Doug and Carlton exchanged a look, and Carlton talked hurriedly into a phone.
My heart thundered, sweat ran down my back, and I was numb, as if I were outside of my body. I pulled at my shirt, trying desperately to put it back in place. Smears of his blood ran down the front, and a button was missing. They all stared at me.
Three more people rushed into the clearing, and everyone was talking at the same time. I shook, unable to still my hands. This isn’t really happening. The sting of my cheek from his slap and the scrapes along the backs of my arms from the tree couldn’t be explained away. He hit me. He was going to . . . Tears pricked behind my eyes, and my breathing was fast, too fast. The ghost of his touch on my body turned my stomach, and my head spun.
People were talking in hushed tones all at once, and the sound was overwhelming, a dissonant clatter in the stillness of the woods. It was blocked out when two solid arms circled me.
I took a gulping breath, inhaling as deeply as I could.
Sandalwood.
Jake’s familiar voice was thick with emotion as he spoke close to my ear, cutting through the chaos. “Are you hurt? What happened? Did he . . .”
“No, I—” I tried to take a breath, but instead I sobbed, unable to finish the sentence. He pulled me tighter against his chest, his chin on my head. Everything seemed to come out at once in a steady stream of tears—the fear of Davis hurting me, of losing everything I’d worked for, of losing Jake. Also, the knowledge that I’d fought back, finally, after all the years of hiding. I’d fought.
“They’re all going to know about us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough. He ran his hand over the back of my head, stroking my hair. “You’re safe.”
“Really, guys. This is not what you think. Doug, c’mon . . . you know me. She was into it and then just went off.” Davis’s voice crawled up my spine, and I shuddered.
Jake whipped around, and his body seemed to grow taller and wider as every muscle tensed. The hands that had been stroking my back moments before balled into tight fists at his side.
Carlton stepped between the two men, putting a meaty palm against Jake’s shoulder, stopping him from lunging toward Davis, who stood ten feet away near Doug.
I didn’t recognize Jake’s voice. It was menacing. “You should think very carefully about what you say, because if you open your mouth again, I will finish what she started and break your fucking jaw.”
I couldn’t see Jake’s face, but something in his expression wiped the sneer clean off Davis’s, and he slumped against a tree, hand held to his injured face.
Jake wrapped me in his arms again, wordlessly.
“He’s not worth it,” I said into his shirt as he stroked the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair.
“You are.”
Forty-two
Thank you, ma’am.” The officer finished taking my statement, tipped his head, and walked out to the parking lot. They had Davis in the back of a police cruiser, but he would probably have a good enough lawyer that he’d be out in no time and spinning his lies. He’d continued to spout we’d been fooling around and that it had gotten out of hand.
I gingerly skimmed over the cheek that was tender and swollen. I could only imagine what I looked like, my face bruised and arms scraped, tear tracks on my skin. Someone had handed me a clean T-shirt, and I clutched it, anxious to get the bloodstained fabric off my body, but unprepared to be anywhere alone where I could change.
“Need this?” Carlton held out a blue ice pack and sat in a chair across the table from me.
I thanked him, pressing the cold plastic to my face. “I didn’t thank you for, um, for—”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry we didn’t hear you sooner.” Carlton and the others had been on their way back to the cabin to grab something when they heard my screams and ran. I gripped the ice pack as an involuntary tremor ran through me, remembering the moments leading up to their arrival.
“Is Jake still here?” I asked in a shaky voice. When the officer started to take my statement, Jake had stepped out of the kitchen. I wondered why he hadn’t returned.
“He didn’t want to leave you alone, but I made him take a walk before he did something he’d regret and ended up in jail himself.” Carlton was surprisingly soft-spoken, not at all the jovial front man I’d seen in the meetings. “Not that I blame him. If what happened to you happened to the woman I love . . . I don’t know.” He shifted his gaze to his wedding ring. It looked worn, the gold dull from years of wear.