Page 75 of 15 Summers Later

“Then, what?”

Ava sighed, looking through the trees. “I’m pregnant.”

Madi’s heartbeat kicked up and she stared at her sister in disbelief, unable to comprehend how Ava could sit there so self-contained and cool while sharing the staggering news.

“Pregnant? Seriously?”

Ava nodded. At first, Madi couldn’t tell how her sister felt about that, then she thought she saw a glint of joy in her eyes.

“That’s fabulous. Oh, Ava. I’m going to be an aunt!” Madi instinctively reached out and hugged her, remembering all the times they had talked about the families they might someday have. Ava had always wanted to have children, she remembered, while Madi said she would be happy only having fur babies.

At her hug, Ava was stiff, all thin bones, for only a moment before she hugged her back.

“It’s none of my business but...have you guys been trying long?”

Ava shook her head, easing back into her seat. “It was a surprise. A...a happy one but totally unexpected. Before a month ago, we were talking about maybe in a year or two, after we bought a house and felt more settled.”

She frowned, picking up immediately on that short disclaimer. “What happened a month ago?”

Ava said nothing, the only sound the breeze rustling the aspen leaves near them and the chitter of a squirrel protesting their intrusion. “What happened a month ago?” she finally answered. “Ghost Lakecame out and Cullen learned he wasn’t married to the woman he thought I was.”

Madi stared. “What are you talking about?”

“He didn’t read the entire book until after it was released. I didn’t...didn’t want him to.”

“Why not? He knew about what had happened to us at the camp and about Dad, right? About the grooming and the punishments and your sham of a marriage.”

Ava didn’t answer, gazing at the vast mountains around them. Madi read the answer in her silence.

“You never told him? How is that even possible? You’ve been married for three years!”

It was such a part of her, even if she didn’t want it to be, Madi couldn’t imagine concealing that from someone with whom she shared her life.

She might not want to dwell on it or talk about it or, heaven forbid, write a blasted book about it. But she would still want any man she loved to know that part of her.

“He knew bits and pieces. He knew about our rescue and Dad being killed and that you were hurt at the same time. He knew about Dan Gentry.”

“Okay. Whatdidn’the know?”

“I...might have let him think we were only there a few weeks instead of months. I didn’t want him to know about how bad things were.”

“Why not? He’s your husband! He loves you.”

“Becauseof that! Because I didn’t want him to pity me or to...to wonder if I was damaged forever because of what happened. We were so happy together and I didn’t want that ugliness to cast any kind of shadow on our joy.”

“You never told himanyof it? Did he know about your wedding?”

Ava’s denial was in her tightly compressed mouth. “Not until he read the book,” she admitted. “It wasn’t like it was a legal marriage, anyway. I didn’t consider it important.”

Not important?Ava’s wedding had been the catalyst for everything else that came after.

That had been when Ava finally accepted the grim truth that no one was looking for them, that their situation was untenable and they couldn’t remain there.

She’d also had to face the even more painful truth that their father wasn’t going to come to his senses and they were going to have to leave him behind. He had been so wholly brainwashed by the warped ideology of the Coalition, by the Boyle brothers, that he had even been willing to give his own daughter to one of them and was planning to hand over the other one.

If Cullen hadn’t known about Ava’s wedding, at sixteen, to a man thirty years her senior, a man whom she feared and loathed, he couldn’t have known about her wedding night. He couldn’t have known how Ava had somehow found the courage to drug the man who had just raped her with herbs they had crushed from wildflowers obtained surreptitiously. Or that she had known even as she mixed the dried plants into his tea that they might knock him out, as she hoped, or they might kill him.

At that point, neither she nor Madi had cared which.

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