Week 136 – Connor stormed out of his apartment into the night
Someone grabbed her, spun her around and shoved her up against the wall making every bone in her body jar painfully.
Lacey wasn’t going down without a fight. She kicked, she scratched, she snapped her teeth at anything that came close to her face. Every time she had cowered in fear and allowed her husband to put his hands on her flashed through her mind and she fought like she wished she had fought back then.
Time and place blurred into nothingness as she fought for her life.
“Its me. Lacey, its me. Detective Zaal, Connor, its me.”
Connor.
It was Connor.
Not her husband.
Relief hit her hard and she sagged, probably would have hit the tiled floor of the bathroom if Connor hadn’t grabbed her, scooped her up, and carried her into his living room, switching on the light then depositing her on the couch.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I, uh, I didn’t know where else to go,” she admitted. She hadn’t intended to come here, she had intended to find a solution on her own, but the only solution she had was to run again, and what good was that going to do when her ex could obviously track her down.
“So you came here?” he asked with an arched brow. “How did you find out my address?”
“I did a little detective work of my own,” she said, knowing her cheeks were going pink with embarrassment that he knew she had snooped into his personal life, dragging him further into her nightmare.
“I’m glad you did,” he smiled, and then took a seat on the coffee table that sat opposite the couch. “Now, I need you to tell me everything. And I mean everything.”
Tell him everything?
Wasn’t that why she had come here?
It was, and yet her mouth wouldn’t open and let the words out.
Obviously sensing her reluctance to talk, he stood, and without a word, Connor stormed out of his apartment into the night.
That wasn’t what she wanted.
Lacey ran after him. “Connor, wait,” she called, catching him as he was about to head down the stairs. “I’ll tell you.”
He turned and smiled at her. “You really should be keeping off your leg.”
“You ran off,” she reminded him.
“I had to do something to get you talking,” his smile teased her, and then he picked her up again, and she curled an arm around his shoulders, already starting to feel comfortable in these arms.
She wasn’t sure this was a good idea, she didn’t have a good track record when it came to the men in her life. But something had led her here, something she was too strung out to dissect.
“You have to tell me everything you know about your ex, its the only way I can keep you safe,” Connor told her as he carried her back into his apartment, and closed and locked the door behind them.
“Its not a pretty story,” Lacey said as he set her down on the couch. He went to stand but she grabbed his hand and held on to it, needing him to stay close by while she relived the nightmare that was her life.