoline, on the dress that Anna Kate wanted me to wear and…

oh God, oh God. My parents. Arson…oh, God, the implications of that one small object reverberated through me, realization dawning over me in horror, overwhelming grief.

“You killed my parents,” I sobbed.

“Yes, of course I did.” He said it like it should be common knowledge and no big deal. “Your parents wanted to send you away. I couldn’t have that.”

“It was you who pulled me out of bed, set me on the lawn, but you left my parents to die!”

“You sound upset. You have to agree they were being unreasonable. You’ll see. Everything will be great when we get to the cabin. It’s isolated in the mountains. It’ll be just you and me.”

“Unreasonable?” I whispered. “And, Anna Kate...” My voice was strident, but my heart was pounding so hard I could hardly hear over it, and hysteria edged up my throat, squeezing it tight. So many people all because of me.

“She got information out of me,” he said through gritted teeth.

“She was going to hurt you with it.” His voice took on a pleading tone.

“I had to stop her. She was a nasty bitch.” Then a strange look of glee gleamed in his eyes.

He simpered and paced. “You didn’t want to wear that ugly dress anyway,” he said, my stomach twisted with sick dread.

“No,” I said, agreeing with him. “I didn’t want to wear that dress.” Placating him might get him to let down his guard and then I could try to do something, get away.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. His sharp gaze studied me.

“Do you? Or are you trying to get away from me? I spent a long time tracking you down. You disappeared, and I couldn’t find you. It took me years. I’ve been living here right under your nose for eight months.”

I closed my eyes. I hadn’t noticed. That was too true.

Adam had been an awkward boy on the edges of my memory and all this time he’d been in love with me, obsessed with me, my face looking at me from every corner of the room, reminding me how close to that unbalanced edge he was.

It was quietly terrifying to realize I’d been stalked for years.

He rushed at the bed and grabbed me by my bound hands and hauled me up. My feet hit the floor, and I stumbled into him. The bulge in his pants telling me that I was in much more physical danger than his slaps and hair pulling.

I choked on my fear and revulsion. Trying to back away, but his unrelenting hold was like iron, his face thrust against mine. He leaned in, his eyes going to my mouth, the light in them lascivious and unbalanced at the same time.

“I’ll let you go to the bathroom if you give me a kiss.” The longing in his voice made me sick.

I wanted to spit in his face, but I knew that he would blow up and maybe lose any affection, real or imagined, he had for me.

My rejection would set him off. I fended off the disgust and dread.

He’d killed five people, my gut clenched with hatred at this person who had taken away everyone I had loved.

I could only pray he hadn’t harmed Jake.

There was nothing, except his perceived love for me to keep him from killing me.

“All right, Adam, but I need my hands free so that I can hold you the way I want to.” I kept my voice even with just a tinge of breathlessness and knew I’d gotten an advantage when I saw the hunger in his eyes.

I’d been the object of his worship for eight years.

I needed to work that. I smiled, trying to imagine I was with Jake and it worked.

I immediately relaxed, and Adam made a soft sound that rippled over my skin like crawling spiders.

He stared at me for a moment, his feverish eyes, the unhinged look of him spurred me on.

He had terrible plans for me, least of all taking me away from Suttontowne to this cabin in the woods he kept babbling about.

I had no intention of becoming his victim.

It was fight or live as this man’s slave until he tired of me and killed me.

I had no intention of becoming a statistic. I was going to survive.

For moments that felt like days, he stared at me as if he was trying to read my mind. But I kept my face soft and neutral. “Please, Adam,” I pleaded, trying to still the twist of nerves in my stomach. “I promise I won’t do anything but show you exactly how I feel about you.”

He smiled, his delusional mind seeing what he wanted to see.

I let go of my pent-up breath on a sigh.

He reached for my wrists and worked at the bindings.

When my hands were free, I slid my palms up his arms to his shoulders.

With an explosive movement and with all the force I could muster, I brought my knee up into his groin.

As soon as he cried out and doubled over, I reached for the bedside lamp and smashed it over his head.

I bolted for the door, my breathing harsh in my lungs, fueled by terror.

I ran for the stairs feeling as if I was in quicksand and everything was happening in slow motion.

When I heard him bellow my name, my heart jumped, adrenaline drop loading into my bloodstream.

My hands slick on the banister, I rushed down the stairs, my eyes hitting the front door. Freedom!

I reached for the door knob and twisted it frantically. The door didn’t budge. It was locked. Oh, God.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Help! Someone help me!”

He grabbed me from behind in a choking grip, cutting off my voice and my air. As the room dimmed, all I thought about was Jake and how much he meant to me. How much I—the door burst open and Jake stood there with the Outlaws.

Four big, beautiful men, dressed to the nines, towering over Adam’s spindly form. Blue eyes blazing with threat and protective glints. A wall of muscle barreled toward me as Jake growled my name, forces of nature, their fists clenched and mayhem in their eyes.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Adam cried out and released my neck and I stumbled toward Jake, choking. They were on him, beating him into submission as Jake pulled me against him, and I clung to him, bursting into wrenching tears as if each successive breath I would need to live was him.

***

Two weeks later.

I huddled in the warmth of my sheepskin jacket standing on the outskirts where my brother and parents had lost their lives because of a maniac who had fixated on me.

It was now occupied by a beautiful stone and wooden ranch house, cherry red barns, horses and cattle grazing in the nearby fields, the fencing all pretty, white and new.

That night came back to me in full force. But it wasn’t Adam Myers and his brutal treatment of me that I remembered. It was Jake looking like he would kill Adam with his bare hands that resonated with me.

The sheriff had arrested him, and Adam, blubbering like a baby, had confessed to everything—the murders, the arson, his obsession with me.

Still in shock, heartbroken and sick with guilt, I’d told a devastated and worried Jake that nothing had changed.

I had to get away from the memories that were killing me by slow degrees.

I’d had no intention of going back, no matter how tormenting my thoughts were of Jake and how much I missed him.

I crouched down, the charred remains of my past had all been swept away and something beautiful and prosperous had replaced it.

No, I hadn’t thought I would go back.

Then the package from Jordan came in the mail. When I’d opened it, I couldn’t believe what was inside. It had brought me to my knees and Jake’s card had twisted me up so hard, I was still reeling from his words.

Ah, Jake, a swell of suffocating emotion waved through me. Who was I kidding? I was the only one who was fooling myself. I was so in love with him that I was darned scared to admit it.

That precious gift and two words he’d said had set me on this road, brought me back here to where the nightmare had all started.

I reached for a handful of soil and let it sift through my fingers.

I could hear my father’s booming voice, see my mom’s beaming face.

This here soil is where you came from. Don’t forget that, baby girl.

But this dirt isn’t our legacy. No, honey.

It’s all that came before and all that will come afterward.

That’s the kind of thing you can take to the bank. The spirit of us all will prevail.

Here I thought nothing lasted forever, but I’d been wrong.

It was what you built in your life that lived on in generations to come, I realized, fighting a swell of tears, my throat tight and painful.

I closed my eyes against the steadfast knowledge that I was a blending of my parents.

In my body their genes lived. In my heart, their love remained and in my head, memories of them would last a lifetime.

It was my turn to make my mark and build my own legacy where I would keep them alive forever.

Emotion welled and my tears spilled over, tears of understanding, of letting go and hanging on as I rubbed the grit of the soil between my fingers.

I’d see them in my children’s eyes, the essence of them stamped in living memory.

I wanted to take that journey with no one other than Jake Sutton.

Living without him wasn’t an option. I struggled with it every day.

The scandal in Suttontowne might be minimized without me there, but, suddenly, I decided that outside forces wouldn’t dictate to me ever again how I was going to respond.

I was going with my heart, head and gut. Jake was the man for me. Would be the only one for me. I loved him and I was going home… home …to tell him that.