Page 21 of Redemption (Favorite Malady Duet #2)

DANE

B lood. So much blood. It’s splattered across my face in droplets that are beginning to cool. It’s wet and sticky on my hands where I’m grasping my sister’s dress. I’m shaking her, screaming at her.

Katie isn’t breathing. She doesn’t answer when I say her name over and over again.

How can she answer when half her face is missing?

A car horn blares incessantly, deafening me. I shake my head sharply, as though I can toss the maddening sound from my ears.

I can’t escape from it. My seatbelt is stuck.

If it weren’t, I would’ve tumbled into my sister.

The Jeep is on its side. We rolled off the country lane and down a steep hill when my father took a particularly fast corner.

I don’t know how long we’ve been here, but it’s dark outside, and my voice is raw from screaming.

No one has come to save us.

No one has come to save Katie.

My father is slumped over the steering wheel. It’s not an unfamiliar sight to see him passed out after a night of drinking, but this time, there’s a thick crimson stream that flows down his slack face.

The car horn rings in my ears. I’m clawing at them, raking my hands through my hair as though I can pull the sound from my mind.

Katie is looking at me with one eye, but she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t see anything.

I cry out for help, for salvation, for mercy.

Anything to escape this nightmare.

After a while, I go quiet. I accept that no one will come for me.

No one will bring my twin sister back to me.

I don’t yet know a word for what’s happened to her, but I know she’s gone forever.

The doctor won’t be able to fix her.

There’s nothing I can do. I’m powerless. Helpless.

Alone.

“Dane.” A soft hand shakes my shoulder.

I grab the delicate wrist and force the tender touch away.

Abigail reels back into the shadows of my bedroom. I shove upright off the cramped chaise and blink hard to focus on the present.

I run a hand over my face and find that my brow is slick with sweat.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur into my palm. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”

I’m not ready to face Abigail. Not when she’ll look at me with fear in her aqua eyes.

“You were having a nightmare,” she says gently.

The bedside lamp turns on, chasing the shadows away. I keep my face in my hand and apply pressure to my closed eyes, as though I can wipe the macabre images from my mind.

“You’re shaking,” she observes, voice soft.

I rub my temples and keep my eyes closed. “I’m fine. Like you said. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Who’s Katie?”

I freeze. No one has said my sister’s name aloud since her funeral. Certainly not in this house.

She deserves better than that. She deserves to be remembered.

And I’ve spent years trying to forget.

I haven’t thought about that crash in a long time, and nightmares about it haven’t troubled me since I was a child. I never needed to be coddled or comforted when I was distressed in the middle of the night; I learned to overcome the fear on my own.

Comfort wouldn’t have been forthcoming, anyway.

“My sister,” I admit. “My twin.”

“I didn’t know you have a sister. You’ve never mentioned her.”

“That’s because she’s dead.” The words are flat and utterly devoid of emotion. “She died when she was five years old.”

Her small gasp makes something twist in the center of my chest.

“I’m so sorry.” She sounds like she really means it. My sweet, compassionate Abigail. “You were having a nightmare about her? You said her name in your sleep.”

I press my lips together for a moment, reticent to reveal the terrible extent of it. My father’s carelessness. My mother’s coldness. The fact that they replaced my dead sister with James and acted as though she never existed.

But Abigail doesn’t have an ounce of cruelty in her. She won’t dismiss Katie’s memory as an inconvenience.

I can trust my little dove.

“I was dreaming about the night she died,” I say after a long, heavy pause.

“You were there?” Abigail’s voice is soft with horror. “When you were only five?”

I nod absently, detaching myself from the volatility of that night and looking at the memory with cool, clinical eyes.

It can’t hurt me if I don’t relive it.

“My father was driving drunk. A bad habit of his. He thinks he doesn’t have to follow the law when it’s inconvenient to him. He was driving us through the Dales when he took a corner too sharply. The Jeep rolled a few times. My father was unconscious for several hours. Katie didn’t make it.”

“Dane…”

My name wavers, and I finally look up at Abigail to find that her remarkable eyes are shining with tears.

Tears for my sister.

For my loss.

My chest aches, and it’s all I can do not to reach for her when I know she’ll recoil again.

“Is that why you…” She trails off and then tries again. “When I crashed the Jeep. I understand why that must’ve been so upsetting for you. I didn’t know.”

I try to shrug, but it’s a sharp movement to throw off her empathy. I can’t allow her emotions to bring out the new feelings she evokes in me.

Not when it comes to this.

Because if I feel what I felt that night, it’ll destroy me.

Maybe it already has.

Then, by some miracle, she’s closing the distance between us. She sinks down onto the chaise beside me and places a tentative hand on my knee.

I can’t help grasping it and pressing her palm directly over my aching heart. She doesn’t pull away.

“When I saw you covered in blood…” My breath shudders. “I wasn’t rational. I was consumed by the fear of losing you. If James hadn’t snapped me the fuck out of it, I wouldn’t have been able to help you. I’m sorry.”

“You did help me,” she says with the weight of a promise. “You healed me and took care of me. You are taking care of me. I’m right here, Dane.”

She places her other hand on my cheek, and I forget how to breathe.

“What you went through is terrible. No one should endure that.”

“I couldn’t save her,” I confess. “I didn’t know how to fix her.”

“You were a child.” Her thumb caresses my cheekbone, keeping me grounded to her. “Is that why you became a doctor? So you can fix people?”

I try to scoff. “I’ve told you before that there’s nothing altruistic about my career.”

“But you could, if you wanted to,” she counters quietly. “You have the knowledge to save someone if they’re seriously injured. You saved me.”

I wish that were true. I want to be the man she’s describing, but it’s just not who I am.

“You were never in danger of dying. I just patched you up.”

“But you didn’t know that when you first found me in the Jeep. You said there was a lot of blood. I was unconscious. I know that must’ve been traumatic for you.” She increases the pressure of her hand over my heart. “I’m safe now, Dane. You can breathe.”

Bright, hot hope sparks in my chest.

She said she’s safe with me.

Before, she’d said that she needed protecting from me.

Has something changed her mind?

I scour my recent memories to understand this change in her. Maybe my unnervingly intense apology hadn’t frightened her like I thought. Yesterday afternoon—after she showed me her nightmarish self-portrait—I’d thought she’d been distressed. I overwhelmed her and made her break down sobbing.

No. That can’t be what’s changed her mind, no matter how sincere my apology was.

It must be this: the fact that I’ve told her my worst trauma.

I’ve made myself vulnerable with her.

The power she holds over me should be terrifying, but I want her too badly to care. She’s looking at me with that clear, open gaze for the first time since I brought her to England. She sees me in a way no one else ever has. No one has ever bothered to try.

I obey her gentle urging and draw in a deep breath. Calm settles over me, and my eyes droop closed with a sudden wash of exhaustion.

Her hand turns in mine, pulling away from my chest. My fingers tighten around hers, but she’s not trying to escape me; she’s urging me to follow.

“You should sleep in the bed,” she says. “That chaise can’t be comfortable.”

I look at her with wonder. Is she offering me absolution? Or at least acceptance?

I scarcely dare to hope.

“I don’t want you to pity me.”

“This isn’t pity,” she assures me and climbs into bed, making room for me beside her.

I join her before she can change her mind. She scoots back slightly, and I get the message: I can sleep beside her, but she still wants space.

I can give her that.

For now.

I’ll win her back, no matter how vulnerable I have to make myself. Nothing matters but having her.

“My father likes to drink, too,” she says after we settle down, inches apart. “And he doesn’t care who he hurts when he’s drunk. Usually, it’s verbal cruelty. But it still hurts.” She places her delicate hand over mine again, the lightest contact. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry about Katie.”

Just the sound of someone else saying her name in this house, acknowledging her existence, is enough to make my eyes burn strangely.

“Thank you. I am too.”

Another beat of silence passes before I growl, “You said usually. Has your father ever laid a hand on you?”

“I don’t think we should talk about this.”

“Why not?”

She’s looking at me with that clear-eyed gaze again, and it takes everything in me not to glance away from the power of her guileless stare.

“Because I don’t know what you might do to him if I tell you.”

That answer is enough to seal his fate, but she won’t want to hear that.

“I’m serious, Dane.” She reads me so easily. “You can’t hurt my father.”

I decide to bargain with her. “I won’t, if you tell me what he did.”

She considers me for a long moment, assessing my honesty. Whatever she sees in my expression, she must decide that she believes me.

“It hasn’t happened since I was about ten,” she begins.

“But he used to belt me if I disappointed him. Or angered him. He got angry a lot when he was drinking. At some point, I guess he decided I was too old to discipline me like that anymore. The cruelty was verbal after that. He would yell, and then my mother would dictate the terms of my punishments.”

“And what did she do to punish you?” I can’t quite keep the dangerous edge from the question.

“You can’t hurt my mother either.”

I growl, then catch myself. “Fine. I won’t hurt anyone in your family. No matter how much they deserve to suffer.”

“Swear it.”

I narrow my eyes at her. I don’t want to agree to this blanket pardon of her loathsome relatives.

But she would be troubled by their suffering. She’s so soft-hearted and good to her core. She would shed tears even for her abusers, just like she said she cried over her rapist’s death.

I won’t allow the monsters who raised her to cause her one more shred of grief. And she would grieve them if I killed them for her. She would probably feel responsible.

I won’t do that to her.

“I swear I won’t hurt anyone in your family.”

She nods, accepting my promise.

“My mother’s punishments were erratic,” she admits. “Sometimes, I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house for a week. Other times, a simple slap to the face was enough to satisfy her. There was no rational pattern to the severity of the consequences.”

“The chaos was designed to keep you on edge.” Her mother is a narcissistic piece of shit. I’d known as much after spending five minutes in her presence at Meadows’ wedding.

But learning the extent of her cruelty to my Abigail is enough to make me see red.

“Dane.” My name is laced with warning, and I realize my hand has fisted beneath hers.

I force my muscles to relax.

“I’m not in that house anymore,” she reminds me. “She can’t hurt me.”

“And you’ll never step foot inside it again.” I try to keep the ring of command from my tone, but I don’t quite succeed.

“I don’t intend to.”

“I’ll protect you from them,” I vow. “I’ll make sure they never bother you again.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” she counters, but she doesn’t seem troubled by my fierce countenance. “I can handle them.”

I remember the way she wilted like a cut flower in her mother’s presence at the wedding.

“You don’t have to handle them alone. Not anymore.”

She stares at me for a while, and I realize she’s not going to respond to my intense declaration.

“We should get some sleep,” she says instead. “I’ll be here if you have another nightmare and want to talk.”

I marvel at how she’s softened toward me.

Maybe she won’t hate me forever.

Maybe she’ll love me again one day.