sorry. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Daniels shook his head. “I understand. Are you able to answer some questions about last night?”
Wilder bit his lip, then nodded. “I don’t remember much.”
“What about events leading up to the attack?” Daniels asked, and Wilder felt another chill of panic race through his limbs.
He forced himself to breathe through it, to dig deep into the long years he had been under Scott’s furious, vicious control. He thought about years’ worth of bruises on his arms, the occasional too tight grip around his throat, the way Scott would look at him like he actually got off when Wilder was hurting.
He knew what it was. He’d been fighting the truth, fighting the reality that he’d gone from one destructive, toxic home to another and still hadn’t run. He felt like a coward, and the reality of it threatened to choke him. He was terrified to admit it to Daniels, because he was going to ask the question Wilder had no answer for.
Why did you stay?
There were a hundred, a thousand reasons, and none of them would make any sense.
Wilder felt something hot on his cheek, and he realized then he was crying. Daniels’ gaze was soft, and he leaned a little closer when he spoke. “I understand this isn’t easy.”
Wilder shook his head. “I just…I feel so…” He sniffed and rolled his eyes away. “I feel so stupid.”
“I don’t like admitting how many times I’ve had this conversation,” Daniels told him. “With men who are made to feel weak and cowardly for admitting that someone has hurt them. But I need you to understand one thing.”
Wilder blinked, giving the man his full attention. “Okay,” he whispered.
Daniels cleared his throat, and though Wilder’s hearing was going in and out, through waves of fog, he heard his tone plain as day. It was honest. And it was safe. “I believe you. Whatever happened, I believe you.”
It was nothing short of a miracle that Wilder’s sudden and intense desire to break down didn’t consume him entirely. He managed a thick swallow and a barely there whisper of, “Thank you.”
Daniels nodded, not quite smiling, but almost. “Do you think you can talk to me about Scott Spriggs and the relationship you two had?”
And for the first time, Wilder knew he could.
Wilder held his wrist with his free hand to keep the dropper from trembling as he slowly added the banana essence to the mixer. It was a delicate thing, a make-or-break moment where he’d either have something delicious, or he’d have to throw another batch of wasted ingredients into the bin and start over. His overhead prepared for waste, but over the last few years, Wilder had grown into an unforgiving perfectionist, especially with his bakes.
Most days, standing in the too-warm kitchen of his Cherry Creek bakery, people like Scott Spriggs and his mother were nothing more than a distant memory. At best, a fading ghost—the impression of toxic energy left behind from a life he had abandoned. The moment Officer Daniels had left his hospital room and he was transferred into inpatient recovery, he had made a decision about his life. Enough was enough. He’d lived under the heel of too many angry boots, and there was no need for it. Not anymore. Refusing to deal with the trauma his mother had caused had led him straight into Scott’s arms, and he wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. He’d nearly paid with his life, and he’d gotten away with nothing more than a handful of ugly scars and progressive hearing loss—and both of those were nothing more than proof he had survived.
He’d taken his trauma, his increasing deafness, the rift with his parents, and his fear of ever being touched again, and he threw them all into something new. Weeks after he was released from the hospital, he set foot on the community college campus with a bag on his shoulders and a firm set to his jaw, determined to find something that made him feel like he could breathe again. Something that had no connection to his former life. Something that could redefine the man he’d become, shaped by the events of his past, controlled by himself and himself alone.
He started with culinary classes on a whim, but after fucking up his seventeenth poached egg, he was ready to put his spatula through the wall and never look at a boiling pot of water ever again in his life. He didn’t even fight it when the