Page 141 of Wicked Dares
Only therapy and strong meds can take the edge off when you go through the type of fucked-up shit Reece put me through.
When I was rescued and went back to Aunt Bess, I was a broken, beaten mess.
I couldn’t even talk, and I could barely sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, my mind took me straight back to that cabin in the woods.
The nightmares lasted for a good eight months. When they stopped, there was a time when I didn’t dream at all. That was better.
Better to see nothing than the face of a monster who terrified me.
It was hard to tell Levi what happened, to recount those details. What I told him was awful but not even the half of it.
I never explained the horrible parts before when Reece started losing his mind. All those times he hit me then either apologized because he was stressed out or blamed me for provoking him. I never explained that when you’re in that situation, it’s hard to figure out who’s at fault, even when you know things can only get worse.
Then, when I told Levi about the kidnapping, I never captured the raw fear I felt from being driven away in the back of a pickup, bound and gagged.
There are no words that can fully explain how you feel when you think someone’s going to kill you. There are even less words to describe how you feel when you believe it.
Even now, there are some days when I wake up and wonder how I’m still alive.
The shitty thing is, I never saw this coming.
My healing was based on the fact that Reece was behind bars and would stay there for twenty-five years.
Not three.
And when last I checked, he wasn’t supposed to get any chance of parole or any sort of reduced sentence—except when he was given the choice of twenty-five years or life.
The twenty-five years wasn’t fucking long enough, but I thought I’d have time.
Time to heal, time to truly move on, time to forget.
When Dorian explained what happened—how Reece got out—my world crumbled.
It felt like the sort of thing you hear in one of those crime movies where top criminals get out of prison early because of who they know.
Reece was just crazy and hyped up on drugs. He wasn’t important like that, but the man had the manipulation skills of a serial killer. It’s not that surprising he made the right friends in a maximum-security prison. I’d bet an accountant was mighty useful in a place like that.
Now he’s here.
Somewhere in New York, Reece is out there waiting for me.
The asshole must have looked for me in San Francisco first. Then he would have gone to New York because he knows Alexis lives here.
If he’s been here for a month, it was definitely him I felt watching me all those weeks ago. My guess is he also knew where I lived when I was at that horrible apartment block.
It wasn’t him who trashed my apartment and took my panties. That’s not his style.
The rose and the note and the creepy Hannibal Lecter vibes are more him.
I think that incident threw a wrench in his plans, though. It meant he couldn’t stalk me as much. Because I went to live with Levi.
He clearly knows about us, too.
I’ve been asking myself why now?
But the answer is simple. He struck because it was the right opportunity.
And knowing him, all these weeks of waiting have probably left him unhinged and impatient.
