Alone Read Online Free PDF

on the back of her neck stand on end. He was here for
her.
    “ What happened to my husband?”
she asked, barely believing the words had left her
mouth.
    “ What happened to
you?”
    She looked up, her eyes fierce.
“Answer the question!”
    His eyes grew dark under his furrowed
brow. He pressed his lips together as though he had to control
himself before answering. “He didn’t get anything he wasn’t asking
for. In my opinion, he got off lightly.”
    “ So it was you!” Anger
bubbled within her. “Why ask me? Are you just another controlling
man who likes to screw around with a woman’s head?”
    He sat back, astonished at her fury.
Then he leaned forward and took her hand across the table. She
caught her breath at the touch of his skin on hers and the anger
melted away like a night’s snowfall under the day’s first rays of
sun. She saw worry in his face; in the creases at the corners of
his eyes, in the lines between his eyebrows.
    “ No, never,” he said. “I
didn’t know how much you had figured out for yourself. I didn’t
want to scare you.”
    “ Scare me? It’s a bit late
for that!” she sat back, shaking her head. “But how? How did you
get into the bedroom? And the ambulance, that was you on the
roof?”
    He nodded.
    “ What are you? An acrobat, or a
magician, or...” She trailed off, at a loss for ideas. “Something?”
she finished weakly.
    “ Yeah,” he lowered his head
and a lock of thick black hair fell across his forehead.
“Something.”
    “ But how did you get in and
out of the room without us seeing you?”
    “ I can’t explain exactly.
Try to think of it as a trick of the light, an optical
illusion.”
    She wanted to press further, but she
didn’t want to scare him off. His presence was nothing short of a
miracle and however he’d managed to perform his ‘tricks’, he’d kept
her from being raped by her own husband.
    He must have read her
thoughts.
    “ You could leave him now. Pack
your bags and go.”
    The thought struck fear into her heart and
she hated herself. He was right; she should have left Jackson years
ago, but didn’t have the courage. More things came into play than
simply packing her bags because he was a bad husband. Things had
happened in their marriage, some weren’t Jackson’s fault, and she
blamed herself for them. Part of her didn’t blame Jackson for the
beatings. Deep down, she felt like she deserved it.
    “ I don’t know how to,” she
admitted, her cheeks heating with shame. “I don’t know how to be
alone.”
    “ Alone is all I’ve ever
been.”
    They looked up at each other and time
stopped. Even though they sat in dim light, his features were more
real to her than anything she’d seen before. The gloom cast shadows
across his face, making his pale skin jump out from the darkness
and his eyes almost glowed. She wanted to reach out and touch the
thick lashes framing his eyes, trace her finger along his jawbone,
touch the fullness of his lower lip.
    How was it possible to want someone so
badly when you knew nothing about them?
    “ I will leave him,” she
said, her voice low. “As soon as he is well again, I’ll
leave.”
    He dropped her hand.
    Panic rose within her; she was being
forced to make a decision she should have made years ago. “I don’t
even know your name,” she said, “and you’re asking me to leave my
husband.”
    “ I’m not asking you to leave
your husband for me. I want you to do it for yourself.”
    He pushed back his chair and stood. For a
moment, she thought he would touch her again, place his palm
against her cheek. Heat spread from the centre of her chest,
flooding down into her belly and coalescing between her
legs.
    I nstead, he took a step away.
    “ I don’t want you to choose
because of me. What would you have done if I hadn’t stopped your
husband tonight? Would you have let him do what he wanted and then
pretended nothing happened?”
    A lump formed in her throat and her eyes
burned with tears.