Page 13 of Found By the Mountain Man

“It’s that cult at the base of Blue Ridge, isn’t it?”

I glance down, not able to meet his eye. I’m embarrassed that I ended up in a place like that. I didn’t even realize it was a cult when I joined, which shows how stupid I was.

“Yeah. They call it a compound. It seemed like a refuge for a person like me.”

He tilts my chin up.

“And what kind of person is that?”

He says it kindly. Rhys thinks I’m a good person, but he’s only known me for a week. A week where I’ve lived in an alternate world. When he found me, I could be whoever I wanted to be. I could be someone good. And that’s what I’ve been doing, only showing him the best parts of myself. But I haven’t always been a good person.

“When I joined the Seekers, I’d just come out of a juvie center.”

I glance up at Rhys, expecting him to be horrified or disappointed. But he’s looking at me with the same steady gaze as if it’s nothing to find out the woman he’s been sharing a bed with was a juvenile delinquent.

“And the cult felt like a fresh start?”

He hasn’t asked me what I went in for. What I did that got me sent to juvie.

“Don’t you want to know what I did?”

He takes a strand of hair and curls it behind my ear.

“You can tell me if you want. But your past doesn’t define you, Indigo.”

It takes a moment to realize what he’s saying. All my life my pasthasdefined me. People have made judgements about me, the daughter of a junkie. Then, when they finally took me from my mother, a foster child too old to be adopted, passed through the system as just another troubled teenage girl. When I was caught stealing vapes, it was easy to send me to the center. I was just another kid heading down the wrong path.

When I came out, I swore I wouldn’t go back to detention. The Seekers of Light seemed like somewhere I could keep out of trouble, somewhere to belong.

I tell Rhys all of this, and he listens quietly.

“Let me guess. The cult welcomed you in and told you it was the fresh start you needed?”

There’s an edge to his voice, and he pulls the flannel tight between his fingers.

“Something like that.”

“They prey on vulnerable people, Indigo. People who are searching for something and don’t know what that is.”

I hate that I fell prey to them, I was so naive to believe their talk about redemption.

“And they did this to you?” His fingertips brush over the skin around my eye where the bruising is almost faded. I wince even though his touch is gentle.

I’m ashamed that I let this happen to me. I’m ashamed that it wasn’t the first time. My gaze dips, and Rhys pulls me toward him. His arms wrap around me in a comforting embrace. My check rests against his chest, and the steady beat of his heart gives me the courage to go on. I’m baring myself to him and I want him to know it all, to know all my flaws and mistakes and vulnerabilities.

I begin to talk, telling him everything about The Seekers of Light.

I thought I’d found somewhere to belong at the compound, but I was stupid and naive and vulnerable. They took me in, and at first it was fine. A bed to sleep in and a community to be a part of. But then the punishments started. If I looked at one of the men the wrong way or didn’t peel the potatoes quickly enough, I’d spend the night in the pigsty sleeping with the animals.

I see what they were doing. They were trying to break my spirit. Wear me down so I would comply with their wishes like the other women.

The first time the leader came to get me from the pigsty to spend the night in his room, I refused. That’s how I got the black eye.

He didn’t force me, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was beaten so much, I’d have to comply.

I ran that night.

When I finish telling my story, Rhys’s heartbeat is going a mile a minute and his body is still. I try to pull back, but he keeps his arms locked around me.

---