Page 15 of Torn In Two

Embarrassment crept up my neck. “I’m sorry. You really don’t need to worry about me.” This man was a doctor. He was probably busy saving lives. Nobody needed to be concerning themselves with me. “Is he here?”

“Who? The MC thug?”

I nodded. “Hawk.”

Grayson’s mouth flattened into a worried line. “I’m told he and another man are out in the waiting room. Apparently they both claim to be your husbands.”

My fingers took up a violent shake. I didn’t know why Hawk was claiming himself to be my husband, but if Josiah was out there, I wasn’t safe and I needed to run. From both of them. Hawk might not have abused me the way Josiah had, but he was a liar.

And now he was sitting out there with the man who’d forced me to marry him, only to spend years terrorizing me for not being able to produce a child.

I ignored the wheeze in my chest and pulled the oxygen tubes away from my nose. I reached for the drip in my arm, ready to yank it out.

Grayson caught my fingers. “Don’t do that. It’ll just mean they have to stick you again, and you’re already hurt enough.”

I fought with him, fear wrapping its way around my body at the very thought of being so close to my husband. It would only be a matter of time before he sweet-talked his way in here. Josiah was the ultimate charmer. It was how he convinced once sane, rational people to believe the lies he fed them. “Let me go. I can’t be here. If Josiah’s found me, I need to run.”

Grayson’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, but he pinned my hands to the bed and looked me in the eye. “Nobody is going to hurt you in here. You’re in the hospital. There are multiple locked doors between here and the waiting room.”

His calm words did nothing to temper the rising panic inside me. It choked my throat, cutting off the air, until I was yelling, desperate to get away. “It’s not enough. He’ll get to me. He always does!”

Grayson didn’t flinch at the screeching tone. “According to your notes, your husbands in the waiting room are Hayden and Hawk. There’s no mention of a Josiah.”

I slumped, the fight going out of me instantly. Soft hospital pillows caught me. “Oh.”

Grayson gave me that same smile from earlier as he let go of my wrists. It bordered on playful and lit his entire face, though the worry didn’t leave his eyes. “How many husbands do you have exactly?”

I sighed, letting him fit the oxygen back to my nostrils. “Only one. And of the three of them, the one I’m legally married to is the only one I never want to see again.” Though Hawk wasn’t high on my list of people I wanted to see right now either.

Grayson settled back at the foot of my bed. “Want to tell me why?”

I shrugged. “Josiah’s not a very nice man.”

Grayson jotted that down on his notepad, which reminded me that the last time we’d met, he’d said he was a psychologist.

His pen slid across the paper resting on a clipboard. “Talk to me about cages.”

I froze. “Why?”

“You were talking about them in your sleep.”

He looked up, his gaze remaining neutral, even though I was sure mine was anything but. He didn’t ask me twice. Or try to change the topic in the face of it clearly causing a reaction in me. He just waited patiently. “Take your time.”

I’d done such a good job of forcing myself to forget that even now, when I tried to bring the memories to the forefront, my mind resisted remembering. “I can’t,” I whispered.

I hadn’t even told my sisters about the cages. Nobody knew but me and Josiah.

Grayson nodded and put his pen down on the white blanket covering my feet. “You don’t trust me. I get that. Why should you? We barely know each other. But I only want to help.” He smiled again, and it was so simple and pure. “It’s kind of my job.”

“I don’t have a good track record when it comes to trusting men,” I admitted.

“How about I tell you my experience with cages then?”

If it was anything like mine, I was sure I didn’t want to know.

But Grayson didn’t wait for me to answer. “My parents dumped me in foster care when I was pretty young. I can’t really remember how old I was, but old enough to remember them and know that they didn’t want me.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

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