Page 67

When Kara allowed herself to imagine what it might be like to tell Wade about her worst secret, it was always unemotional. She would lay out the facts without hesitation because it’s been years.

She’s moved on. It doesn’t hold the power over her that it once did.

Except that’s all a lie, or she would have told him already.

Secrets like this aren’t kept unless they’re too difficult to speak.

She’s only fooled herself into thinking it didn’t matter anymore.

Time may have given her the ability to compartmentalize, but once that box is unlocked, all bets are off.

Avoiding it any longer isn’t an option. Not when he’s asking her to stay out here indefinitely, but her mouth won’t move, and there’s a funny taste in the back of her throat.

Wade is patient while she fidgets, watching her like she’s about to crush him. Little does he know she’s the one in danger of crumbling.

She pulls his shirt tighter around her, seeking comfort from tokens of the man right in front of her that she’s suddenly too afraid to touch.

Last time she thought about telling him, she put it off, wanting to be fully clothed for a conversation so important.

Maybe it’s fitting that she’s half-naked before stripping away the last emotional barrier between them.

“Whatever it is, we can figure it out,” he tries, when her silence stretches on.

“There’s nothing to figure out. It’s already done. Can’t be changed.” Her skin prickles hot and that funny taste only gets worse, making her cringe.

He’ll understand.

It happened forever ago.

He has a right to know before they make any permanent plans.

“I don’t want you to assume blame for anything I’m about to say, even though it happened while I was looking for you. These were my choices. I made them. Understand?”

He only nods.

“I haven’t told anyone since it happened except for Juliet because I left the child with her, but you deserve to know if you think you want to spend forever out here with me.” His eyes go wide and she backtracks quickly, realizing how that sounds. “It wasn’t mine.”

There’s no proper lead-in for something like this. She’s scaring the hell out of him with the way those worry lines between his eyes form a crater.

“Whose kid was it?” he says softly, once she’s allowed a long pause to consume her.

The phantom scent of smoke from her gun wafts up her nostrils, sweeping her back into a memory she’s tried so hard to forget.

Just say it. Get it over with and the urge to throw up all over this fancy blanket will vanish, then you can both move on.

“I killed her parents when I was looking for you. I didn’t know at the time that they had a kid.

It was just another outpost. I did what I always do, shoot first and ask questions later.

Then…when I was searching the compound, I found her.

Sitting in her crib alone. Three, maybe four years old.

She was crying and scared, and I made her an orphan.

I know exactly how that feels, and I did it to someone else.

She may not be the only one, either. I killed so many people.

So many. I thought everyone who was with Silas was evil, and I acted accordingly.

Never thought that maybe some of them were just trying to survive.

That’s who you want to be with, Wade. They’d call me a murderer back before the turn, but now that almost everyone is, no one says it anymore.

It’s still true, though. I took that child’s family from her. ”

God, she sounds psychotic. Unaffected and monotone. It takes the reality of what she’s said a moment to catch up to her while she’s locked eyes with Wade, who simply stares like he hasn’t a clue what to say.

She bolts off the bed, grabs her pants off the floor, and tugs them on while fighting the bile in the back of her throat and the lightheaded fuzz that only appears when she’s in the middle of a panic attack.

What has she done? How can she ever look him in the eye again? He’s known that she killed for him, but the extent of it is something else entirely.

She can’t stand the silence anymore, just needs to be outside where the air won’t smother her, and she’s not reminded of how easily she threw away the best thing that’s ever happened to her with a single confession.

She never should have told him. This moment was about finding relief and acceptance for herself. It had nothing at all to do with him, and now she’s ruined everything.

“Kara, wait!” he calls out, finally kick-starting to pull on his clothes and chase after her as she aims for the door.

He grabs her arm just as her hand closes over the knob and she jerks free. “Don’t.”

She shrugs back, her defense mechanism of pushing away anyone who’s getting too close, still as functional as ever, as she ducks out into the sunlight.

Tries to suck fresh air into her lungs but they stall and stutter.

She’s just as strangled outside as she was on the bed with the man she loves, looking at her like she’s a monster.

Maybe she’s having a heart attack. Only knows that everything feels tight and not even the steady clawing at her chest, so deep blood gathers under her fingernails, won’t uncoil the tension. There’s a snake curled around her and no escape from the pressure.

“Please don’t.”

His voice stops her for how worn and shaky it is, tainted by the wet tears clear on his cheeks when she turns to face him.

His outstretched hand reaching for her as if she might jump is the only thing that makes her realize just how far she’s gotten to the edge of the overlook.

A few more steps and she’d be tumbling over without any hope of salvation.

Hadn’t meant to go in this direction, but turns out all her paths lead here no matter what.

“Please don’t,” he says, again. “If you go, I go.”

He’s convinced she’s about to launch herself right over on purpose. Keeps taking these tiny steps in her direction as if approaching a jumper on a high rise.

“Wade, I can’t breathe,” she gasps. “I can’t. Help me…help.”

Her thoughts have narrowed past the heart-wrenching admission of what she’s done, into a slim tunnel that’s closing in on her by the second.

All that matters now is her next breath and when she reaches for him, because he’s always been the only one who can save her, miraculously, he’s there to catch her as she crumbles.

Pulls her in tight and squeezes hard enough to hold all her tattered pieces together.

Instead of feeling even more suffocated, his arms are a relief, and his hold a refuge.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. This doesn’t change anything between us, I promise,” he whispers into her temple, telling her everything she wants to hear like a lifeline tossed into choppy waters.

“How many other families did I destroy and I never knew? I thought they were all the enemy. Maybe they saw me as the monster. You know what’s worse?”

“What?”

“I would do it all again because it worked. I got you back. What does that say about me that I feel the weight of this guilt crushing me, but I still wouldn’t change what I’ve done?” A sob breaks free as he squeezes her tighter.

“You said you brought the child to Juliet?”

She nods against his chest, wiping her tears against the fabric of his shirt.

“I’d check on her every few months. Make sure she had what she needed.

One of the families there adopted her…and now she has our dog.

Nothing I could do would ever make up for what I’ve taken from her.

I know how it feels to be an orphan, and now I’ve sentenced someone else to that fate.

I started keeping a mental tally after that.

Logging every kill I made. I almost ran out of space in my own head. ”

It’s always so difficult for her to accept comfort, but this time she’s practically clawing under his skin to get closer. If she lets go, he might disappear. She can’t do this alone.

“You weren’t inside those places like I was. You didn’t see firsthand how they lived. How they treated each other,” he replies calmly. “If you weren’t a prisoner, you were one of them. Always. Do you remember the girl I told you about who cleaned my cell?”

Kara nods.

“They let her in there with me alone like it was no big thing. Didn’t care that I could have hurt her.

I showed her that little mouse one night that used to sit in my hand.

I asked her what happened to her parents, and she said they traded her to Silas for food and protection.

She was just a kid. I always hope that she got out somehow.

That kinda life is what was waiting for the child you found.

That life or worse. Hell, she probably didn’t belong to a single one of them to begin with.

If she did, then you need to remember that even terrible people have children.

She is so much better off anywhere else but there.

The kind of guilt you’re holding onto doesn’t fit in this world anymore.

If you’re looking for someone to call you a monster for what you’ve done, then you’ll have to keep looking because that’s not gonna be me. ”

Her breath hitches. In the back of her mind, of course she knew it was possible that girl she found was never related to any of Silas’s people.

In her heart, she assigned the same grief and trauma to that baby that Kara carried her whole life. “Do you want to know the numbers? I’ll tell you. If you need to know how many I’ve—”

“Shhh, I don’t need to know. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t.”

She often wondered how he could ever look at her again once he truly understood the extent of what she did to save him. How could he? The reality is that she holds far more blame in her heart than he could ever put on her.

“You have always done the hard things when others couldn’t,” he whispers into the crown of her head, rubbing a hand along her upper arm. “I would still be a hostage if it weren’t for you. You didn’t hurt that child, you saved her like you saved me. I love you.”

It’s a soft promise as he holds her snug, then the world is spinning and she’s being scooped off the ground and carried back into the safety of the trailer to be deposited onto the bed, where he doesn’t hesitate to curl around her, tucking her in safe against him.

She’s admitted her worst crime and his reply is that he loves her.

“I wasn’t going to jump,” she says, her voice raw. “I want to stay out here with you forever.”

“That’s what I want, too. What I’ve always wanted. We’ll plant a fruit tree, me and you, right here on this land. We’ll watch the sunset every night and play fetch with the dog. Huddle under the blankets in the winter and go skinny dipping in the summer…”

She drifts off to the sound of his voice describing all the wonderful things they’ll do together with the steady beat of his heart under her ear and the dog tucked behind the bend of her knees.

There are no ghosts when she sleeps. Only visions of a future within reach.

* * *

Four Months Later

Kara is up early this morning to see the sunrise. Red desert lies before her, muted and silent until the first rays pop over the mountains beyond the cliff’s edge, bathing the ground in a surreal glow.

There’s no ring on her finger, but she doesn’t need one of those, just like she never needed that white dress stuffed into the closet. She and Wade already have rings around each other’s hearts without any extra trinkets required.

The dog plays with a stick nearby. The same dog that she said they shouldn’t keep.

Cherry is staying. That much was clear from the moment they found her.

Kara hadn’t wanted to admit it then, too afraid to get attached, but she’s taking her chances these days.

Letting herself feel what she feels and if that means she loves this damn dog who always makes them laugh, then so be it.

It’s not the dog who brightens her smile this morning, though, it’s the warm arms that snake around her waist from behind as she stands at the window.

“Breakfast is ready,” Wade says, like her best dream come to life.

“Stay here with me a little longer first? Just until it’s too bright.” She nestles further back at his nod of approval at enjoying one of the simple things in life.

Their days are easy out here. Everything else has been stripped away, leaving only them.

No enemies to fight. No communities to trade with.

Nothing more important to do than hunt their dinner, harvest their crops, and keep working on the bar down the mountain trail they cleared a few weeks back.

It might make a good place to hunker down when the hard winter hits.

They’d have a fire there in a large hearth, but with that comes the dangers of attracting others, and so far, they’ve put off using it.

She never wants to see anyone else again.

Odds are they’ll find people or people will find them, but she can only hope it’s temporary.

She still has a hard time believing this is her life now.

They’ve left their traumas back east in favor of looking ahead.

That means the others will assume them dead eventually, though she isn’t bothered by that.

She’s always been more than willing to leave the past behind for a chance at a better future.

They are happy here in a little silver trailer at the end of a cliff, making a new life out of the ashes.

They even found lemon and apple seeds in a farm store a few miles up the road.

Cultivated them inside just like the package said, and by spring, they’ll have a row of sprouting greens just down the trail in all that flat land they talked about farming.

They’re growing one sapling at a time. One day, when they’re tall enough to bear fruit, she’ll tick another item off her bucket list and pick apples in her very own orchard.

Thankfully, they’ve already doubled that list. It grows and fans out just like the roots in those trees, and the strength of the only relationship she’s ever felt like herself in.

Kara has spent the majority of her life in love with Wade. She’s searched for him, missed him, lusted after him, and cried for him. Devoted years to bringing them back together. Threatened to burn what’s left of the world if it didn’t give him back to her.

Now, the missing piece of her heart is back where it belongs.

The weight of finally having what she thought she’d lost forever settles into her chest like peace.

Every what-if, every tear, every scar she carried to get here is all part of the path that led her home.

For the first time in a long time, the future doesn’t feel so far away.

It feels like something they’ll build together, one quiet, beautiful day at a time.