her.”
Gabe exhaled and his warm breath blew across her neck. “Fuck.”
That might have been the perfect response. No pity, and he didn’t launch into a game of Twenty Questions. Instead, he lifted his head and looked down at her with clear eyes.
“He was evil and dangerous. Spent his life hurting her. Liked to do it in front of me—said it would teach me how to be an obedient wife one day.” Without even trying Natalie could call up her father’s grim voice and all those lectures.
“Sick fucker.”
“He was that.” Natalie let her legs slide down Gabe’s until her feet touched the floor. But she didn’t let go and he didn’t step back.
“You tried to protect her.”
“Yes.” She knew he’d get it. With who he was and how he stepped forward, he would have done the same thing, even as a kid. She was sure of it.
His hand cupped her cheek and his thumb traced her mouth. “And he punished her for that.”
Natalie tried to swallow, to say something, but couldn’t. She just nodded. The guilt knocked into her and her knees started to buckle, but the weight of his body resting against hers held her up.
“The police report said you were asleep upstairs,” Gabe said.
Because the officers on the scene protected her. Engaged in a conspiracy of silence meant to quiet the whispers and keep her from the torment of hours of interrogation and all the second-guessing that would follow.
She didn’t share that piece or how she’d come to understand that gift as she got older and tried to repay it once or twice in her cases. Skipped right to his ability to read between the lines of her official report when no one had ever done that before. “But you knew that wasn’t true. That I’d seen more.”
Gabe nodded. “You would have heard the noise. You would have investigated and rushed in.” He kissed her forehead then let his rest against hers. “Is the scar on your stomach from him?”
She didn’t even know he’d seen it. Time had faded the angry red to a soft white. Low on her abdomen. A slice that spilled blood and marked her forever. “From that night.”
Gabe lifted his head. His gaze searched hers. “Did you kill him?”
No judgment. He asked it like he might ask what she wanted for breakfast. The question should have shocked her. With anyone else she would have rushed to deny and change the subject. But the way he held her, looked at her, wrapped her in this cocoon of safety . . .
For the first time since that night, the words spilled out of her. “I had to make him stop.”
Memories flashed in her mind. Red splashed everywhere. Her mother’s sobbing as she tried to reach for the cord and bring the phone hanging on the wall crashing down. Her father’s shouting about how her mother deserved this. How he should let her die.
Then the knife was right there. Natalie remembered looking down and curling her fingers until the handle pressed tight against her palm. The first slash made his eyes pop open wide. The next one drove him to his knees. All while her mother begged her to stop.
She didn’t know she’d been lost in the whirl of the past until Gabe gently touched her. Placed a palm against each cheek and lifted her head so she could see directly into his eyes.
“Yes, you did,” he said, as if willing her to believe.
The words didn’t make sense at first. “What?”
“We’re the same on that score. We don’t kill lightly, but sometimes we have to.” Then he kissed her. A soft peck on the mouth, likely more for comfort than anything else.
“Yes.” Exactly that.
“But the haunting never stops.”
He would know. He’d killed. In the name of God and country, maybe, but he’d still taken lives and he wore that with a dignity she appreciated. “But the pain did.”
He shot her a lopsided smile. “Good. Some of it.”
The sounds of the cabin and forest came roaring back to life. The hum of the lights and the knock as the wind hammered a loose shutter against the outside wall. The strangeness of the moment hit her. The smell of sex still lingered in the air. Gabe’s strong hands and sweet touches. Both of them basically naked from the waist down.
A rational conversation about a horrific event. It was surreal and healing. The way he pressed his lips to her eyebrow then her cheek cleansed her.
She held on to his shirt.