Gradually she was able to separate the roar of the water from the other sounds and she concentrated on those. Birds. Insects. Even what sounded like a monkey in the distance. Lots of birds. She began to differentiate the calls, picking out at least half a dozen different bird sounds.
She turned her face upward, feeling the light mist blow over her skin, cooling and refreshing her.
And finally she reached inside her mind, tentatively pushing out, searching for that pathway to her sister. The blackness was intimidating, but she didn’t give up.
For several long minutes she forced herself to remain calm. She floated in that darkness that enveloped her mind and tried to make peace with it.
The longer she sat there, the less overpowering the darkness and silence became. Instead of feeling powerless and terrified, peace settled over her like the sun on a warm summer afternoon.
She grabbed on to it. Held tight. Refused to let go and reimmerse herself in the horrors of the last months.
To be free even for a moment of the choking fear, despair and frustration was to spend a few seconds in heaven.
She had no knowledge of how long she sat there. It could have been hours or just a few minutes. When she reopened her eyes, she found Rio still sitting where he’d been, staring into the distance. Patient. Waiting for her.
As if feeling her gaze, he turned his head and then lifted one eyebrow in question. “Feel a little better?”
“You’re amazing, Rio. You would have made a terrific therapist or maybe a yoga instructor or someone specializing in meditation. Or something. Heck, I don’t even know myself. I’m having the hardest time reconciling this man here with me now with the warrior who rescued me from hell. I can’t fit the two together in my mind.”
“We’re human too,” he said, though there was no censure in his voice. “All of my men. They’re the best of the best. No better anywhere. I’d stake my life and yours on that. But they also have a very human side, one that has nothing to do with blood and death and fear.”
“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” she said regretfully.
“How is your head now? Still hurt? Are you tense?”
She took a moment to evaluate and then slowly shook her head. “I’m fine. Truly. I feel…sorta empty. It’s nice. Like nothing weighing down on me.”
“That’s good. The next step is to talk about it.”
Startled, she yanked her gaze back up to him. “Talk about it? You really are starting to sound like some armchair psychologist.”
He ignored the defensive reaction and tilted his head to the side, staring until she fidgeted on the makeshift bench.
“What were you going to say earlier? When the guys were asking you about everything that happened. You implied that they didn’t really take care with you until…Until what, Grace? What happened to make them realize they were slowly killing you?”
She dropped her head, shame immediately crowding into her mind. She closed her eyes tight as if she could push away the memories. But they clung tenaciously, a cruel reminder of the person she’d become for that short time.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “They can’t hurt you now. You survived. They didn’t break you.”
“But they did!” she burst out.
Tears burned until she no longer had the strength th brto fight them. They were like trails of acid down her cheeks, and she choked back the urge to scream. God, she wanted to just yell.
Rio took her hand, softly turned it over until her palm was up, and she instantly tried to yank it back. He held firm, his grip not painful, but neither was it relenting.
He traced a path across the thin, fading line over her wrist. It had taken a long time to heal, so savage the wound had been. She curled her fingers into a tight fist, her wrist flexing in his grasp. She closed her eyes as if she would simply will him to drop the subject.
“What happened here, Grace?” he asked quietly. “You have a nearly identical mark on the other wrist. Given your ability to heal, these must have been terrible wounds.”
“They broke me,” she said again, her voice defeated and small. “Oh God, Rio, it was so terrible. I tried to kill myself. I’m so shamed by what I did. They nearly didn’t save me. If they’d been a few minutes later getting to me, I would have lost too much blood, and what shames me the most is when I was myself again, my first thought was that I was sorry that I hadn’t succeeded. But oh God, it wasn’t me. I swear to you it wasn’t me, but I still couldn’t keep from wishing that I’d been successful.”
He curled his entire hand around hers and rubbed his thumb over the still healing scar.
“What happened?”
“It was a test,” she said bitterly. “I’d already gone through so much. I was exhausted mentally and physically. I was in constant pain. I was sick from a dozen different ailments. It hurt to even breathe.”
“What kind of test?” he gently prompted.
“They brought in a woman who’d been institutionalized because of the danger she was to herself. She was mentally ill and suicidal. She’d already tried to kill herself multiple times, and she was under constant supervision and heavily medicated. They brought her to me and forced me to heal her.”
“Oh, Grace.”
His tone was heavy with sorrow. He continued to stroke her wrist, and she found she didn’t mind quite as much as she had a moment ago.
“It was hell,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt such despair. It was overwhelming, coming at me wave after wave. The voices all telling me I was worthless, that I was nothing and that I’d be doing the world a favor by killing myself. I wasn’t worthy to be alive.