Page 130 of Hold Me Until Morning
It had taken me two years to realize what I’d unknowingly become. Blinded. A fool who didn’t have a clue. Then another four to gain the courage to rip free of the chains.
My tongue swept out to wet my dried lips, and I fought to find a suitable answer to give Cody, my spirit screaming at me to let him in and the rest of me knowing I couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure how I was going to handle this.
I was already putting him at risk—having him here. Having him stand for me the way that he was.
A ball of razors lodged at the base of my throat. “No. Pruitt was more about manipulation and control than the physical. Always trying to force me to be the wife he wanted, mold me into who I wasn’t, sure to let me know when I wasn’t up to his standards.”
At least that was true.
A crack of aggression split through the air, and Cody drew me closer, those big arms holding me as if I were fractured. “I won’t let him get near you, Hailey. Not you or Maddie or your grandmother.”
“I keep warning you that you don’t want to get involved. I’m going to get rid of him, Cody, once and for all, and I’m not sure what that’s going to look like.”
“It’s going to look like me doing it by your side, that’s what.” His voice scraped with determination.
“Cody.” Anxiety riddled my conscience all while I fought the urge to fully sink into him.
“You’re stuck with me now, darlin’.” Cody issued it like banter, though there was something ferocious seeded in its depths.
He took my chin between his fingers. “Tell me how you got wrapped up in him.”
A tumble of nerves skated through, and a sigh pilfered from my nose. “After I left…”
Cody flinched, both of us jarred right back to that time.
When Brooke died.
I gulped around the sorrow that thickened my throat, around the lash of guilt that cracked across my conscience like the scourge of a whip.
“You’d told me you didn’t have plans to leave. That you were going to be going to school in Langmire so you could continue to work on your father’s ranch since that was your dream.”
Agony pulsed, and my tongue stroked out to wet my dried lips. “I couldn’t stay here after what happened. I couldn’t be on that ranch. Not with her ghost lingering there. I felt…”
Tears blurred my eyes.
Cody just pulled me tighter.
“So I packed my things and left for Austin. There was a ranch there that I knew about. My father had sold some horses to them over the years. I got a job there. The year before that, Pruitt had inherited it from his father.”
“And one look at you, and he wanted you,” Cody surmised.
My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip. “I was so blinded by pain that I couldn’t see who he really was.”
“And who was he?”
He pushed me closer to the edge. To that surrender. The guilt that haunted me was only a vague blip in the back of my mind.
“You can tell me anything, Hailey. I’ll hold it.”
“I know you would, Cody. But I…I need to figure out what I’m going to do with this information. With what I know. I can’t drag you into that until I have a definite plan. But you need to understand he’s dangerous. Really dangerous.”
Awareness dimmed his features, and that stubbled jaw clenched. “And these things you know, you’re holding them over his head?”
I gave him a jerky confirmation. “I told him I was going to go to the police if he ever came anywhere near me again.”
Disgrace bit down. “But I’m not brave enough to do it. Afraid of what really might happen. Of what he really might do to me. And I’m over here pouring gasoline on the fire.”
“He’ll die before he gets near you.”