The cinnamon bun was the farthest thing from his mind right now. He could have been famished a few moments earlier and even so would not have been able to think on it, save for a tightening of his mouth at Gracie’s mention of it. His agitation was, of course, not directed at his wife, but she was, regrettably, the unfortunate witness to it. Had Mark been feeling less urgent he would have approached it better, but this was a situation involving Gracie and Rudy and that changed everything. He might have been maintaining a cool head on the surface, save for his obvious concern, but underneath it all he felt something bubbling.
There were precious few things in this world that Mark loved; he couldn’t handle the thought of one of them destroying the other.
But…he was getting ahead of himself. Gracie was here, after all. His brother hadn’t killed her (even thinking that made his stomach turn). She was not unshaken, but she was here. He had to focus on that, and when she finally touched him he released a shaky breath that somehow managed to embody his relief and his fear all at the same time.
“Gracie…”
The mention of her father sent yet another jolt through him, though along with it came a resolved sort of discomfort as well: Johanssen had not been a good man, and he had certainly not been a good father, but…for a time, he’d been the one to provide Mark with the thing that he’d been missing all his life. In turn, he’d idolized him. For a time. He had been an accessory to many of the pastor’s sins, hadn’t he? Mark knew that he deserved to feel uneasy right now, but he forced himself to remember that those terrible things that had been done to Gracie had also been the things to turn him from his father figure’s side. It hadn’t been about redemption for him to do so, though. It had been about her. His sins were his own, but his salvation had always been her.
Then again, Mark Rollins had never been under the illusion of being a good man to begin with, so perhaps the reminder of Johanssen was a welcomed thing. There are worse demons out there. Well. There were. Helena had taken care of that.
He couldn’t find comfort in any of that, though. Not when his wife was recounting her ordeal with his brother, and certainly not when she finally relented to show him the evidence of Rudy’s attack. His gaze dropped from her face, down to the wound on her neck and that cold, rolling feeling in his stomach gave way to a sinking sensation as he realized all at once just how easily his brother could have killed her. Where had he been when this was happening?
He could picture it now with chilling clarity: Rudy, with a hand clamped mercilessly around her throat. Gracie, struggling for breath but never begging. He knew that she wouldn’t have begged. He knew that his wife was brave, and far stronger than anyone would have assumed from first glance. What she had survived, and what she still endured, had made her unbreakable.
That didn’t change a thing about how he felt about all of this, though. Not a thing. Mark raised a hand, trembling with suppressed emotion, in order to trace a finger gingerly across the wound on her neck. His expression crumpled with the contact, and for a moment his grief at her suffering was all that he could feel. Even his anger has given way to this feeling; Mark stroked the side of her neck tenderly with his thumb, trying to keep from imagining how horrifying this had to have been for her.
“No…Gracie, no,” he replied miserably, shaking his head firmly as he brought both his hands upward to cup her cheeks. Mark lifted his gaze back to Gracie’s, his concern for her finally flooding over the bubbling rage that he’d been struggling with. His anger would return later, undoubtedly, but for now all he could care about was how she was faring. “No, this wasn’t your fault.”
Why had Rudy done this to her? To hurt him? ‘Well, mission accomplished, brother’, he thought bitterly as he brushed his forehead against his wife’s. It didn’t matter how much Gracie insisted that the blame was hers…Rudy was the one that had drawn blood. Again, the thought sent his stomach churning, and he knew that he would need to respond to this before long.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. This will never happen again, I promise you.”
Gracie’s mouth was salivating, filling quickly, in the way that she felt before vomiting. It was something she hadn’t done in a long time; it was rare to find something to churn her stomach. But disappointing her husband, or the implication of such, made her physically ill. Gracie swallowed hard, trying to tame that bile that threatened to rise, but she just felt sicker.
Her name on his lips caused a whole new churn of her stomach, like he was somewhere between a prayer, and chastisement, and she couldn’t tell which was which. It frightened her. Rarely had Gracie trusted men (women for that matter, but men were a particular brand of evil), so this trust in Mark was a new and frightening venture. She wondered how she could escape this distrust of others, but given that she only made things worse with Mark’s brother, she didn’t know that it was entirely possible. Maybe she was just fettered this way, created and sewn with the inability to interact with men, inherent with the ability to be a terrible wife. Sometimes, Gracie wondered if there was truly a God, and if there was in fact, could He forgive? Could He restore her heart?
She could be as stoic as Mark, but she broke slightly in the way she’d wanted when Rudy’s fingers clamped around her throat. She whimpered, and it led way to a small sob of a noise, and she wound her arms tightly around her husband’s neck, clinging to him. Her right cheek against his, she was reminded that Mark was so different than Rudy, no marred skin, no fierce warrior smile. Just the man who defended her against all others, who reminded her that she wasn’t alone.
She could still feel Mark’s fingers against her neck, as though it burned. She couldn’t stand the look in his eyes, she couldn’t stand the idea that she’d brought this out in him, be it through knowledge or if she’d done it to someone he loved herself. She hated this. She hated herself. She’d been so self-satisfying, so smug. It hadn’t been her job to point out Rudy’s sin, and yet…
The wound on her neck was the worst of it. Gracie didn’t think it necessary to show the bruises on her knees and palms from where she’d been tossed to the ground. Truthfully, she’d been surprised she grew the bruises in the first place. She’d thought that she was long past being able to bruise, given the conditions and punishments branded by her father. It had grown to be expected, until Helena came into the picture.
Helena, who she hated at first for threatening the very nature of their routines. Helena, who made Gracie question everything. She’d wanted to hurt the girl, kill her, remove the anomaly who changed everything she knew, but it had been a wicked decision to try. Gracie had been no better than Rudy.
It had been Mark who turned it around. Gave her the strength to question those terrible practices, who was there willing and poised to hold her hand and love her, and run with her without question out of the back door. The man to let her out of the cage, quite literally, and read her emotions before even she did. She knew now why he was able to easily question science versus morality, but in the end, it came down to his strength and his love, and for that, she loved him tremendously.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she muttered, her voice muffled by his skin. He smelled like deep musk, like hard work, like comfort, something she needed over the saccharine smell of cinnamon and baked sugar, and she held him tighter, feeling tears burn her cheeks, stopped only by his shoulder. “And it isn’t your job to protect me. I knew what he was like. He wouldn’t kill me, Mark. He loves you too much. He could have done it, and he didn’t.” She didn’t know if what Rudy had done was entirely forgivable, but she felt the responsibility to repair what she was inevitably severing.
