Read The Virgin: Redemption for Free Online Page B

long time to be able to see that. I blamed myself. I blamed you. I blamed your family.”
    His gaze cut toward me and I laughed. “Please, Drake. It was Gallagher Enterprises that authorized the project…not just you.” Sighing, I tipped my head back and stared up at the endless expanse of sky overhead. “I blamed my mother. I blamed the cops for not finding us, not realizing those guys were out there. I blamed the security guards for not realizing what I was saying sooner. And I did blame the men who grabbed me. But it took a long time for me to stop blaming everybody else around me, everybody who’d been in my life around that time.” I plucked at a loose thread on the blanket, forcing the last of the words out. “Including my father.”
    The boards under his feet creaked and I looked up, watched as he settled across from me.
    “Your father.”
    “Yes.” Tears stung my eyes. Impatient, I dashed them away. “He was the reason we went to Florida. He talked about the money. He trusted too many people and that was the reason he ended up in a bad way to begin with, why we had to sell out anyway. Yes, I blamed him. I blamed you. I blamed everybody.”
    Clutching the blanket, I stood up and went to the railing and stared out over the water, watching as it crashed into the beach. “Most of all, I blamed myself.”
    He joined me at the railing, his eyes on the rolling surf. “Why?”
    “I lived. He didn’t. They battered him. I had bruised ribs and a bruised kidney. Oh…and skinned knees from where I fell. You couldn’t even recognize him when they were done with him.” Turning my head, I stared at him, swallowing so I could speak around the knot in my throat. “It’s been ten years. And the clearest image I have in my head of my dad is the way he looked that last day, his face bruised and his mouth busted open. Most of those came from the times when I couldn’t stop myself from screaming. I can’t see my father the way I want to. Those are the clearest memories I have of him, no matter what I do. I can’t cut those images out of my head.”
    He moved then, so fast I couldn’t even prepare for it. His hands plunged into my hair, tugging my head back until all I could see was his face. “And is that what he’d want? Would he want that to be how you remember him?”
    “It doesn’t matter . I can’t get it out of my head! I did that to him. For weeks before that happened, I didn’t want to talk to him. Not to him, to Mom. I hid in my room, or in the hotel and stared outside, feeling sorry for myself. Because they had done what they could to make sure I’d be taken care of.” I curled my lip, glaring at him. “Poor little Shan. Her parents were in the hole so bad. Then a rich guy comes and buys up their hotel. Now we’ve got lots of money and what am I’m twisted up over? You .”
    I jerked away from him, ignoring the nauseating way my head pitched and rolled.
    Stumbling away, I curled my hands over the railing, tried to steady my knees. “I hated everybody .”
    “You had a right to hate me,” he said, his voice hard as stone.
    “No.” I had to get this out. The poison inside me had festered for too long. “A right to be angry…maybe. I still don’t understand why you wasted your time with me, but that’s neither here nor there. I didn’t need to hate your family, my parents, the cops…or myself. I’ve been trapped for ten years and I’m tired of it.”
    Unable to stand there any more, I turned away.
    He didn’t follow me.
    I can’t decide if I was happy about that or not.
     
     
    Morning came. Too bright, and as far as I was concerned, too early.
    Squinting against the light shining through my window, I groaned as the pounding continued inside my head and tried to think about the fact that I had to go out there. Face Drake. Figure out how to get out of this place, figure out what to do next.
    At some point in the next few days, I had to make it down to Florida.
    Thinking was so hard,