Page 88 of Betrothed

“No.” She gasped and shook her head. “Part of me was afraid of what Stan would do if I ever accused him. He was… so good… at making people see what they wanted to see; I was afraid he’d start to hurt Jake.”

Her eyes met mine, and we shared a silent acknowledgment that she was probably right; Stan tried to poison Jake at the beach today all so that he’d have a sure rebuttal against her custody claim. Had Kenzie threatened to expose him for what he’d really done… there were clearly no lines he wasn’t willing to cross in the effort of self-preservation.

I reached out and took her hand in mine. Her breath caught and then instantly her fingers squeezed, sending a rush of warmth through my veins.

“Will you tell me what he did to you?” I rasped.

There would be a point where the police would want to question her. A point where they’d asked for dates and details to line everything up with medical reports and hospital visits. They’d dissect everything about her story to confirm his guilt. And I didn’t want that to be the first time I heard what he did.

Her throat bobbed, and her head started to fall.

I lifted my hand and cupped her cheek, lifting her so I could find her eyes.

“It’s your voice that matters now, angel. Only yours. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure it’s heard.”

She placed her hand over mine and turned her face into my palm for a moment as though it were the safest place in the world for her to be.

“After Jake was born, Stan started to become more controlling. It was little things at first, and I told you how they became bigger things. But the drugs…” She took a deep breath. “When Jake was four, I was chasing him in the yard, and I tripped over a rock and sprained my ankle. Stan rushed out, picked me up, and sped us to the hospital. I remember the way he carried me into the emergency room, refusing a wheelchair. Everyone in the ED was enamored with him—the hero husband. And looking back, I think that was the first time he realized he didn’t have to wait for a call while on shift… he could be the hero anytime by creating his own emergencies.”

I stroked her cheek, refusing to move any other muscle because I wanted to hear every word of the story she’d been too afraid to tell.

“In the next year and a half, I’d gone to the hospital four more times. Two more sprains, a cut on my foot that required stitches, and a broken wrist,” she went on. “I’ll never forget how Stan’s work friends teased that it was such good luck I was in a relationship with a paramedic.”

“Did you know…”

“Not then.” She shook her head. “At the time, they were all plausible accidents—even to me. And why would I think the man who professed to love me would… hurt me?” She lowered my hand from her face and balled it with hers in her lap. “But when I broke my wrist, Stan insisted they give me something for pain. At first, I took it because I was in pain, but then Stan started insisting I take it regularly even when I said I didn’t need it; I told him it made me groggy, and the pain was manageable, but he didn’t care.

“Even after I refused to take the pills—thought I had stopped taking them—I noticed my head was still feeling funny. Like I was perpetually out of it. After a few days, it would get better. Then it would get worse again. Stan brushed it off, telling me it was allergies or hormones or my imagination. We went on a family skiing trip almost two months later, and the second day, even though I wasn’t feeling myself, I went out with them, but I ended up hitting a patch of ice and falling and dislocating my shoulder.”

“Jesus, Kenz…”

“Once again, Stan played the hero.” She swallowed. “Only this time, while I was at the hospital, they ran my blood and said I had high levels of opioids in my system.”

“That was when you knew.”

She nodded. “I wanted to say something then. I remember staring at the doctor in complete shock. The last Vicodin I’d willingly taken had been almost six weeks prior, and yet, here they were telling me that I had high levels in my system, and it was what caused my fall.”

“What did Stan say?”

Her breath caught, a pained crease formed between her brows. “He threw it back on me. If I thought learning I had drugs in my system was bad, it was nothing compared to hearing my partner fall right into a story—a lie about how I’d broken my wrist a few weeks ago and had been given pain meds and that he knew my pain was bad but he didn’t realize that I’d still been taking them.”

Part of me wished Stan wasn’t in police custody. The punishment the legal system would give him seemed too good for what he’d done—what he’d put her through.

“I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t… believe what was happening. And when we were finally alone again, he acted as though Ihadbeen taking the drugs on my own, promising he would help me and that we would get through this.” Her eyelids fluttered. “The first and only time I confronted him about it, he screamed in my face—screamed that he’d saved me. That I was nothing without him—had nothing without him. He said if I ever accused him like that again, he’d show me what it would be like if he actually hurt me.”

“God, I want to murder him,” I admitted roughly.

“After that, I started to be afraid of what I was eating or drinking. It had to be where he was putting the drugs, so I refused to drink anything but water, thinking I could see if it was cloudy or taste if something was off. I started buying individually packaged foods—”

“Like yogurt.”

She nodded slowly. “I don’t know if it was that using the pills was too unpredictable or if it was because I changed my habits or if it was because he got a call not long after that involving a drug overdose and had to use Narcan, but the next time I ended up in the hospital, it was from fentanyl.”

He could’ve killed her. So many times, it was so fucking dangerous. And he did it all to satisfy his own twisted high.

“Zeke…”

When she said my name, I realized how tense I’d become.