She began to tremble and it quickly progressed to shaking that spread through her body like wildfire. Her throat seemed to close in, until each breath was torturous to squeeze in and out. An odd wheezing noise echoed in her ears and it took her a moment to realize that it was the sound of her breathing—or rather her attempt at breathing.

Zack opened his eyes and her wheeze became more pronounced. For a moment she simply stopped trying to get more air into her starved lungs as she tried to make sense of his reaction.

His tears were readily visible and he made no effort to disguise his grief. Such terrible grief. Never had she seen such naked emotion reflected in another person’s eyes. It was gut-wrenching for her. It mirrored her own sorrow, was like a window into her soul and her own suffering. Suffering he was responsible for.

“Gracie,” he said, his voice thick with all the emotion so visible in his features. “You have to believe me, baby. Please.”

He eased her hands down to her lap and then leaned forward, his fingers shaking as badly as she was. He lifted his hands to her face, hesitating as if he feared she would recoil, and then carefully cupped her cheeks.

“I don’t care what you read or think you read from those bastards’ sick, twisted minds. It doesn’t matter. I had nothing to do with them hurting you. I swear it on my life! I would never do anything to hurt you. I could kill them for what they did. So help me I will kill them if it’s the last thing I do.”

His voice had gone hoarse, each word vehement and impassioned. Her eyes were wide with shock because he was begging. He’d never begged anyone for anything. He was too proud and too determined to go his own way. And she couldn’t even comprehend what he was begging for! He was denying it? Everything? Was he crazy? Or was he saying she was crazy?

“I loved you. I have never and will never love anyone like I loved you. Do you know what it did to me to come home and find you gone?” he asked, his eyes blazing. “You simply vanished. No trace. No hint of where you’d gone. And I looked. God help me but I looked everywhere for you. I never stopped looking.”

His expression grew fierce, more earnest. His gaze was piercing, as though he was willing her to understand—to believe him.

“I don’t know what happened that day or why. But I will find out, Gracie. Because not only did those sons of bitches put their hands on you”—he broke off and shuddered visibly and then took several steadying breaths as if to compose himself again—“they violated you; they drove you away from me. They knew I loved you. They knew I planned to spend the rest of my life with you.”

He stopped his impassioned plea and went silent, studying her face. She was sure what he saw wasn’t good. All the blood had long since fled her face. Her eyes were wide with shock. And she was still shaking like a leaf and struggling for every single breath.

“Gracie?” he whispered tentatively.

His gaze was imploring, silently begging with her to accept his emotional plea. His hands stroked lightly over her cheekbones, mindful of the bruises. Then his thumbs gently wiped away tears she hadn’t realized had fallen.

“Please say you believe me.”

She closed her eyes, and she felt herself slowly give way, her tenuous grip on her composure snapping. She tried to respond but couldn’t breathe, much less manage to articulate her shattered thoughts.

Her eyes flew open in panic when her chest constricted to the point that she could no longer squeeze in the slight breaths she had before. Her arms flailed wildly, shoving at Zack’s hands, which still framed her face.

She heard a distant, muffled curse but couldn’t make out anything else as the roaring in her ears escalated to the point that it sounded like a freight train bearing down on her.

And then she did something she’d sworn she’d never do again.

She looked frantically at Zack for help and she managed to gasp his name before the room faded to black around her.

The last thing she registered was Zack’s grim, worried expression, and him enfolding her in his arms.

His familiar scent, unchanged in twelve years, enveloped her. Being in his arms gave her a deep sense of . . . homecoming.

And nothing had ever felt so sweet.

TWENTY-THREE

ZACK held Gracie in his arms, savoring the moments of quiet in the dimly lit bedroom. He’d made sure to leave the bathroom light on and the door open enough so that if she woke up, hopefully she wouldn’t panic to find herself nestled firmly against him. Something he’d dreamed about on more nights than he could count. And finally his prayers had been answered, even if the two of them had a very long way to go in their journey back to one another.

He clung to hope, though. He had to or else the very thin strings holding him together would snap, leaving him clinging desperately to his last vestiges of sanity and plunging him into a dark world of despair.

He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent, then ran his fingers through the strands. Memories of so many nights spent just like this were bright in his mind. Gracie in his arms, her small frame curled into his. Him looking forward to many more nights spent in the same manner once they were married and he’d made love to her for the first time.

A fresh wave of grief rolled through him all over again at all she’d lost. What he had lost. Just a sixteen-year-old girl, brutally violated by men Zack had trusted. Had called friends. No, he didn’t have anything to do with their sick crime, but in a way he was guilty all the same because Gracie would have never been exposed to them if not for him.

Her head was pillowed on his shoulder and she slept deeply, and he hoped dreamlessly, devoid of the memories of her past. In forcing her to relate all that she’d endured, she’d been taken back to that awful day all over again, thrust right back into the horror of her worst nightmare. And he’d lived it—envisioned it—right alongside her. It had taken a piece of his soul that he would never get back again. He’d live the rest of his life knowing she’d suffered the unimaginable, all the while believing that he had done this to her. He couldn’t even think about it without becoming completely undone.

He wasn’t sure if having to relive her ordeal had instigated the panic attack that had left her unable to breathe to the point of passing out, or . . . if him protesting his innocence had finally sent her over the edge.

He’d never felt such a lack of hope in his life. Except when he’d had to face the fact that Gracie was gone and wasn’t ever coming back. He couldn’t survive losing her a second time. If she refused to believe him, if she ran as far and as fast as she could, he would never be whole. He’d forever be a hollow shell of himself, wandering aimlessly through life with no purpose, no hope. None of the joy that only Gracie could bring him.