Page 86 of Brutal Obsession

When I open my glazed eyes, I see three of him swaying in front of me.

“Cian, don’t…” I barely have it in me to talk. “Don’t take me back to New York.”

He’s saying something, but the panic has already won. My consciousness fades to blackness, like I’m being pulled backward into a tunnel with no light on the other end.

Then the world disappears.

Chapter 24

Cian

Harper collapsing again is the last thing my already-abused nerves need. In public, no less.

I was still pissed off by the way she turned me on back there at the motel. We both came quicker than a couple of teenagers. I was so livid that Harper has the power to finish me off that easily, I handcuffed her to the bed and left her there.

And now?

My pulse goes crazy as I move her to the back seat and climb in with her. It’s not ideal, but the tinted windows provide a little bit of privacy until the rental car agents come by.

My ribs squeeze at the sight of her pale, fragile face. “Harper, look at me.”

With gentle fingers, I tap her cheek, but she doesn’t stir. Alarm bells wail inside me, like I’m still twenty and just found my mom unconscious in our apartment.

No!I want to scream.She survived that bastard, don’t let her die now.

I used to think that, with my father dead, my mother could go on to live a happy life. I thought him being alive was the only thing standing in her way. That getting rid of him would clearthe clouds from her mind, allow that smile to come back to her face.

But I was a dumbass kid.

I didn’t know anything about how trauma lingers, sometimes forever.

I never imagined that the real harm my father inflicted damaged my mother’s mind.

He broke her beautiful spirit.

My mom once told me she stayed with that foul, violent man for me. I didn’t know she meant that she was only alive because she wanted to protect me, and that if I made that monster disappear forever, if I became someone who could protect myself, all her motivation to stick around would disintegrate into ash.

Why couldn’t I have been enough?

Why am I never enough?

Fucking hell.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, using the jolt of pain to wrench the moisture back to where it came from.

Anything that resembles crying is absolutely forbidden, trauma be damned.

Scrunched into the back seat with Harper half reclined in my lap is not how I thought our journey home would begin, but we’re here now, and I can’t shove her off of me. Not when I open my eyes and she’s awake with that expression on her face.

Like a kite tied to a fraying string, soon to be untethered and lost to the wind. Like she’s losing it, teetering on that brink.

Fear grips me. I’ve never seen her so scared.

She’s quivering.

I need to get her back to New York and get the fuck away from her, before she gets us both killed. No matter how much it hurts.

Those are the thoughts circling my mind as I stare, cotton-mouthed and grateful, into her glassy blue eyes.

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