Chase wanted to say a thousand different things to Chloe about how stupid her ex had been. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault for believing he was a better, kinder man than he actually was. He wanted to rage at the unfairness that her ex had turned on her.

But he didn’t want to do or say anything that would make her stop talking to him. So he forced himself to swallow it all and simply ask. “When did you decide to leave?”

“One day I was sitting at the country club with a bunch of his friends’ wives that I really didn’t have anything in common with, and I realized I’d been entirely swallowed up by him. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wasn’t interested in listening.” She swallowed hard. “That was the first time he scared me.”

Chase worked to keep his muscles from tensing with rage beneath her. “What did he do?”

“Nothing physical. But he’d started drinking more and more and it was like he wasn’t listening to anything I’d said. When I woke up the next morning, all of my quilting stuff was gone. My fabric. My machines. Everything.”

This time Chase couldn’t stop himself from saying, “What an ass**le.”

Her mouth was tight as she said, “A few weeks later, after I finally accepted what the rest of my empty life was going to look like with a man who didn’t actually love me, I filed for divorce and I moved to Lake County.”

“Somehow you must have known it wasn’t safe for you to stay in the city.”

She shook her head, saying, “No,” then paused, frowning. “Maybe. Maybe that’s why I felt like I had to leave.” Her frown deepened. “I love San Francisco,” she told him, “but I felt like I needed to start fresh. I didn’t want his money, I just wanted my freedom back. Freedom to work on my quilts. Freedom to choose my own friends. Even the freedom to wear ratty jeans or shoes that don’t have a designer name on them. My apartment never really felt like home, though, even though I wanted it to. Even though I needed it to.” She blew out a breath. “But that was okay. I told myself I could eventually make it home, because I thought filing for divorce, leaving him, and moving away had worked. I didn’t hear from him for months, so I thought he’d accepted the divorce.” She moved her hand up to her cheek and touched the fading bruise. “Evidently, he hadn’t.”

“What happened the night I found you?” Chase could hardly get the words out between clenched teeth.

Her eyes darkened. “I was getting ready to paint my living room when I heard someone at the door.” He could feel the shock of that memory radiating from her tight muscles. “Dean was standing there and I was so surprised to see him I let him in without thinking, without even once second guessing that I wasn’t safe with him. But then I realized he was drunk. I don’t know how I could have forgotten how much he was drinking toward the end, but I had. I don’t know, maybe I made myself forget things I didn’t like remembering.”

“That’s natural, sweetheart.”

But it was like she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t do anything but relive what had happened with her ex-husband.

“He said, ‘You’re not getting away from me. You’re mine.’ I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to come to my new town, to stand in the middle of my apartment and tell me that. I didn’t think not to be angry, not to say that I wasn’t his. I told him to go away, that we’d talk later when he wasn’t drunk.”

Chase knew what came next. “Nothing worse for a drunk than hearing that he’s a drunk.”

She nodded. “He told me to shut up and said that he’d made the mistake of letting me get away with too much when we were married and that this time he wouldn’t.”

Chase echoed the words, “This time?”

She closed her eyes. “His exact words were, ‘You’re coming home with me right now. And this time you’ll do what I tell you to do.’”

Chase barely bit back a string of curses as she continued, saying, “He’d never been like that before, never just outright scared me. But I didn’t want to back down, didn’t want him to think he could control me anymore. So I told him I was already home. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere with him and that I wanted him to leave. Now.” Her words hollowed out even more than they already were. “He lost it and grabbed my hair and when I pulled away, he punched me.”

She lifted her hand to her cheek, but he was already there with his, cradling her soft skin, wishing like hell that she’d never had to be hurt. Knowing he never wanted her to be hurt again.

“I was stunned for a minute. I honestly couldn’t believe what he’d just done. I kept waiting for him to start apologizing, to admit that he was completely out of control. But the look on his face, it wasn’t sorry. It was like he was finally victorious, looking at me there with his mark on my face. I was so freaked out that he was going to do it again or something worse, that I didn’t think, I just grabbed the nearest paint can and swung it at him. And then while he was down, I grabbed my bag and ran.”

She was shaking from recounting the story to him and he hated that he’d asked her to go there, that he’d made her relive it all.

“Chloe, sweetheart, you’re all right now.”

She closed her eyes tight. “Do you know what I was doing the whole time I was driving away in the rain? I kept wondering, why was I so stupid? That’s probably why I crashed into the ditch. Because I couldn’t pay attention to anything but that voice in my head that said I should have seen it coming.”

“Looking for the good in people is never stupid.”

She opened her eyes. “But being blind and naïve is.” She gave him a small smile that never reached her eyes, before moving her hand from her face to his. “I know you must have guessed some of this as soon as you saw the bruise on my cheek. But thank you for not pressuring me to call the police. I will. I know I have to. For once in my life, I’ve got to fight for myself. For my own life. And know deep inside myself that I can win that fight.”

From the moment Chase had met Chloe, every last one of his protective urges had come to the fore. Again and again, he’d wanted to jump in and take care of everything for her.

Never more than right this second. He wanted to get in his car and track down the bastard and make sure he never came near her again, make absolutely sure he never had another chance to lay a hand on her.