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All I’d been able to determine was that at least one of us had to legally appear at the house to take possession of what Momma had left us—especially in the event that Father wasn’t actually dead.

Virginia was a common property state, which meant that most of what Momma had went to Father, not that she’d ever been allowed to have much.

None of us had. But she was able to legally dispose of the few things she’d had before they married—some of her grandmother’s jewelry that she’d always promised Noah could have, some hand-embroidered linens, a few other odds and ends.

I had to go back both because of whatever Humbolt needed me to do and—more importantly—because I had to get Noah the fuck out of jail.

At least they were holding him in Staunton. There was literally nothing that could have been worse than Noah being held in custody by the so-called Justice of the Peace named by the Community.

Nothing.

Elliot woke up as I pulled into the TA Travel Center just across the Illinois border.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Baby, you should have woken me up hours ago.”

“It’s only been three,” I told him, pulling up at the gas pump.

“Still,” he replied. He stretched, and, despite everything, I couldn’t help but appreciate the flex of his muscles and the leanness of the stomach he bared as he raised his arms overhead, the lines of his elaborate tattoo vivid in the sunlight coming in the passenger window. “Let me take over?”

“Okay.” I was tired—I hadn’t really slept the night before—and that wasn’t helping the ache in my back or my knee.

I slid out of the driver’s seat, wincing as I half-hobbled over to the pump.

My left knee wasn’t the one I used to drive, but having it crammed in the car and unable to stretch meant that it had locked up.

The fact that I was tense as hell wasn’t helping, because I couldn’t get the muscles to relax.

A hand on my arm made me jump. “Go sit down, Seth. I can do this.”

I blew out a breath. “I need more coffee.”

He pressed his lips together. “You need water and sleep,” he replied gently.

“I have a water bottle,” I replied. “I don’t have more coffee.

” I turned and limped toward the plaza building, using the distance to work out at least a few of the kinks in my hip and knee.

And to put some distance between me and Elliot before I said something I’d really regret.

Elliot was trying to be supportive and helpful, and I was being an irritable jerk.

I returned with two iced coffees as a peace offering to find Elliot had finished filling the tank and moved the Cruiser close to the door. I clambered into the passenger side, passing over the iced mocha.

“Thanks.” Elliot took a long pull. “You doing okay?”

“No.” Not on any front—mental, emotional, or physical, although hopefully I could at least ease some of the tension in my lumbar by dropping the seat-back down. I did so.

It didn’t noticeably help.

Elliot backed out of the parking space and headed down the ramp back to the highway.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, once we’d safely merged back into traffic.

“No.” I was in a foul mood, surly and sharp, and I knew it.

But I didn’t want to talk about the fact that my mother was dead, my father was missing, my twin was in a jail cell, and I was being essentially forced to return to the one place on earth that I didn’t fucking ever want to go again.

I didn’t want to have the feelings I was feeling, and I didn’t want to talk about them because talking about them would make them more real.

I’d have to take them out and look at them, instead of trying to stuff them back down into whatever little lockbox I had buried at the bottom of my gut.

Elliot’s hand gently squeezed my thigh above my knee, and I turned my head to look out the passenger window so he wouldn’t see how hard his simple gesture had hit me.

I still wasn’t used to someone putting me first, even though it had been over half a year since Elliot had first kissed me.

Since he’d told me he loved me. Since he’d tattooed my paw-prints on his skin.

I blinked rapidly to clear the tears, even though I was pretty sure he knew they were there. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

The hand on my quad squeezed gently again. “You don’t have to be sorry,” he told me. “Nobody can tell you how something like this will hit you.”

I knew he spoke from experience.

But it wasn’t my experience. He’d loved his father. And everything I’d heard about Gregory Crane told me that he’d loved his son right back, gay, shifter, and all. He’d loved Hart like a second son.

Mine hadn’t loved the sons he had.

“They were horrible fucking people,” I spat out, a little surprised at my own anger.

“They were still your parents,” Elliot responded softly.

“And part of me wishes I’d been the one to kill them,” I hissed.

I didn’t know you could feel blood draining out of your own face if it went fast enough.

I’d said it, but it had come out so fast that I hadn’t even had time to register the thought before it had been put into words and cast out into the air.

Instinctively, I put a hand over my own mouth, horrified.

There are some things you don’t say, ever. And then there are some things that you should never, ever, ever fucking say. Especially in front of certain people.

I wish I’d killed my parents is one of them when the man you’re talking to lost his own much-loved father to murder a year and a half before.

Especially if that man is someone you love.

And I’d just said it.

I’m a monster.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the people I’d been born from, I suppose.

“El—” My voice broke.

The hand on my leg rubbed softly. “Baby, it’s okay.”

“It’s not?—”

“Seth.”

I swallowed, falling silent.

“My parents loved me, and yours— Well, I don’t know how they felt, but they sure as shit didn’t act like it, from what you’ve told me.”

What little I’d told him.

I hadn’t gotten into the worst of it.

He kept talking. “I know you, and, baby, you’re one of the kindest, gentlest men I’ve ever met. Whatever they did to you to make you hate them that much… I’m not going to shed any fucking tears for them, you got me?”

The tears I shed weren’t for them, either.

The hand tightened on my thigh. “I love you. I will always love you. Homicidal rage or not.”

I put my hand over his, and he shifted to grip my fingers. “I love you,” I whispered back, emotion thick on the back of my tongue.

“Good,” he said. He picked up my hand and brought my fingers to his lips.

And then I told him the parts I hadn’t managed to tell him the night before.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop talking. So I told him everything.

About the time Noah and I tried to drown ourselves at the conversion camp where we’d been shipped off to break us of our ungodly feelings.

About the time my father had locked me in the cellar for four days with nothing but water and unleavened bread, because that was all the Israelites had to eat in the desert, and I should be able to manage four days if they had lived like that for forty.

About the time, when I was fourteen and a raging ball of hormones, when he’d brought in another member of the Community to ‘show’ me what it was I thought I wanted when I’d told him I liked boys instead of girls.

Elliot pulled onto the shoulder, pressing both palms into the steering wheel.

We were somewhere in rural Indiana, with wide highways glimmering in the late July sun.

“Seth… Jesus fucking Christ .”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t?—”

“ No !”

I flinched, my heart pounding with adrenaline and terror.

“No,” he said again, more gently this time. “There is fucking nothing for you to be sorry about.” He turned to look at me, and I saw there were tear-tracks on his cheeks.

It hit me like a punch to the chest, and I opened my mouth to apologize again.

“Nothing, you hear me? Jesus fuck .” He shook his head. “How are you as fucking normal and well-adjusted as you are? After having lived through that ?”

I didn’t know what to say.

He turned in his seat, taking both my hands again. “I need you to listen to me, okay, baby?”

I nodded, my heart still hammering in my throat.

“You are the bravest and strongest man I know.”

I felt my forehead pull into a frown.

He reached out and held my face between his palms. “Seth. Tell me what you would say to Noah if he thought any of that shit was his fault.”

That was like a slap to the face. The kind you need when you’ve become hysterical.

I felt heat flush up my neck.

“Tell me,” Elliot said firmly.

“Of course it isn’t,” I whispered.

“And why are you different?” he asked me, his voice so very gentle.

“I’m bigger.” I half-swallowed it.

“You were how old when you left?”

“Fifteen.”

“A child .”

I swallowed.

“You were both children. Why are you any more at fault than he was?”

“I was supposed to protect him,” I whispered.

“Because you were bigger?”

I nodded.

“So by that logic, your parents, who were bigger than you for most of your childhood, should have protected you?”

I was silent.

“And they didn’t?”

I shook my head.

“And would you hold any other fifteen-year-old responsible for their own and their brother’s safety under those circumstances?”

Of course I wouldn’t. But that didn’t mean I didn’t still blame myself. After a pause, I shook my head again.

“So then why do you hold yourself to standards you wouldn’t ask of anyone else?” he asked me.

I couldn’t look at him. I knew he was right, but… I still felt responsible for what had happened, both to me and to Noah. Because…

I didn’t know why.

I shrugged in response to Elliot’s question.

He pulled my face forward, pressing our foreheads together. “You see what I’m getting at?”

“Yeah,” I whispered softly.

He kissed my forehead. “Good. Can I make a request?”

I nodded.