Page 116 of Torn In Two

I stared at her. “Are you crazy? You haven’t failed her at all.” Anger rose in me. Not at her, exactly, but at the way she thought. At the way she’d been so gaslit into believing that everything that had happened to her and Hayley Jade was her fault. “I was there the day she was born. I watched you bring that girl into this world when you were at your lowest of lows. When anyone else would have given up, you never did.”

“That was because of you.”

I shook my head. “Stop giving other people credit for what you did. Caleb taking her wasn’t your fault. Josiah ripping her from your arms wasn’t your fault. Can’t you see that all along, you were the victim?”

“Hawk is going to have to call a lockdown.”

“He’s not. We talked him out of it.”

She sighed. “For now, maybe. But for how long? Everyone is in danger while I’m here. If I go back, that all stops.” She stared out the window at the night sky. “My life is just one series of prisons after another. I don’t want all of yours to be like that too.”

Terror rolled its way down my spine. I didn’t like the way she was talking. I understood it, but all I could picture was her slipping away in the night, finding her way back to the commune, giving herself up because she was selfless enough to do that so the rest of us weren’t targets.

“Please don’t,” I begged her quietly. “We both know that if you really want to go, you’ll find a way. I won’t be your jailer. If it comes down to it, Hawk won’t be either. You have to be the one to decide you want to stay. That you want us enough to fight.”

She didn’t say anything.

Just stared down at her hands.

A wave of crushing despair washed over me. Her selflessness was going to be the thing that got her killed.

I couldn’t bear the thought of Josiah’s hands on her body. Of the things he’d do to punish her.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she whispered. “You aren’t a mother, so maybe you can’t understand that this is not a choice. It’s all I am. All I have to give her.”

I heard the words. Understood where she was coming from. But I was mad. I was mad because she was giving up. Because she wasn’t as one-thousand-percent in as I was, ready and willing to do anything to keep us all together.

I was mad because she was going to break my fucking heart.

I stared at the car ceiling, breathing hard. “What do you think is going to happen to that little girl when you leave? What am I supposed to tell her when you disappear in the night?”

“Tell her I loved her enough to give her up.”

“Bullshit!” I shouted.

Kara flinched.

Guilt filled me for scaring her, but I didn’t take it back. Because someone needed to talk some fucking sense into her. “I’m not looking that girl in the eye and telling her you’re gone. She’s five, Kara. You know what she’s going to hear? The same fucking thing I am. That you didn’t love her enough to stay. To fight. To be in her life instead of a goddamned brainwashed cult sacrifice!”

She stared at me, the tears in her eyes melting away, replaced by anger. “How dare you?”

“How dare I? No, sweetheart. How dare you. How fucking dare you come back into my world and turn it upside down? How dare you bring that little girl and make me love her? How dare you sit there, so fucking beautiful and selfless, and then tell me you’re throwing it all away because you don’t believe in us the way I do? How dare you make me—”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it. But silently, my fingers made the sign for, “love you.”

I turned away, biting down on my lip.

For a long moment, only the sounds of our breathing filled the air.

“What did that sign mean?”

I wasn’t giving her that. I couldn’t bring myself to voice the words because it would hurt all too much when she didn’t say them back.

Which she wouldn’t. Because if she loved me…us…the way Hawk and I loved her, we wouldn’t have been having this argument in the first place. “Give us one week, Kara. Give us one fucking week to work this out. To show you that you don’t need to do this.”

She sighed, staring out the window. “I don’t even know how to drive a car.”

I blinked, turning back to her. “What?”

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