Page 27 of Unbroken

He smiled at me again as he began to walk away. “I’m glad you’re back!” he called as Shelly opened the door for him. She followed him out and I wanted to bottle his childlike joy.

“We all know what happened at that lunch,” Reed said, continuing the conversation. “But what the hell happened after? You mentioned going to your parents, but you never made it.”

“Wait, your mom said they got a few phone calls from you, but they couldn’t pinpoint where they’d come from,” Amanda said.

Very few people knew the information they were asking me for. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d told. Three of them were therapists and counselors. The other two were my parents, and I’d given them only the information they really needed. Not that they’d asked for more details anyway.

But the point was, I was out of practice telling the story. And I’d never told it to anyone who knew me on a personal level and truly cared like the people surrounding me did. Or at least how they used to.

“Don’t ever trust anything my parents say,” I began. “My mother’s a politician—she lies for a living, and my dad does whatever she says. They are more concerned with how it would look if their only daughter went missing than they are withwhyI went missing or where I was.”

“Went missing?” Hazel questioned.

I studied Hazel. She leaned forward, still touching Luke withone hand while the other lay protectively over her stomach. Her brows were scrunched in concentration like she was reliving the events and trying to connect the dots she wasn’t able to before.

“Just say it, Blakely. I—I can handle it,” she clarified, reading my concern perfectly.

“They grabbed you,” I said, speaking directly to her. “And I’d already decided that the second I could, I would call the police. I’d follow her and lead the police directly to you. I would do whatever I had to do to save you. But Valerie had contingencies for that. To make sure her plan went off the way she wanted it to, she needed to make sure all her loose ends were taken care of.”

“Wait, so she…” Hazel said, her words trailing off as her eyes went wide.

“She took you,” I said. “But someone else took me, too.”

THIRTEEN

Devon

Every time I blinked,I expected her to vanish. I prepared for her to disappear like she always did each time I’d pictured her the past two years.

But she didn’t. She was there, as alive as I was.

Blakely wasthere. She’d been missing for two years, yet she was sitting right in front of me. Right in front of all of us.

And she was telling us a story we’d all longed to know for as long as she’d been gone.

A torrent of emotions warred through me.

The initial shock of seeing her at the door was still weighing down every one of my thoughts. It was just as I’d dreamed it. Actually, it was better than any dream I’d had because, in each of them, she’d been weak and fragile. She looked like she’d been gone for two years, with dark circles under her eyes and gaunt cheeks.

But she didn’t. She was healthy, almost glowing. Her dark, curly hair hung past her shoulders, and her gray eyes were light.

I couldn’t stop staring at her.

Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, and her kneebounced nervously. Even from across the room, I could see the unshed tears shining in her eyes. But she powered through every word, no matter how much it likely pained her to do so.

My heart hammered in my chest, and every one of my muscles tensed.

The longer she spoke, the more everything made sense. Pieces began falling into place. Like why, when Valerie showed back up, Blakely had such an intense reaction and why she hadn’t gone to the police.

What I hadn’t been prepared for was the realization that Valerie had gone as far as to use my mom to keep Blakely in line. Anger like I’d never felt vibrated through me.

Part of me didn’t want to believe her, but I did. Blakely kept a lot of information from us back then, but I still knew the woman in front of me, no matter if she’d been gone for two years. When it came to my mom, she wouldn’t have fucked around with a threat like that.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Valerie would go to those lengths. She was bound and determined to ruin Luke and Hazel’s relationship and ensure they never had the opportunity for anything more.

But to pull my mom into it was on a whole new level of insane. She was in Houston at the time, fighting for her fucking life, and Valerie used her like a throw away pawn in her sick game.

My hands were wrapped around the back of the couch. It creaked under my grip, but my legs felt too weak to hold my weight. And to hold the weight of all the new information.

---