“If you only knew,” Sarah muttered.
P.J. lifted her eyebrows. “What?”
Rachel sighed. “While you were AWOL, we sort of had an incident at the school where I’m teaching again. The mom and dad of one of my students split up, and the dad went bonkers and came to the school with a gun and held my class hostage. This was just a few days after I’d found out I was having twins. You can imagine that Ethan didn’t take any of this well.”
“Did they go in and take the fucker out?” P.J. demanded. Then she bit her lip, glancing in Charlotte’s direction. “Sorry.”
The others laughed.
“Yep, they did,” Sophie said with a grin. “They pissed off a whole host of people in the process, but the real heroine was Rachel.”
Rachel blushed and shook her head. “I was terrified.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” P.J. said quietly. She felt protective of these women. Like they were hers. She’d had a hand in every mission that dealt with them, and it bugged her that while she’d been out seeking revenge, Rachel could have been killed.
“You’re here now,” Rachel said. “And that’s all that matters. KGI isn’t the same without you, P.J.”
Shea leaned back in her chair and pried a leaf from Charlotte’s hand before it made it to her mouth. Then she turned to look directly at P.J.
“Look, P.J., I know Cole called and talked to Sophie, and yeah, he told us about what happened to you, but we already knew. KGI is family, and even though you don’t hang around us that much, we all care about you a lot. You’ve been there for each of us when we needed someone the most. You’ve risked your life for all of us. You risk your life to keep the men we love safe. That makes you very special to us whether you know it or not. It also makes us very invested in what goes on with you. When we heard what happened, we wanted to go kick that fucker’s ass every bit as much as the guys did.”
P.J. bit the inside of her mouth to keep it from flapping open. She didn’t really know how to respond to Shea’s impassioned statement. She hadn’t ever considered that she meant crap to these women. It baffled her that they thought about her at all. She was just a member of a team that worked for or with their husbands. No one special. Certainly not family. Right?
And yet the mere word had sent a warm flush straight into her heart.
“And I said all of that to let you know that we aren’t here to psychoanalyze you. We aren’t going to pry into your thoughts. What we do want you to know is that we’re here for you. Anytime. Whatever you need. If it’s someone to talk to. If you just want a shoulder to cry on. If you just want to bitch and scream. We’re here. Never hesitate to call us or come over. You may not be a Kelly in name, but you belong to us and we take family very seriously.”
Sophie clapped, a broad smile on her face. “Very well said, Shea. Wow, you’re coming along just fine.” She turned a teasing smile toward P.J. “It wasn’t so long ago that we were having to convince her she was part of the family and that it was okay to lean on us.”
Sarah leaned forward, her expression serious, her eyes full of understanding. “I was raped too, P.J. I know what it feels like. I dealt with it by ignoring it. I shut everyone out. I just wanted to be left alone.”
“Yes,” P.J. said fiercely, finally latching on fully to part of the conversation.
Sarah’s admission was everything that P.J. had done herself, and as silly as it sounded, it made her feel not quite so alone that she wasn’t the only one who’d reacted to what had happened to her the way she had.
“I just didn’t—don’t—want to think about it,” she finished painfully.
Sarah nodded. “I get it. I do. But when you let it go like that for so long, you eventually reach a breaking point.”
P.J.’s heart thumped, making her feel a little light-headed. She wanted to confide in her so badly about what happened the night before. The words were burning her lips, but she was so ashamed, and it simply wasn’t in her nature to confide in others.
She’d always been a loner. It was something drilled into her from the time she was a child. That wasn’t going to change in the course of a single day, the first time other females extended their hand in friendship.
When a child couldn’t even count on her parents, how the hell was she supposed to be able to count on anyone else?
But who said there were rules she had to follow? Just because she was one way her entire life didn’t mean she couldn’t take steps to change, even if they were baby steps. She was tired of feeling so alone all the damn time. If that made her weak, then fine. She was weak.
She rubbed her face tiredly and sat there a long moment before she finally worked up the courage to say what she’d nearly blurted out just moments before.
“I freaked out last night,” she admitted. “I thought I was ready. I never really thought about it. I mean, I’m a logical person and I have no trouble separating out what those bastards did to me with the reality of having someone you care about touch you. I know Cole would never hurt me. I know that! And yet one minute I was in the most fantastic place in the world and the next I was in full-scale panic and hyperventilating all over the place. I no longer knew where I was or who I was with. I was so scared that I couldn’t even function. How stupid is that?”
“It’s not stupid,” Rachel said in a tone that told P.J. she knew exactly what she was talking about. “I still have episodes of panic and utter despair. Despair doesn’t even begin to describe the absolute desolation or the feeling that you’re lost in hell and no one will ever find you. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I’m back in that horrible hotbox, in the dark, alone, knowing I have no way out.”
“I have a pretty awful confession to make,” Sarah said with a grimace. “On our wedding night, I had a panic attack when Garrett tried to make love to me. Talk about stupid. We’d made love so many times before and I was fine. Maybe it was the stress of the wedding. I have no idea. But I freaked out when he touched me, and he spent the rest of our wedding night holding and comforting me. I’ve never felt so awful in my life. I ruined what should have been the most special night of our lives.”
P.J. felt a twinge of sympathy for the other woman. She knew exactly how that felt. It was the way she’d felt the night before when she’d all but begged Cole to make love to her.
“Ahh honey, I’m sorry,” Sophie said, reaching over to squeeze Sarah’s hand. “I’m sure Garrett was fine with it. He loves you so much.”
“Oh, he was. It was me who wasn’t fine with it. I’m so tired of allowing that bastard who raped me to control my life. I don’t want him in my life or my marriage and I damn sure don’t want him in bed with me and my husband.”
The others giggled. Then Sarah stifled her own laughter and everyone joined in, laughing at the image of another man in bed with Sarah and Garrett.
It lightened the mood and injected some much-needed levity into the conversation.
“I’ll tell you like we told Shea,” Rachel began. “It may sound stupid, and the initial reaction is denial, but sometimes you just need someone to talk it out with. I avoided therapy for the longest time because it frustrated me that I needed to go see a complete stranger so that I could deal with the things that had happened to me. But once I got over that feeling of ridiculousness, it really did help.”
“Same for me,” Sarah interjected. “And I tell you something else that really, really helped. Talking to Garrett and being honest with my feelings. He’s been so understanding, and I can’t imagine Cole would be any less so.”
P.J. felt heat rise into her cheeks. “You guys are kind of assuming that Cole and I are a slam dunk.”
Sophie snorted. “Oh please. The man was a walking corpse after you pulled your disappearing act. You have that man so tied up in knots it isn’t even funny.”
The others nodded their agreement.