Page 98 of Bittersweet & Strange

Raw.

The skin is abraded in an unmistakable band, the angry marks continuing around his wrist, and I can do nothing except stare.

Boone tries to pull his sleeve down. I stop him gently.

“Both of them.”

He gives me the other hand.

I turn his wrist carefully, examining the damaged skin while Boone trembles despite how little pressure I’m using.

Lucien tied him.

“I didn’t want him to … to touch me the way you do.” He shivers. “I swear I didn’t.”

My hand begins to shake.

I release Boone immediately. Not because I don’t want to touch him, but because I no longer trust myself to know how tightly I’m holding him.

“Rhys?”

I turn away.

There is a small table beside the sofa, and I grab its edge, trying to contain something I have never had to contain before. The wood cracks under my grip.

Boone jumps.

That brings me back faster than anything else could.

I look over my shoulder and see him standing exactly where I left him, arms wrapped around himself, frightened and exhausted. His wary gaze remains fixed on me because after everything he has endured, he still has reason to wonder what my anger might become.

My rage cannot become another thing Boone has to fear.

I force my hands open.

“Did he leave you there?”

Boone nods. “He said he’d tie me up and drag me to the altar if he had to. Then he told me he wasn’t releasing Dad because I gave him such a hard time.” Tears spill down his face again. “He left me on the floor. I eventually got the rope loose enough to get out, and I went for Bramble.”

“You rode here like this?”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

That silences me.

Boone looks at me helplessly. “I just knew I had to get to you.”

I cross the room without thinking, then stop just short of touching him.

His face twists. Boone closes the remaining distance himself and throws his arms around me. I hold him, one hand cradling the back of his head while he buries his face against my chest and sobs. I stare past him, piecing together everything he has told me.

The men who took his father.

The place they are holding him.

Lucien.

Especially Lucien.