Synopsis
A girl in danger…
Aubrey Walsh never dreamed that she would find herself in an
abusive relationship, but after her boyfriend hits her so hard he breaks her
tooth, she flees the University of Maine to hide on a remote island with her
best friend. Only to discover that she is pregnant. Terrified of what will
happen if Jared finds out, she is walking along the rocks, deciding her future,
when she slips.
A guy with a secret past…
After a job gone wrong, Riker has left the assassin business
and is incognito as a ferryboat operator off the shores of Maine. It’s a lonely
life, and when he sees a young woman almost fall off the rocks, he doesn’t
hesitate to save her and take her in, though he’s determined to stay
unemotionally uninvolved. But when the truth about her situation is revealed,
he will do anything to protect Aubrey and her unborn child.
Even marry her. Even kill for her.
When Jared comes looking for the only girl who has ever
rejected him, Riker won’t allow it. And Aubrey is torn between protecting
herself and her child, or protecting the mysterious husband she has come to
love.
And when chance brings them together but fate tears them
apart, can their love survive the storm?
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Excerpt
“Where were you?”
Jared asked as I came into the apartment, my arms loaded with plastic grocery
bags.
He didn’t offer to
help. He never offered to help.
His tone was
congenial, but after six months of living with him, I knew him well enough to
recognize that he was looking to trap me, to start a fight. To back me into a verbal corner where he
could accuse me of some misconduct and there would be no way to argue
rationally with him.
“The grocery
store.” I staggered to the kitchen and
heaved the eight bags onto the counter.
“It doesn’t take
that long to go to the grocery store, Aubrey.”
He stood up, rising slowly, unfurling himself like he had all the time
in the world.
My palms started
to sweat. Nerves. The cat-and-mouse game had begun, just like
it had more and more frequently, where he berated me and shamed me and
frightened me.
“I left work at
five, sweetheart.” Sometimes, giving him
a smile and using a term of endearment helped to diffuse his anger, but it was
getting harder and harder to make myself smile.
It was also hard
to believe I’d ever looked at him and thought he was gorgeous. Thought he was so sweet, so charming. There was nothing charming about him at all
now. He was cruel and insecure and
sadistic, and I was afraid of him—yet even more afraid to leave him.
He moved towards
me, his arms crossing over his chest.
“You fucking the bag boy, babe?
Is that it? You can’t come home
on time and cook me some dinner because you’re too busy in the backroom blowing
some loser.”
I shook my head,
saliva thick in my mouth. I took an
involuntary step backward, but the cabinets halted my progress.
There was nowhere
to go.
“Of course not. Why would I do that? I love you,” I said even though I
didn’t. He’d killed every genuine
emotion I’d ever had for him. “You’re
the only man for me.”
The only man I
even dared to look at for fear of the repercussions. The only man whose touch I granted, even when
I wasn’t in the mood or I was tired or he purposefully degraded me. I knew that if the fear could be peeled away,
there would be nothing there but pure hatred for Jared, but the terror was too
overwhelming, an octopus ink that covered, hid, camouflaged all my other
emotions.
“What do you want
for dinner, baby?” I asked, despising the tone of my voice. It was wheedling, desperate. Pathetic.
I didn’t even recognize that voice anymore—or who I had become.
I reached out to
put my hands on his chest, to halt his steps, but under the guise of
affection. I tried to kiss him, but he
grabbed my hands and yanked one up to his face, the motion jerking my
shoulder. I winced then tried to cover
it. He sniffed my hand.
“What are you
doing?” I asked, appalled.
He had leaned in
and was smelling my neck, my clothes, my hair.
It was discomfiting, and my hand trembled before I could try to control
it.
“Seeing if you
smell like a man.”
I didn’t smell
like a man. But I was sure I did smell like
sweat. It was August, and even in Maine,
the days could heat up. It was almost
eighty degrees outside and we didn’t have air conditioning in our apartment. Plus, fear always made me leach that sour
anxiety sweat and I was truly afraid. I
knew what he was going to do and I knew it was going to hurt.
The girl I used to
be would have spit in his face, kneed his nuts, stomped on his foot. But for eighteen months, Jared had been
grinding me down one day, one hour, one minute at a time until I was merely a
powdery dust beneath his boot. I wanted
to fight back. I wanted to flee, but I
had left him three times before, and each time, he’d brought me back with first
his tears and then his fists. He’d
threatened my mother, my father, my brother, my best friend. He’d gotten me fired from my job, kicked out
of my sorority house, and he had convinced me that no other man would love me.
So this me, the
one with no money and no car and self-esteem that had been fed through the
industrial shredder, just tried to keep the peace. To make the moment pass without
repercussion.
“I’ll smell like a
man once you kiss me,” I said lightly.
“I missed you.” Lie. Total lie.
So untrue that I actually felt bile rise in my mouth.
He saw it. Somehow, he always saw it. It was like he’d perfected the evil art of
stripping me naked emotionally in front of him and he thrived on the
humiliation.
Jared suddenly
gripped my chin hard in his hand, jerking my head to the side.
I gave an
involuntary cry. “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
His lips came up
to my ear. At first, he lightly nibbled
on my earlobe. Then he whispered to me,
his tender tone at complete odds with his words. “If you even so much as look at another man,
I will break every bone in your body. I
won’t even use my hands because you’re not worth it. I’ll stomp on you with my boot, the one I use
to go riding, the one covered in horseshit.
I’ll beat you so bad you’ll wish you were dead, and no man will ever
look at your busted face with anything other than total disgust. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, a shiver
rolling up my spine. He was big and he
surrounded me, his shoulders tense, his grip on my chin so hard I knew it would
bruise. He had played lacrosse in
college, but he was broad and muscular enough that he could have gone out for
rugby. I would never be able to
overpower him, outrun him, escape him.
“I understand,” I
whispered. “I am not interested in other
men.” I wasn’t. I never wanted another man ever again. All I wanted was to be left alone.
He bit my
earlobe. Hard.
I gasped in
surprise. “Ow.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it’d
slipped out involuntary.
Pulling his head
back, he jerked my chin so I was facing him again. “Shut up. You are the whiniest woman I’ve
ever met. I swear to God, all you do is
complain.”
A hysterical laugh
bubbled up inside me and escaped before I could stop it. Was he insane?
Maybe he was. Maybe he was actually totally
certifiable. Because I never
complained. Ever. About anything. He had knocked that out of me months ago, had
silenced me almost from the beginning with his verbal disapproval. I walked on fucking eggshells now and I was
exhausted.
But even though I
tried to clamp my lips shut, he heard the weird giggle and it enraged him. Before I could even prepare for it, the back
of his hand came up and nailed me on the cheek.
I stumbled from the force of the blow, tears springing up. Pain reverberated throughout my face and I
caught myself with my palms on the kitchen counter, my hands falling into the
grocery bags. He yanked me back by the
arm and slammed me against the cabinets so that my hip connected hard with the
lip of the countertop.
Then he went for
the hair, grabbing a big fistful of my blond strands and jerking it so
viciously that I cried out in pain. He
did it to blur my vision with tears so I couldn’t see him clearly. It was his MO. First the hair. Then a few blows. Sometimes the face, but usually the arms so
no one would see bruises later.
“Give me your
phone.”
I dug it out of my
pocket, thrusting it at him. There was
nothing incriminating on it. But that
wasn’t why he wanted it. He hurled it at
the cabinets, denting the wood. The
phone fell to the floor and he stepped on it.
I heard the crack.
This was going to
be a bad one, the worst in months. I
could feel it. When I blinked and my
vision cleared, I saw the fury in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils. He looked…murderous.
“Why are you doing
this?” I demanded, more of the old me left than I’d realized. “I didn’t do anything.” I tried to bend down, to get away from his
hold on me.
A survival
instinct that had been lying dormant kicked in.
This wasn’t going to be a time where I could placate him, and I was
suddenly frightened—but not of pain. Of
dying. If he hit me too hard, I could
die, and I wasn’t going to let him do that without trying to protect myself
first.
“You’re a fucking
slut, that’s why. I know you’re screwing
around on me.” With one hand still
holding me, he used the other to pull his belt out of the loops on his
jeans.
I clawed at his
hands, trying to get myself free.
No. No way in fucking hell was he
going to hit me with that. When I
couldn’t break his grip on my hair, I used my arm to strike at the belt as he
raised it, knocking it out of his hand.
The leather stung and I let out a cry, but he was shocked that I’d
deflected the blow. I used that sudden
pause to my advantage, twisting out his reach and finally freeing my hair.
“Don’t you dare
hit me with that,” I warned, catching my breath and backing away from him.
“Are you giving me
orders?” he scoffed. “I’ll hit you with
whatever I want. Pull your pants
down. I’m going to beat your ass with
this belt like you deserve.”
There was no way I
was going to voluntarily take my pants off so he could humiliate and abuse
me. Somewhere deep inside, I found my
strength despite the fear, and the line I couldn’t let him cross before I lost
myself entirely.
“No.”
“Then I’ll take
your pants off.”
When he started
towards me, I bolted, knocking my shoulder into his as I took off for the front
door of our apartment. My keys to his
car were still in my pocket. Or I could
make it to the neighbors if I couldn’t sprint to the car. But he shoved me and I fell back against the
wall. I tripped on the lamp cord and it
crashed off the end table onto the floor.
I put my hands up, but it was too late.
The belt, buckle
end first, hit me square in the jaw, and the pain was so shocking, so
excruciating, that I fell onto my knees and straight onto my face. I rolled on my side, grabbing at my mouth, my
nose. Everything was radiating an
agonizing throb, my fingers wet, the scent of my own blood clogging my
nostrils. I tried to speak, to scream,
to cry, but nothing came out but a gurgling mewl of panic. I dropped my bottom lip and blood rushed
between my fingers, down my arm, puddled onto the floor.
“Oh, fuck,
Aubrey. Look what you made me do.” Jared sounded frustrated.
The belt clanked
down onto the floor next to me, and I winced, scooting away instinctively. I scrambled to sit up, to grab the belt so he
couldn’t hit me again. There were tears
in his eyes, and that enraged
me. How dare he. How fucking dare he.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Shit. If you weren’t such a bitch
I wouldn’t get like this. But you push
all my buttons.” His hands went up into
his hair. “You’re going be fine. Just go rinse your mouth out. Where are the car keys? I’m going to the bar. I need a drink.”
On my knees,
gripping my split jaw with one hand, I started to dig in my pocket, loathing
him with every bone in my body. Every
single bone that he wanted to break hated him and his pathetic limp-dick need
to beat on a woman half his size. When
he bent over and made to root around in my pocket, clearly impatient, I swatted
his hand.
“Don’t touch
me! I’ll give you the keys.” Blood sprayed across his face with my words
and he reached up and wiped it away in disgust.
“Jesus,
Aubrey. That’s really gross.” Then he took the keys and left as I glared at
him in complete silence.
I spit out two of
my teeth into my palm and put them in my pocket. Then, with shaking fingers, I packed a bag
with my wallet, my cell phone with the now shattered screen, and some of the
groceries I’d just bought. The rest of
the food I left on the counter to rot.
Without even
bothering to clean myself up, I went out the front door and knocked on the
apartment immediately to the left, where an elderly couple lived, my bag on my
shoulder.
When the wife
opened the door, I choked back tears as her eyes widened in horror. “Please help me,” I said, my words garbled
from a swollen lip and the whistle of air where my teeth used to be. “Before my boyfriend comes back.”
About the Author
USA Today and New York Times Bestselling author Erin
McCarthy sold her first book in 2002 and has since written almost fifty novels
and novellas in teen fiction, new adult, and adult romance. Erin has a special
weakness for New Orleans, tattoos, high-heeled boots, beaches and martinis. She
lives in Ohio with her family, two grumpy cats and a socially awkward dog.
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