Rescued

  Rescued

  by

  Priscilla West

  Copyright © 2014 BNXWorks LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Copyright © 2014 BNXWorks LLC

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Warning: This work contains sexual content and is written for adults only (18+). All characters depicted in this story are over 18 years of age.

  Note: This is the second book in a series. Book One of the series, Wrecked should be read first.

  Wrecked (Wrecked Book One)

  Rescued (Wrecked Book Two)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: FALLOUT

  Chapter Two: A NEW HOME

  Chapter Three: HEALTHY

  Chapter Four: AWKWARD

  Chapter Five: A NEW MORNING

  Chapter Six: MEMORIES

  Chapter Seven: MOVING ON

  Chapter Eight: HELP

  Chapter Nine: FUN AND GAMES

  Chapter Ten: PERFECT

  Chapter Eleven: SECRETS

  Chapter Twelve: TALK

  Chapter Thirteen: A DIFFERENT KIND OF READING

  Chapter Fourteen: STOLEN MOMENTS

  Chapter Fifteen: STRONG

  Chapter Sixteen: CLINT

  Chapter Seventeen: PROGRESS

  Chapter Eighteen: AN INVITATION

  Chapter Nineteen NEW BEGINNINGS

  Chapter Twenty WAKE

  Chapter Twenty-one CHANGES

  Chapter Twenty-two HELP

  Chapter Twenty-three: FRONT DESK

  Chapter Twenty-four: DISTRACTION

  Chapter Twenty-five: ANSWERS

  Chapter Twenty-six: TOSS AND TURN

  Chapter Twenty-seven: WHAT’S MINE TO KNOW

  Chapter Twenty-eight: STORM

  Chapter Twenty-nine: CLOSURE

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  FALLOUT

  “Tell me about Hunter.”

  I sat up on the plush tan couch in Dr. Schwartz’s office and tried to catch my breath. The spasming muscles in my chest fought back bitterly.

  Hunter. The mention of his name was enough to drive me to the edge of a panic attack.

  “Lorrie? Would you like something?”

  I shook my head and lay back down. The room was painted in creamy off-white and lit by lamps that glowed in soothing tones. Every decorative choice had been made with the goal of calming patients down. Patients like me.

  The only exception to this rule was the ticking made by the clock on Dr. Schwartz’s stained ash desk, in front of which she was seated. By my guess she was about a yard from where my feet were on the couch.

  That ticking sound I could do without. Its steadiness made me nervous.

  My thoughts raced anxiously as I thought about how to answer her. I’d just told her about everything that had happened in the days before I left Studsen. My face felt warm. The intensity of reliving all of that after days of lying numb in bed and trying not to feel anything was exhausting.

  Now she was asking about Hunter. How should I answer that? He made me feel the best I’d ever felt. And the worst. It didn’t really matter what I thought about him at this point. I was probably never going to see him again.

  “Lorrie?” Dr. Schwartz asked, after a little while. “Can you tell me more about Hunter? You can start anywhere.”

  I took a deep breath again, the tension in my chest fighting back. Moisture started welling up in my eyes to my frustration. It would be messy if I cried. That morning I’d gotten a little enthusiastic with my makeup in anticipation of actually leaving the house for the first time since I’d returned to Indiana. It probably hadn’t been the best idea to make myself up right before going to my therapist.

  “Can I have a tissue?” I said, my voice quivering.

  She handed me a tissue and I dabbed at my eyes, trying to get a hold of myself. My ribs seized against every attempt to fill my lungs. I’d been numb all week, but it was hard to hold back the emotions now.

  Reality was settling in. I had left him beaten and broken. Hunter was out of my life and no one was going to save me from this nightmare.

  “He keeps his apartment very clean,” I said finally. “And he smells good.”

  The clock ticked and my heart beat erratically. Dr. Schwartz sat listening. After a few more deep breaths and who knows how many ticks of the clock on her desk, I continued. “He took me to his apartment after he saved me when I fell in a lake,” I said in a small voice. “That’s how we met. His place was so neat and tidy. It wasn’t what I expected when I first saw him.”

  I almost smiled lying on the couch and thinking about that first day. I’d scurried across campus with his trash bag because I couldn’t find a place to throw it out. My hands had been absolutely freezing by the time I got back to my dorm and threw it away. When I got back to my dorm room, I realized the sweatshirt I stole from him smelled wonderful. I lounged around in it for the rest of the day and hadn’t even taken it off to sleep that night. That was so long ago.

  Dr. Schwartz nodded encouragement. “What did you expect when you went to Hunter’s apartment?” she asked. “Picture him for me on that day. What does he look like?”

  “He looks like a bad boy . . .” I started. Tears again threatened to burst through, and I took a minute to calm myself. “But he’s . . .” I tried to get more out, but every time I started to form a word I came close to crying. My entire body felt like a dam ready to burst.

  “I knew things would get messed up between us,” I croaked finally. “That’s why I tried to hold back.”

  My therapist looked at me over her horn-rimmed glasses and her face screwed up at my last statement. She wrote something on her pad and nodded to herself.

  I watched her for a moment, hoping this would be one of the rare times she said something, but she sat back in her chair and continued to gaze at me patiently. She had straight, graying hair that stopped just above her shoulders and was wearing her usual business suit, this time in herringbone.

  After a while I realized she wasn’t going to tell me what she had nodded about. I didn’t feel like volunteering any more about Hunter, and so we sat there in silence for a couple minutes, each second marked out by the interminable clock on her desk.

  The crushing numbness of the last few days began to return, along with my confusion. Every time I thought about what happened with Hunter, I hit a wall. We probably should have never gotten involved. Either I should have been stronger and stayed away, or I should have admitted my feelings for him sooner. What had happened had been a disaster.

  It was exhausting to talk about it. The only other person I had told about what had happened was Daniela.

  “Let’s back up,” my therapist said, breaking the silence. “Tell me about your semester. How was it for you being back at school?”

  I took a deep breath, a little more freely this time. “I don’t know,” I said. “Hard, I guess. Classes were going okay but not great before the letter. I was drawing a lot. All I wanted was to be a normal student for one semester without any breakdowns.”

  Another silence followed, punctuated only by the clock. When I first started seeing Dr. Schwartz, silences like these made me feel awkward, but by this point I accepted them. She was just being patient and making sure I had nothing else to say. This wasn’t a conversation. It was therapy.

  “You’ve talked about g
etting back to normal before,” she said. “Do you think you would have had a normal semester if you hadn’t met Hunter?”

  I flinched inwardly at his name. “Maybe. I guess I’ll never know.”

  She waited.

  “I would have gotten the letter from Marco either way,” I said quietly, half to myself. “I don’t know. That would have been bad with or without Hunter. Marco’s going to haunt me forever, I think.”

  There was another pause. The clock ticked as I got more and more frustrated with everything that had happened. A terrible crushing sensation pressed against my chest and it was getting difficult to breathe.

  “Seriously, what the hell?” I cried. “Who has to deal with someone ruining their life like this? It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Why would he write me a letter?”

  I clenched my jaw bitterly. Every time I thought about Marco it got me worked up.

  “What did Hunter do after you got the letter from your stepfather?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

  I pressed my knees together and bit my lip. “Nothing. He never found out.”

  “Oh. Did you hide it from him?”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t really talk for a few days. I have no idea why he didn’t contact me.”

  I bit my tongue before saying any more. The way things had happened in my last few days at Arrowhart made me upset and confused. Dr. Schwartz didn’t say anything, so I changed the subject back to Marco. “I just don’t understand why he’s out to ruin my life,” I said. “How can you be normal when someone killed your mom, basically killed your dad, and then holds it over you like some kind of psychopath? And I’ll never know why he did it.”

  Another minute was punctuated by the steady clock. My pulse raced faster and faster.

  “How am I supposed to feel?” I cried, before sighing with frustration. Then I pushed my lips together and stayed quiet until she spoke.

  “Do you think you would feel better about what happened to your parents if you knew why Marco killed your mother?”

  “Yes,” I said instantly.

  “Have you asked him?”

  My stomach sank. Ask him? Like he was just going to tell me after showing no remorse even during sentencing?

  The clock ticked. Dr. Schwartz was waiting for my answer.

  “They asked him during the trial,” I tried. “Interrogated. Even during sentencing.”

  More time passed. “So then I understand you have not asked him personally. It might be worth considering. I know it would be deeply painful, but if you get answers it could be worthwhile. He may respond differently to your personal request than he did in a legal setting.”

  I took a few deep breaths. The prospect of writing Marco a letter back, even if it was just that question, was daunting. I really just wanted him and everything he did to me to go away.

  “I’d like to return to Hunter,” she said after a few more ticks of the interminable clock had passed. “Are you angry because he wasn’t there to support you when you got the letter from Marco?”

  Her voice was irritatingly steady, calm, and really getting on my nerves. “I thought this was about Marco,” I said through my teeth.

  My therapist didn’t answer. I sat up to look at her and found she was staring at me neutrally.

  Frustrated, I let myself fall back down and breathed out. “I don’t want to talk about Hunter right now,” I said, my voice beginning to shake. I tried changing the subject. “The most positive thing about the semester has been my drawing. That was basically the only thing I was good at.”

  I poked my head up and looked at her. Nothing. I might as well have been talking to an empty room. The emotion that had been bound up in my body threatened to overflow. I let myself back down onto the couch harder than I’d meant to.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back to Arrowhart,” I said. “What happened after I got the letter was scary.”

  I chanced a glance at her and found the same attentive gaze.

  “It was like I couldn’t quite wake up from a bad nightmare,” I said. “For a while, I kept hearing or seeing Marco and then realizing it was just in my head.”

  There wasn’t much else to say. Once I’d read the letter from Marco I was basically useless for a few days. I hadn’t even been able to read the questions on my psychology test. I had to recover.

  Dr. Schwartz frowned. “I was worried when you left about the possibility of post-traumatic stress symptoms like those you’ve described. Of course, I didn’t anticipate a trigger as direct as the one you received. It sounds like it took quite a toll on you.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you for sharing that. However, you avoided my question. Are you angry with Hunter?”

  “Why do you keep trying to make this about him?” I snapped, blinking away fresh tears. “I told you I don’t want to talk about that.”

  She paused for a moment before answering my question. “Because you’re willing to talk about anything to avoid talking about Hunter, Lorrie. You’re avoiding something important.”

  I bit my lip, waiting for her to say more, but nothing came. I took a few ragged breaths, trying to steady myself. Tears welled up big in my eyes and began to roll down my cheeks until a massive sob built up in my chest and crashed through my body.

  Tears that had been building up since the moment I left Studsen poured out faster than I could wipe them. The whole situation was just too much. Every time I tried to process it, I was overwhelmed.

  When I looked toward Dr. Schwartz, I saw she had extended the tissue box to me. I tried to use a tissue to clean myself up, but it was no use. So much for looking presentable.

  As soon as I pulled the tissue box away, tears began to stream from my eyes anew. “I don’t know if I’m angry at Hunter or just confused,” I mumbled unsteadily. “The whole thing doesn’t make any sense.”

  For the first time since the appointment started, I wondered how long I had left before we were done for the day.

  “I mean, what was I supposed to do? After he left me crying in front of the health center, I waited at his apartment to talk to him for hours. I couldn’t have waited any longer.”

  The clock ticked. Again and again.

  “Do you feel guilty, Lorrie?”

  Anxious chills squirmed through my body. I had been arguing with myself for a week, trying to find a way this wasn’t my fault. Even if I didn’t deserve all the blame, maybe I did feel guilty.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my voice barely my own. “Maybe.”

  After a short silence, I continued. “I shouldn’t have left him when he was hurt. That’s what I feel bad about. I should have stuck around and talked to him. Made sure he was okay.”

  My stomach was queasy. Saying the words I’d been feeling in the back of my mind was both liberating and upsetting. Fresh tears came, and this time I didn’t even try to stop them. “But I didn’t know what to do,” I said again.

  “It’s alright to be confused,” my therapist said. “But you shouldn’t be avoiding what happened either. Is that all you feel guilty about? The way you left, I mean.”

  I licked my lips, thinking about how I wanted to phrase my answer to that question. “Well, and getting involved in the first place,” I tried. I thought of what Gary had said at the fight. Had our relationship always been unhealthy?

  “Like I said before, I should have either backed off totally or started a relationship sooner. The way I handled it was kind of the worst of both worlds.”

  She squinted. “Why do you think you should have backed off?”

  “I just don’t know if I was ready. If you have a breakdown in a relationship, you end up taking the other person with you.”

  “You think you dragged Hunter down with you after the letter?”

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Now I was getting confused again. “No. I don’t know. When we started dating we stayed at his apartment for four days straight. Skipped our classes and anything else we were supposed to do. Didn’t even go outside.
I don’t think that was good for us.”

  “Why do you think you retreated like that?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I guess because it took us so long to realize our feelings that we had a lot pent up.”

  Dr. Schwartz’s pen clicked and she wrote something for a moment before speaking. “Do you think he dragged you down?”

  I closed my eyes. This was exhausting. “Maybe. His friends made it sound like he has something that’s weighing him down too. I don’t know. Maybe two messed up people like us can’t ever work out.”

  The pen scratched at the pad a little more before I heard her set it down on the desk and opened my eyes. When I sat up and looked at her, I saw she was staring at me intensely, her lips pursed. Were we finally done for the day? I didn’t think I could keep talking about Hunter any more.

  “That’s all for today, Lorrie. However, before you go, I do think I should ask you to think about whether two people who have dealt with a lot of tragedy in their lives might be better equipped to support each other. There’s no right answer to that question, but I think you should stop and consider it before assuming you have the answer already.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. Her words might as well have been in another language. It had been a long session, and I was completely and utterly drained. At least I wasn’t crying anymore.

  “And for what it’s worth, I don’t think this is the last you’ve seen of Hunter.”

  I sighed, staring at her blankly. I didn’t want to think about Hunter. I didn’t want to think about anything.

  Taking the cue that the session was over, I rose shakily onto my feet. After a half-mumbled goodbye, I walked out of her office. I was beyond glad that we were done for the day.

  I looked up at the clock in the waiting area and saw there were still ten minutes left before my uncle was due to pick me up. Taking a deep breath, I sat down before realizing this gave me time to clean myself up. I hopped back up and went to the bathroom to clean off my makeup. As I stared at my sunken eyes in the bathroom mirror, I couldn’t help but play Dr. Schwartz’s words over and over in my head. Was she right? More importantly, did I want her to be right?