Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

She sniffed as she blinked back a tear. He wasn’t sure if the emotion had come from her empathy about his regrets or if he was starting to get through to her. The best way to combat an adversary was to know their motivations, but as Nik was beginning to realize, understanding your enemy was the only way to forgive them. And maybe it was time Thea started understanding the enemy she seemed so eager to be up against. “You had a tough life, baby. Give yourself a break.”

Barely audible, she asked, “You said you met me at a gas station. How do you know what kind of life I’ve had?”

Back in the gun room, her eyes had brightened at the thought of her dad teaching her how to use the rifle. She’d almost seemed interested in learning about her younger self. Maybe he should start there. He reached out and brushed her hair back off her face as he waited for her to relax.

Stroking a finger along the pinkish red line disappearing into her blonde hair, he told her, “What the makeup lady said about needing to cover your scars was total bullshit. I don’t want you to ever cover this scar up. It was the first place I touched you.”

He trailed his finger over the white marks on her knee, the one on her wrist, her calf. “Scars on girls are incredibly sexy things. They prove you were wild and brave. Climbing trees and shooting guns and riding horses.”

“Horses?” she breathed out in a whisper. “What makes you say that?”

“At the gas station, you went over to a trailer to smooch on the horses inside. I was incredibly jealous I didn’t have four legs and a furry mouth.”

Thea playfully pushed at his chest, but then inched closer, allowing his arm to curl behind her and hold her as she settled against him.

“And there was a picture of you riding as part of a news story about your sister.”

“My sister?”

Pulled close, he could hear Thea’s heart pumping wildly. Thrashing against the ropes of the past like an unbroken colt fighting for freedom, and here he was about to break it and cage it. But he had to. She had to know the reason why he believed she’d never had sex.

“Amanda was a few years older.”

“Was older?”

Nik pushed out a breath. “She was kidnapped when you were ten. You were sleeping in the same room. You witnessed her being raped and abducted. Her body was never found.”

“She might still be alive?”

“Your sister wasn’t the only girl who’d gone missing. There was also a neighbor girl whose case was similar. Her body was found. It’s unlikely for Amanda to still be alive. Your parents laid her memory to rest in an empty coffin.”

“Did they find who did it?”

“A man named Danny Dalton. He died in prison.”

Thea’s body quivered. Hot tears wetted the skin at his shoulder, as Nik went on to explain about her parents’ divorce and their subsequent deaths. “How can I not remember any of this?”

“Maybe your brain needed this break.”

“Things like that should never be forgotten.”

“Thea, things like that should’ve never happened. I didn’t say anything sooner because I thought it would be best if you remembered it on your own—or maybe never remembered, I don’t know. But I can’t let you go on believing your choices before the tornado didn’t have weight behind them.”

* * * *

Not even a fleck of memory had sprung to my mind. I could imagine the terror of the girl who’d been raped and tortured. I was deeply shaken with sympathy for the girl who’d witnessed it. Who’d lived with the aftermath. A ten-year-old me.

In part it was terrifying to realize these things had happened in my life. And in part it was like Nik had revealed a story about strangers. An awful, sad, heartbreaking story, but there was distance there. There was also intense relief I wasn’t living with the memory of those events, and I felt horribly wrong for having been so hard on the woman before me who didn’t have such luxury.

Now I understood why Nik had had to tell me about my past. Anyone who’d not only witnessed so much horror, but had lived through it and lost her entire family, would be leery of both physical and emotional connections. Perhaps even avoiding intimacy and love completely. Like Nik, she’d be desperate to wrap her heart in a steel shield.

If this heart had been walled-off before the tornado and my memory loss, there was no trace of a fortress now. This body desperately craved physical and emotional contact. Maybe without the bad memories it was finally free.

I understood why Nik thought I’d regret being intimate with him if my memory ever came back. But was denying oneself really a choice? No one chooses to hold onto those kinds of fears. No one wants to be terrified of natural emotions and desires. Just as her sister had been ripped from her long ago, so had those choices.

Ripped from me.

Like Nik had said, I couldn’t discount my past simply because I had no memory of it. I couldn’t have one foot in one world and one in another, not anymore. My heart needed to feel love and so did my body. Who better to give me what I desired than the man who time after time made sure I was safe?

I reached out for Nik, my fingertips tracing his jawline as I brought his lips toward mine. “This choice has weight to it, too.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Nik kissed me softly, tenderly adjusting to this abrupt change of subject. With a possessive surge, he rolled us to the bed’s edge until we were both standing. His fingers deftly worked to free the top buttons of the flannel shirt, stopping as soon as he could part the fabric enough to bare my breasts.

Drawing in a breath, I marveled at