Page 15 of Shadow's Edge

A noise at the door took my attention from her, and I saw Preacher standing there with a look of murder on his face and his gun in his hand. Seeing that she was dreaming, there was an immediate shift from anger to sadness, but he remained where he was watching her.

“Mom, stop! Please, it hurts. My arm hurts.” Then came the gasping.

I glanced at Preacher, who was starting to make sense of what was happening to Kyle. By the tightness on his face, he realized that she’d suffered a measure of abuse at the hands of the woman who’d given birth to her. If the woman wasn’t already dead, he’d have killed her himself.

“Daddy, help me!” The final wail broke both of us.

Looking at me, he whispered through clenched teeth, “Find out. I want to know all of it. My fucking baby—” The last word came out as a croak as he turned around and, with one last glance over his shoulder at Kyle as I shook her gently awake, walked out and closed the door behind him.

There was a thump, and Tarp asked Preacher if he was okay before the footsteps walked away.

Watching Kyle as she woke up, tears streaming down her face, I saw the moment she realized she wasn’t in the dream and that she was safe. When she saw me looking at her, though, her face shut down, and she sat up and went to get out of bed. I couldn’tlose this moment with her, so I wrapped my arms around her from behind and moved so that my legs were on either side of her, with her back to my chest.

“Wanna talk about it?”

She was clammy and almost as hard as a rock as I held her, but I was adamant.

“Ah it’s nothing, just an old thing from a mission. It happens from time to time,” she shrugged. “Can I get up and go to the bathroom?”

The weight on my shoulders over what I was about to say was immense. Moving my head so that my forehead was against her shoulder, I took the leap.

“Your mom was on a mission with you?”

I’d expected her body to pitch forward, so I moved with her when it happened. I had no doubt that she could get out of the hold that I had her in if she wanted to, but Kyle didn’t cause unnecessary pain and damage to people. During training today, she could have a million times over, but she always held back.

“What the hell are you on about?” Her voice was almost brittle, given how tightly her jaw was clenched. “It was a flashback of this mission that had some shit happen, is all.”

“Baby, you were yelling about your mom and asking her to stop because it hurt. At one point, you called out for your dad.”

I’d expected a fight. I’d expected her to deny it or throw me out. I’d expected anything but what she actually did. It was like someone had suddenly drained her of everything as she collapsed back onto me and put her head in her hands. Taking her weight and listening to her shaky breaths in and out, Iwanted to take the weight of what had happened, too. I didn’t doubt that what she did for a living stayed with her and that she’d seen things no one should see. If I could take one bit of weight from her, though, I would.

“She was so mean,” she croaked. “I would hide away from her or stay here, but it wasn’t ever enough.” I adjusted her so she sat sideways across my lap with her head on my chest. “I thought that if I could make Dad happy, I could maybe get away from her, ya know?” It was rhetorical, but I nodded my cheek against her head. “Nothing was ever good enough. She would tell me how evil Preacher was, how he sold little girls and other terrible things, and that he hated me. He was never around, which hurt even more and made me wonder if she was telling the truth. Then she got a baseball bat,” she paused and shuddered. I felt sick to my stomach but knew better than to interrupt her. “Dad would come home sometimes, and I’d be so bruised and sore that I’d hide in my room and pretend I was sick. There was even one time I had to walk on my own to the ER because I had a broken arm and bruises all over my body.”

“Jesus Christ!” The nearest ER when she was a kid would have been over an hour’s walk. And Preacher had been so close to finding out…

“Then the day happened,” she sounded almost robotic, like she’d locked that day away.

“Did you ever try to tell your dad?”

Her answer was just to shrug. I would bet my bike that the bitch had told her that he’d never listen or believe her, or she had threatened her in some way. Preacher was going to have a fucking shit fit over this, but I now understood why she had issues with him.

“I’m tired now,” she still didn’t sound like the Kyle I had come to know in such a short time.

There had been contradicting flashes of the woman who was pretty much a legend. On one hand, she was a kick-ass tactical ace who could take down anyone without blinking. Then, on the other, was this vulnerable woman who had never opened herself up emotionally apart from to her team. I was going to have to tread more carefully than I thought. The other issue was, how did I tell Preacher without breaking the trust she’d just placed in me?

I was about to move us so that we were lying down when she turned around and straddled my lap. The warmth of her pressed up against me almost made me groan.

I watched her as she held my face in both hands and looked into my eyes. Then, shocking the shit out of me, in a move that was tender and something that seemed so far away from the regular Kyle, she gave me a soft kiss.

“Thank you,” she murmured against my lips.

Wrapping her up tightly in my arms, I hugged her before moving us, so we were lying down again. After turning off the light, she went back to sleep almost instantly while I lay there trying to get my head around it all. Preacher was going to be nearly feral when I told him what I’d found out. I had to find a way to do it when Kyle wasn’t around because she’d know that I’d told him. I also had to find a way to get Kyle to forgive me when she did find out.

Then there was the secret that Preacher was still holding back from her. When had my life become so fucking complicated? Usually, the shit keeping me awake was the jobs we were doingand the people involved. That all still weighed on me, too, but now there was Kyle.

Fucking hell!

Chapter 5

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