Page 88 of Unnatural
“I didn’t know his name. All I knew was where he lived and that he was powerful. I don’t know in what capacity. It mattered to someone but not to me. I cased this man’s house. I gathered what information I could from the locals. I heard people saying that his daughter was dying.”
“Dying from what?”
“I didn’t know.” He sighed softly, and she sensed how hard this was for him as he gathered the words to describe something that still haunted his dreams. “I heard a woman who worked in his home say his daughter was disabled and considered a…burden. I got the impression she’d been left to die.”
“A burden?” Autumn breathed, her heart constricting.Oh God.That description hit Autumn particularly hard. It was exactly what Mercy Hospital had represented—a place where the unwanted, the burdensome, the children society preferred not to see were sent to die.
Sam was silent for a moment, perhaps to let her digest that, perhaps to gather his words. “I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t even know if it was true or just gossip. I entered the property, prepared to complete my mission.”
“To kill this unnamed man.”
“Yes.” She saw by the set of his jaw in the dim room that he was struggling.
“But?”
“But I saw…her.”
“Who?”
“The child. The little girl. I entered through the back ofthe house. I passed a door, and I heard…I heard a tiny voice, a moan. I almost kept going. I told myself to keep going. But…but I didn’t. I opened the door. I went inside.”
She continued to hold him. It was all she could do.
“She was so small. Her legs were atrophied. But her eyes…her eyes were like yours. Large and dark and…they contained a whole world. They reminded me…” He let out a gusty breath. “Her body was mostly dead…” He made a sound, something between a choke and a moan, and Autumn ached for this tenderhearted man. “But her eyes were beautiful. Her eyes…”
“What did you do, Sam?”
“It wasn’t any of my business. To do anything other than kill the man I’d been sent to kill meant failure.”
“Did you leave her there?”
“No. Sometimes I wish I had.”
“Do you?”
He scrubbed his face with his palm. “I don’t know.”
Autumn pictured it then, though it hurt. The tiny, emaciated girl, alone in a room, left there for God knew how long to suffer and die because she was considered a burden. Useless. And Sam’s hulking body, a shadow at first, drawing nearer. Had she been afraid? Had she thought he was death himself? Or had she seen him as the savior he’d been?
“I picked her up. She weighed nothing. She felt like a rag doll in my arms. I tried to leave the same way I came in, but I couldn’t because I was carrying her. I was spotted by the man’s security, and they chased me. Us. I was able to get back to my vehicle, and I put her in the front seat. I laid her head on my lap, and I drove. They followed. It was a bumpy ride. I tried to keep her head still. But…”
His words dwindled as though he’d gotten lost in that far-off land where he’d been sent to take a life but instead followed his soul’s direction to save. After a moment, Autumn prompted him. “But?” she whispered.
He jolted slightly as though traveling swiftly to the present. To her arms. And she liked to think that was the thing that made him continue. “I finally evaded them. I got to a location where I could ditch the vehicle. I went to pick her up, to carry her, but she had died. She was already dead.”
Oh, Sam.Her throat felt clogged. She felt his heartbreak, his deep confusion, as if it was her own. That was the reason he’d been dismissed from the program he’d been unwillingly enrolled in. He’d failed in their eyes, but he’d been a blazing success in hers.Theywere the ones who’d failed, because they couldn’t suppress his humanity, his inborn need to answer the call of the helpless, no matter the cost. Her love for him was a living, breathing thing that felt too big, too overwhelming for her heart to contain. “She died being rescued,” she said when she found her voice.
“But she still died.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
She squeezed him tighter, bringing her lips to his skin, kissing and soothing, whispering words of love. She felt his body loosen, his breath come easier. The owl outside hooted again, nearer this time, and the curtains stirred, a shiver of moonlight making the room sparkle, but only for a moment. He turned to her, his gaze moving over her face. In this low light and with the shifting shadows, Sam looked like any man. His scar was gone, his coloring blended. She only saw the angles and dips of his face, the soft swell of his lips. They’d taken so much from him. So much. Yet he’d retained a gentle heart. A miracle.Hermiracle. Her love.
The curtain lifted, a filmy shaft of moonlight falling over Sam momentarily and exposing him to her in all his myriad differences. Her heart warmed. There he was, her Sam, the real version she preferred. The version built from pain and struggle and strength and fortitude. And though she was deeply sorry he had been made to experience those things, he washimbecause of them.
She felt him respond to her touch, not just in acceptance but with need, so she let her lips linger on his neck, her hand exploring the contradictions of this man’s body. The landscape of Sam.I could spend the rest of my life charting you.Velvety smooth in one spot and raised and rough in another. Muscle to knead in one area and the resistance of a metal plate somewhere else. He groaned softly, a masculine sound of arousal that her body immediately responded to, softening where Sam was growing hard. “Every inch of you is beautiful,” she told him, meaning it down to her marrow.
He made a grunt of disagreement, a note of bewilderment under the gruff sound.
