Healing Touch: Play Doctor, Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

I pass through if I didn’t ride a motorcycle.”
    “After that, I remember my dad always being there, drinking or doing drugs. I’m pretty sure he worked for criminals. Sketchy guys would come in at all hours. They’d wake me up with their yelling, and fighting. I don’t know how he had cash all the time. It sure as shit didn’t look like he was loaded in our pigsty. But he gambled a lot. Partied a lot. Had sex with random women who latched on to his sometime-wins. There was no way for me to avoid it in that place.”
    Brielle took a deep, shaky breath. “I tried to stay out of the way. Keep from being noticed. I put some pillows and blankets in a sloped closet under the stairs to the roof. At first, it made a great hideout. I didn’t mind, except that it didn’t even have a light, so when my dad closed the door…”
    She shivered.
    Luke allowed her to gather her composure before continuing. He wrapped her fingers around her tea, which she chugged.
    “It’s okay if it’s too much.” Kindness radiated from his eyes, the same gorgeous blue as the sky behind him.
    “I can do it. This isn’t the hard part.” Brielle took a deep breath. “I liked when my place would get spider webs because I hoped their owners would eat the other bugs.
    “After a while, it became a routine. As soon as I came home from school, he would lock me in there to keep me out of the way while he did whatever he did. I stole a flashlight from school and I would search for batteries in the garbage. Sometimes I could score ones that weren’t totally dead. Or those Glow Stick things at Halloween. Those were the best.
    “Until later when he wouldn’t let me stay out, even if I asked to sleep in my bed for a night. Then it wasn’t my place to hide anymore. It was my dad’s way of getting rid of me. My refuge turned into a cell.”
    “Jesus,” Luke muttered so low she figured she wasn’t supposed to hear. But he seemed to be sitting closer now. “I’m so sorry you had to endure that, Brielle. Can I ask something? It’s not a judgment. I just want to understand.”
    “Go ahead.” Glad not to have to carry the conversation, she waited as he phrased his question.
    “Did your dad threaten you? Hurt you? To keep you from telling people at school what he was doing?”
    “No. I mean, there were times when he drank that he’d take a swipe at me. Not very often.” She slumped in the seat. “I know, it’s stupid. Even Brad accused me of bringing it on myself. But…it felt wrong to leave my father.”
    “Because he was your only bond to your mother?” Luke asked.
    “Maybe, in some way.” Brielle shrugged. “But also because he was my dad. I didn’t want to abandon him, like he tried to do to me that time. He needed me there. Even if it was too hard for him to bear being around me. Too painful to remember.”
    “How do you know that, Brielle?” Luke narrowed his eyes.
    “One time I ran away.” Her eyelids fluttered closed as she remembered. “I was nine. We went to the university’s topiary park on a class trip. The designs and the glass conservatory were so beautiful. I just…didn’t want to go. I hid in the bathroom until my class left without me. I made it a little over a week before I was starving and cold. So cold. It was winter, and the guy living between the dinosaur and the train, who said I could share his fire, tried…things. I kicked him in the nuts and ran straight home.”
    “It’s okay,” Luke murmured. “You survived. You did whatever you had to in order to make it to the next day. That’s okay, Brielle. That’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s human nature. Instinct.”
    “I couldn’t cut it. I had to go back.” A curse threatened to escape. Either that or tears. But it had been a hell of a long time since she’d allowed herself to cry. Neither her dad nor Brad had put up with weeping. Luke wouldn’t appreciate waterworks either.
    “What I’m hearing is a sense that you failed.” Luke