Page 25 of Inexplicable

Fuck! We were going to take care of each other. I was going to make damn sure she got what she needed to recover.

She hadn’t uttered a word of complaint, but there was no way she was totally unaffected by her ten-day ordeal in Mexico.

It was more likely that she’d buried those emotions.

She was way too calm about everything that had happened to her.

Marshall had warned me that everything might hit her later, and I’d be ready for that if it happened.

She hadn’t been sexually assaulted, but just the fear of that happening must have been terrifying for her.

She been stripped, beaten, starved, and deprived of an adequate amount of water.

Jenna had known exactly what the holding facility was and what was going to happen to her in the future.

That kind of trauma left a mark on the psyche.

Granted, Jenna had suffered a lot of trauma in her life, but the last thing she’d needed was to pile on more of that shit.

I was going to act as her unofficial advisor and, sooner or later, I was going to get her to talk about her trauma.

She might think she didn’t need an advisor or any kind of counseling, but experiences like her kidnapping would leave a mark on her if she didn’t deal with what happened, whether she wanted to admit it…or not.

If she hadn’t suggested coming with me to Michigan, I would have figured out a way to stay close to her.

I really didn’t want to stop to analyze why I felt that way or why I’d never felt that way about any of my past rescues.

I just felt damn protective of Jenna for some fucking reason I couldn’t explain or justify.

I had to know that she was going to be okay after what happened to her.

Life wasn’t fucking fair, and there was no greater proof of that than Jenna’s life and her past experiences.

She’d had to fight like hell for the life she had right now.

Very few people had gained this woman’s trust, and I knew exactly why she was so damn wary.

Fucking hell! I’d convinced myself that Jenna would stop taking up space in my head after she was rescued.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Once I’d met her, I was screwed.

I was even more intrigued by the woman across from me, a woman who had surprised the hell out of me by insisting on staying with me until my injury was healed.

I hadn’t expected that, but I wasn’t complaining.

Yeah, I’d like to see her choose to stay around because of something more than gratitude that I’d saved her life, but I’d take what I could get right now.

I hated myself for admitting it, but I was also physically attracted to Jenna.

It didn’t seem to matter that she had some bruises that hadn’t healed or that she had staples in her head that weren’t completely hidden by her hair.

She was still gorgeous.

She bore the scars of her past, but those scars didn’t affect her allure. They were the physical marks of a difficult life that she’d managed to overcome. Who could ever find something like that unattractive?

I suspected that she was self-conscious about those scars, and I hated that. I could tell by the way she turned the scarred side of her face away from people’s gaze when she was talking to someone.