Page 77

"You get that saying wrong a lot. You do realize this, right?"

"Which is it, Pops? Vibrators or last four months. Your choice."

Neither is ideal. As I think over my choices, we walk toward the back of the property. The scenery is breathtaking, and even though the flip-flops aren't designed for hiking, the fairly flat ground is easy to maneuver along.

"Where are we?" I ask as I stare up at a tall tree that already has the beginnings of red and orange leaves sprouting.

"Virginia, but that's all I can tell you."

"Please don't say you'd have to kill me if you told me."

He gives me one of his boyish charm smiles and looks over my head. "No, I was going to say—okay, yeah, I was going to say that."

Before he can comment with more terrible jokes, I dive into the story, telling him everything about our last day, when I believed he’d died. Well, almost everything. I conveniently leave out the part about me outing myself as a CIA operative—pretty sure he'll be pissed about that one. I go through every detail of what happened in the truck and why I ran. All that takes a majority of our hand-in-hand walk around the property.

We’re headed back toward the house when I get to the part of where I've been the last four months. Of the two women who found me and took me in, moved me from village to village any time the general’s second came looking for the American woman who killed the general.

"I never knew," I say as I examine the clear blue sky, "if they saved me and kept me hidden because they thought it was true, or if they'd somehow learned I was the one who saved the girls early on. Either way, they saved me, kept me alive and healthy. The burka during that time became my only line of defense against being identified. All day and night, I kept it on so not a single string of blonde hair or sliver of blue eyes would show. If it had... I owe them everything."

Maybe it’s the fresh air, or the new life that’s bloomed with every voiced fear and memory, but a sense of being free takes hold. We continue to walk, him not saying a word about my revelations, just cracking each knuckle one at a time.

"It explains a lot," he finally says to the ground. "Especially explains why you freaked out about the covering being taken off while you were still over there, at the Army base. And how exactly did you end up there?"

"Every night I'd be moved from one village to another to keep the general’s second off my trail. I didn't know they were moving me closer to the base until the morning they drove me to the gates and dropped me off. They planned it out, all of them."

"We'll pay them back one day, somehow," he mutters, and I bite back a smile. "You haven't said, but I have to ask. Did any of them ever... hurt you like they did the other girls?"

I shake my head and bend down to pick a bright orange wildflower growing along the path. "Besides a backhand or two and a couple knocks to the head, they didn't touch me. I was lucky."

"Lucky," he says with an incredulous laugh. "I don't think you understand the meaning of the word."

"In comparison, yeah, I think I can use it."

The afternoon sun warms my cheeks and arms as we continue to walk through the open field behind the house. Every now and then, he bends down to grab something and chuck it across the grass, and by the time we're at the porch stairs, we haven't spoken a word in a long while.

I nearly stumble off the porch in surprise when he asks, "Are you scared of me?"

Tucking my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, I shake my head and turn, but he catches my elbow.

"Then why... yesterday, you wouldn't let me near you, but you did...." His hand leaves my elbow to grip the back of his neck. "You were fine hugging him and letting him hold you. Why not me? Did I do something or say something that made you feel, I don't know, uncomfortable over there?"

"What?" How in the hell could he believe that? "You have it all wrong, Nash. Just leave it alone, okay? I'm fine. We're fine. I'm not scared of you, per se."

"Thanks for the solid reassurance there, Fate."

Ignoring my dropped jaw at his annoyed comment, he steps past me into the house.