Let It Be Me Read online

  OTHER WORKS BY TONI ALEO

  The Assassins Series

  Loveswept titles:

  Taking Shots

  Trying to Score

  Empty Net

  Falling for the Backup

  And coming soon on December 9th, 2013

  Blue Lines

  This is for my mom, Patricia Ortiz.

  I love you & miss you so much.

  See that woman there?

  The one with beautiful long wavy blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, her arms up protecting her eyes and face?

  That’s me. Violet Moore.

  I’ve always loved my big blue eyes, hence the reason I’m balled up trying to protect them, along with the nose I received from my mother and the defiant chin I got from my father. Before, Rob used to say my eyes could light up a room. Now he says they annoy him. Everything I do annoys him. I think even when I breathe, he’s annoyed, which is why he hits me.

  Like now, his booted foot connects with my gut with a force strong enough to obliterate any breath I thought I had. A strangled cry pitches from deep within my diaphragm, scorching my throat and he ignores it. He always ignores me. In some ways, I think it makes it worse. His kicks get harder, more frantic and violent when I scream or cry, but I can’t help it. His broad, 5’11 frame towers over my own willowy 5’6 build. He is stronger, much stronger, and Lord knows I’m scared of him. Like now, he lets loose a string of obscenities about how I’m the world’s biggest piece of shit when, not two years ago, I was his world. Before, I used to be the most amazing woman and he was the luckiest man on earth to have me. He promised me the world, and all I’ve received in the last two years is pain and heartache.

  Why the hell do I stay? Why do I take this and why do I allow this to happen?

  I’ve asked myself those same questions for the last seven hundred and thirty days, but for some reason I still stay. Even through the horrible honeymoon where I learned that the way I eat has driven him half past mad a dozen times. I spent most of our trip with sunglasses covering my bruised eyes, trying to hide from the stares of bystanders. Or when he took me away from my family in Colorado to Tennessee, so they would stop asking questions about my injuries. Or when he kicked me so hard, I lost my child.

  Is it love? Hell, I sure don’t think so because his voice makes my skin crawl. Even with his dark hair and even darker eyes, his olive skin, and the thick scruff that used to turn me on, I can’t stand the sight of him. I hate him. Am I scared to leave? Yes. Do I feel like I’ll never find someone to love me? Definitely. I’m scared shitless and it doesn’t help that Rob tells me daily that no one will ever love me. Have I lost all faith? Am I at the bottom of all bottoms? Fuck yes.I know it’s horrible, and I know I shouldn’t believe him, that I should love myself before anything. There used to be a day when I did, but Rob sucked it out of me.

  With my hands cupped over my face, I tense and wait for the blow, the one that tells me it’s going to be a long night and he’s had too much to drink. I don’t want to lie down and give him an even bigger advantage than he already has, but as his booted foot cracks into my sternum, I know it’s all over. My ragdoll body flies back a few feet and my hip slams into the cold linoleum of our kitchen floor. I used to love the swirling pattern of tiny, cerulean flowers, but now I avoid this room for fear of gagging.

  I let my body sag down until my temple hits the floor, the stars in my eyes and heave in my chest threatening bile or worst: blood. His foot connects again and a strangled cry pitches forth, straight from my diaphragm, ripping apart my throat. I can’t help but scream, even though I know it’ll only get worse.

  It always does.

  His kicks become harder and more frantic and I long for the warm detachment of unconsciousness, willing it to take me away.

  It’s amazing that Rob, the tall, dark and handsome stranger I fell in love with years ago, the one who carried me down the beach so I could snap my own “Footprints” photo, who stayed up with me late at night to tell stories and draw endless circles in the soft flesh of my back with his fingertips, could change so completely that he’s nothing more than a distorted image, a blurry memory of what could have been.

  I should have run the first time I heard “I’m sorry” while covering my black-and-blue eyes with dark sunglasses. I should have known better when he packed up our home and took me away from my family in Colorado to move to Tennessee, a place I’d never been, after my mom questioned the fingerprints on my forearms. But I didn’t. I went with him and now look where I am.

  He lets loose a string of obscenities about how I’m worthless as his foot cracks into my sternum again, and any breath I thought I had whooshes away and leaves me empty inside. I wrap my shaking fingers around my long blond hair, holding it close to me so that he has nothing to grab on to.

  Letting out a maniacal laugh that makes my blood curdle and congeal instantly in my veins, he takes a few steps back to look at the mess he’s made. The small pool of blood from my nose, my supine, willowy form with slim arms that cradle the stomach in which a baby had been growing before he kicked that away mere months ago. His eyes are distant, cold, and I know he’s not looking at me anymore.

  I’m aware that I could be classified as a weak person, but don’t give up on me yet, because, look, do you see that? Do you see the way I’m getting up? Look, I’m grabbing his grandmother’s ugly vase and look at my face. See the way my chin is going up, the way my tears have stopped? How my shoulders are squaring up? See how my grip on the vase has tightened? And look, do you see the shocked look on his face?

  Because I do.

  For once I feel the strength that has been hiding inside me for the last two years, the kind that converges under my skin until it manifests itself into something I can use. I’m going to beat the shit out of Rob for once.

  I’m going to fight back. I have to or he may very well kill me.

  Why am I doing this now you may ask?

  Why hadn’t I done this way before I married him, lost a child, and became so weak that I hate myself?

  Well. Get a blanket and maybe a glass of wine, you’re going to need it, because my story isn’t a happy one, well no, I take that back. It can be happy, I can be happy; I just have to get there. I have to fight for it. So sit back and let me explain how the fight was woken inside me.

  It all starts with Tucker McCloud

  I used to be freakishly in love with Rob Moore.

  I thought of him the first moment I woke, and he was the last thing I thought of before I went to sleep. His smile made my world shine and his eyes could bring me to my knees, so dark that they reminded me of night. I loved him and I thought he loved me.

  Things started between us three years ago, when I was in my graduating year of college to be a registered nurse. He was a nurse at the hospital at which I was interning. He stunned me with his angular face and square jaw, the muscles that rippled under this scrubs, the way his dark hair fell across his forehead effortlessly. I remember how shy and fidgety I used to be when he was around. How his velvety-smooth voice sent cascades of gooseflesh across my skin like the angels were singing and I had to listen. I was completely and utterly mesmerized by him.

  It didn’t take long for the attraction between us to blossom. He worked long hours and I only interned four times a week, so the time I had with him I treasured. He had a sly way of captivating me with stories of the hospital. He was funny, and Lord could he make me squirm in my scrubs. I wanted him. Desperately. At all hours of the day, it was mind blowing. Never before had I just wanted a man, but boy, did I want Rob Moore.

  When I was a teenager I thought that reality TV shows depicting inter-office relationships between nurses in hospitals – the kind that happened behind the closed doors of supply closets