Into the Fading Twilight (Starlight Grove, #2) (50)

It wasn’t much … as if my body were a patchwork of pieces of evidence. I hadn’t been raped. I’d almost cried when the kind doctor told me that. As if that would’ve been the thing to break me after I’d endured so much.

The marks on my wrists and ankles told them I’d been shackled. The damage to my eyes and my vitamin D deficiency told them I’d been kept in the dark. The two healed scars on my torso showed I’d been stabbed at some point early on in my captivity. My weight said I’d been starved. And the scarring inside my throat and the bruising outside it revealed that I’d been repeatedly strangled.

That was all I knew for sure—those snippets and the fact that Travis Moore had been my monster. In my dreams, I could hear his voice, clear as day, the weirdly calm fury. But I could never see his face. It was as if my mind had blocked it out. Blurred all his features into something that made no sense at all.

“I have them, too. Nightmares,” Kol offered.

I stilled. I’d expected him to push, to demand every detail in the event that it could help him with the case. I knew he was still working it. One of the officers from the State Police had told me Kol would be in charge of it. And given our proximity, I’d thought he would level me with countless questions. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d given me a gift—the gift of knowing I wasn’t alone in what I was going through.

“What are they about?” I asked, even though I had no right.

Kol stared straight ahead, studying the dark horizon he likely knew by heart. “My brothers mostly. A different outcome of the day Orion killed our father.”

I sucked in an audible breath. Everything about the surly middle brother suddenly made more sense.

“He saved them, Mav and Dex. They’d gone exploring in the one place they weren’t allowed. Hadn’t even realized what they’d found. Trophies of all the women Edmond had killed. But he knew. Almost killed Maverick because of it. It was touch and go for a bit. But Orion shot Edmond. Killed him on the spot.”

“I’m so sorry he had to do that.” Because it didn’t matter that he’d done the right thing, Orion still carried the weight of ending someone who was a part of him in so many ways.

“In my nightmares, Orion doesn’t save them. I come home, and they’re all dead. And then Edmond kills me.” Kol’s voice was devoid of all emotion, as if he were reading off numbers for a math problem.

But the dream? It told me so much about the man who was still largely a mystery. He blamed himself. For not being there. For not being the one to end their father.

“What happened wasn’t your fault,” I said softly.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“But that doesn’t change how you feel.”

Kol’s gaze flicked to me through the darkness. “No. It doesn’t.”

“I guess we’re both survivors in a way.”

Kol gave the slightest shake of his head. “You’re so much stronger than me, Phoenix.”

“We’re both strong,” I argued. “But we both carry a weight. The cost of making it to the other side of a nightmare.”

Kol’s fingers flexed, straightening as if he might reach out, might touch me. But then he tightened them around the step again.

Disappointment flooded my system. I thought I’d kept it from my face, but Kol’s brow furrowed. “What?”

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “No one touches me anymore.”

“They don’t touch you anymore …” he parroted.

“Everyone stops themselves because I freaked out in the hospital. And what’s worse? I don’t know if I’d do it again. Even now. So I’m too scared to ask.” Each confession tumbled out, one after the other, not making complete sense.

But Kol still understood me, as if we shared a language—one created the day he found me. “Do you want me to touch you?”

His voice was quiet grit. The same potent combination as the rest of him.

My eyes filled with unshed tears. I managed a jerky nod that wasn’t all that convincing.

“But you’re scared,” Kol surmised, filling in the silence.

I managed that same robotic nod, not trusting my voice.

“That you’ll scream again?”

Of course he knew about the scream. My cheeks heated as I nodded again.

Kol twisted on the step. “Sky sleeps like the dead. Mav blasted an air horn outside her room to wake her up for breakfast once, and she didn’t even stir. It’s okay if you scream.”

That same bobblehead nod was back.

Kol stared at me, not moving. “Tell me what you need.”

There was a command in those words. A certainty that told me he would not move from that spot if I didn’t use my voice.

I tried to swallow, but my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth. Loosening my jaw, I tried again. The movement was clumsy and almost painful, but I managed it.

“A hug,” I croaked. “I need a hug.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


Kol




INEED A HUG.

Fucking hell. Those four words killed me. Sliced me right to the quick.

A hug. How had everyone around Nova been so blind to the fact that she wanted human connection but was too scared to ask for it? How could I have been so blind?