Caught by Emma Louise

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Anything else we need to go through?" I look around the table at the guys who are probably as keen as I am to get this meeting over with.

"No," Gavin grunts, always the first ready to leave.

"Not from me," Felix adds.

"I think that's all for today." Crew nods, giving the signal that we're done with the meeting, and they can go. Gavin is first to leave, quickly followed by Felix. Crew stays in his seat, and I hope it's because he has good news for me.

"Tell me you have something I can work with." It's been three weeks now since the plan he came up with was put into action. He told me it would be a month, and that date is fast approaching.

"Well..." he starts, and anger buzzes through my veins at the thought of him giving me bad news. “It took a little longer than anticipated, but things are coming together. Give me a couple days, and she’ll be ready to sign,” he promises.

"Step it up. Something is up with Darcey, and I think my shit is making it worse."

"What's up with her?" Isn't that the million dollar question? I think to myself. If I knew what was bothering her, I would be fixing it; not in here contemplating complaining to Crew about it.

"Nothing. Forget I said anything. I'm going to call it quits early today, take Darce to pick up Cass, and take them to dinner." He looks like he's about to push it, but luckily for me, he lets it drop; for now at least.

* * *

A little while later, I find Darcey sitting behind the reception desk, phone to her ear as she scribbles a note onto the pad in front of her. She looks up, giving me a sweet smile when she catches me watching her. I can't help the smile that pulls at my lips too. She's turning me into a pussy-whipped idiot, but I don't have it in me to stop it. Before I can walk to her, drag her out of her seat, and kiss the shit out of her, the bell over the door chimes.

Someone walks in carrying a gigantic bouquet of flowers. They're so big you can't see whoever's holding them. "Delivery for Mrs. Reierson," a younger-sounding voice asks. Helping the poor guy out, I take the flowers from him.

"Nobody here with that name, sorry," I say to the flustered-looking kid.

"Really? You sure?" He looks down at the clipboard in his hand. "Says here to deliver to Elite Security, Mrs. Reierson at the front desk." I look over at Darcey who I realize is suddenly silent. She's staring blankly at the spray of roses in my arms, all of the color has drained from her face, and she looks completely ashen as she sits there, so totally still that I’m not even sure she’s breathing.

"Did you order these?" I ask, and her eyes snap up to meet mine. Fear. I see stark, cold fear reflected back at me. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. "Darcey," I growl as unease rolls through me. I push the flowers back into the kid’s arms so that I can move toward her. That seems to snap her out of it, and I watch as she expertly morphs her features into a somewhat normal expression. I know her well enough to know that the smile she paints on is fake as fuck.

"Nope,” she says with such an obviously fake, cheery voice. “I didn't order anything. Must be a mistake." The façade slips as her voice cracks at the final few words.

"Well, I can't take them back, so you might as well keep them," the kid says, moving to place the flowers on the desk.

"No!" Darcey yelps, causing him to stop with the damn flowers mid-air. She stares at him, wild-eyed like he’s holding a bouquet of snakes, not roses. "Please, take them back. Someone is going to be mad that they paid for such ... beautiful flowers." She swallows deeply over that description, like the words are dirt in her mouth.

The kid looks from Darcey to me, down to the flowers, before settling back on me. Pulling my wallet from my pocket, I open it and take out a few notes. "Get them out of here," I say, pushing the money his way. "Toss them in the trash if you have to."

"You sure?" he asks, but the money is already in his pocket. He doesn't need to be told twice; he's out the door without a second look.

"What the hell was that?" I ask, but she doesn’t look my way. She's shifting the same stacks of papers from one side of the desk to the other and back again in an effort to look like she’s busy. Her shaky hands give her true emotions away.

"Hmm?" She makes a distracted noise, and all it does is piss me off.

"Darcey, look at me," I growl, leaning into her space, two fists planted on the desk in front of where she sits.

"I'm busy, Max," she huffs out.

"I couldn't care less. You need to tell me what the fuck just happened." Reaching out, I pluck the annoying fucking papers out of her hand and toss them on the floor at my feet.

I expect to see annoyance when she finally looks up at me, but instead I get her tear-laden eyes. "Max," she manages to say in a wobbly voice. "Please. I don't want to do this. Not here." Her voice is nothing more than a rasp, and it tugs at my insides. She's hurting for some reason, and she won't fucking let me help. It's frustrating as fuck to be stuck watching her like this, knowing that if I had the chance, I’d burn the whole world to the ground to make sure she’s okay.

"Get your shit. We're leaving." I watch as the fight drains out of her. She nods softly, shuts down her computer, and takes her bag out of the drawer. The silence is thick between us the whole way home and continues as we make our way inside. She dumps her bag on the floor in the entryway and storms past me to the kitchen. By the time I make it there, she's already in the refrigerator pulling out a bottle of wine. She's silent as she reaches for a glass, pouring a larger than normal drink. Turning her back on me, she cradles the glass close to her chest as she stares out the back window, unseeing.

"I need you to tell me what the hell is going on." It's a monumental effort to keep my cool. The frustration eats at me as I wait for her to respond. The urge to go to her, to shake her and make her talk is burning in me.

"Can we just not do this today?" she asks with a defeated sigh.

"I saw how freaked out you were when you saw those flowers," I grinned, trying to keep from snapping at her. "Baby, that wasn’t a normal reaction." I'm trying to tread lightly here because she is skittish as fuck right now, but fuck if it isn't taking everything I have to hold myself back. She doesn't speak, doesn't turn to look at me. I watch as her shoulders slump, and whatever tension was holding her up seems to seep out of her right in front of my eyes.

"My dad was a great guy." She breaks the silence, finally. "He was in the Army from the age of eighteen and never considered leaving. Everyone loved him, respected him. He had a pretty high rank but wasn't a dick about it, ya know? He was a fantastic soldier, a great friend, but he was absolutely shit at being a father." She's speaking, but I can tell she isn't even here anymore; she's stuck in the past. Her eyes are glazed over as she stares outside blankly. I decided not to interrupt, just leaving her to tell her story. "He ran the house the same way he ran his units. There was no room for mistakes, no room to be a child, to have fun.

"Looking back, that's probably why I latched onto Jimmy the way I did." Something in the way she says that name has the blood pumping harder in my veins. "I met him when I was seventeen. That should’ve been the first red flag." She chuckles wryly. "What the hell was a twenty-five-year-old cop doing picking up a teenage girl?"

Every inch of my body locks tight as she speaks. She's kept this story bottled inside for a reason, and it isn't going to have any kind of good ending.

"Daddy loved him, of course. Probably because he saw so much of himself in Jimmy. Crazy recognizes crazy, right?" She finally turns to look at me, and the stark emptiness in her eyes is absolutely gut wrenching. I want to go to her, to wrap her in my arms and tell her that she doesn’t have to tell me anything, but this needs to happen. I need to know what I’m facing here. That’s the only way I’ll be able to fix it for her. "On my eighteenth birthday, Jimmy took me to a fancy restaurant, got down on one knee, and proposed. I was so love drunk on the attention I was getting from him that I didn't hesitate to say yes. Of course, he didn't want to wait to get married. I could wait to go to college, right? I'd be busy planning the wedding anyway." She stops talking and gulps down the last of her wine, dropping the glass on the counter before wrapping both arms around her stomach tightly.

"We were married six months later. It was another six months after that he hit me for the first time." The air in the room turns arctic at her admission. "I went to the gym and forgot to wear my rings. That made me a slut, and I was obviously out looking for men when my poor husband was at work trying to provide for me. I went right back to my dad after that incident and told him exactly what Jimmy had done. You know what he said?" she asks, but she doesn't look my way. Hell, I'm not even sure she knows I'm even still here right now. "He told me that he raised me better than that. That a wife shouldn't be putting herself in situations that might make her husband mad. Then he set my two broken fingers in a splint and sent me right back into the lion’s den." Her admission has me feeling like my chest has been cleaved in two. She was a kid, and she had to deal with this kind of shit? I'm not able to hold back anymore. Moving closer to her side, I pull her still body into my arms. Burying my face in her hair, I breathe her in, hoping like hell that her scent calms the raging anger that is bubbling to the surface.

"Baby ... fuck," I say, unable to find any decent words to give her comfort. I'm floundering here, so I can't begin to imagine how she's feeling.

"The next time was almost a full year later. He waited until I was stupid enough to believe that it was a one-off. He waited until I was comfortable. He waited until I felt safe. You know what I did to deserve it that time?" she mumbles, the sound muffled as she rests her head against my chest.

"Tell me," I force the words out, my hands tensing where they're still holding her close. As much as I don't want to hear a word of this, she had to live through it, so the least I can do is listen.

"I asked to volunteer at the local hospital." She laughs, but it's a dark, brittle sound that grates against my ears. "I wasn't allowed to have a job. I wasn't allowed to leave the house alone. He accused me of wanting to work so I could meet another man. I was caught in a living nightmare every day of my life, and he thought I was interested in adding another man to that?

“He would always be sorry. Right after it happened, he would beg me to forgive him. He would come home with flowers, with..."

"Roses," I finish for her when she stops to draw in a stuttering breath. "That's why you freaked out over the flowers today."

"Always roses. So many roses." Her voice is a lost whisper, a broken memory of a word that has her in its strangled hold. “That was the last time I tried to leave. I went to the cops two towns over, begged them to help me. I didn’t know what else to do. They sat me in an interview room, asked me my story, then left me there for almost two hours. When that door opened, and I saw Jimmy standing there, I knew I was never getting out. I was never going to escape him.”

"Baby..." I plead with her, needing her to know that I get it now, that I understand why she's kept all of this inside.

"Every night I would go to bed and pray that I wouldn't wake up in the morning." The harsh whispered words gut me. She could’ve taken a knife and driven it through me, and it wouldn’t have been as painful as hearing those words coming from the woman standing in my arms.

"Darcey, stop ... please." I'm practically begging, but I've heard enough. Tightening my arms around her, I try to break her out of the memories she seems trapped in, but she just stands there.

"I gave up, Max. I was weak and didn’t even try to get away. Until Cassidy came along," she continues, ignoring my plea for her to stop.

"Darcey, please. Let's go sit down."

"You wanted this, Max. You wanted to hear it, so here it is. You get all my ugly now." Hollow, dead eyes stare up at me as she twists her way out of my hold.

"I'm sorry, baby. I shouldn't have pushed you like that." I try to pull her back, but she side steps around me and walks away. "I just needed to be sure you're safe, Darcey. You and Cass."

"Cass and I are safe." She stops her pacing and swings around to face me.

"How can you be sure? I need to know so that I can stop him from coming back and hurting you. You obviously got away, but how can you be sure he isn't coming back for you?"

"Because he's dead. I made sure he was."