Page 18 of Montana Silence

“Mara, I don’t know what’s going on.” I tried to keep my voice low and even. “But I can see something is wrong. I canfeelit. If you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll go. Just tell me who I can bring for you to speak to. Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

She sat on the couch, staring into the middle distance, and I closed my eyes. A piece of my heart was shattering, and I hadn’t even known it was at risk. One breath of her at the wedding, and my subconscious had claimed more than it had any right to.

“I’ll check on you,” I said quietly. “You can call me any time. I’ll see if Evie can stop by later.”

My hand was on her doorknob, and I heard her voice. “Liam.”

When I looked back, her blue eyes were fixed on mine. She was scared. Fear lived in every line of her body. But she looked more scared that I would leave. “Wait.”

Mara

Liam was in my house.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Liam was in my house, and I loved it as much as it terrified me, because I’d imagined a hundred different ways of him coming here for the first time, and none of them was this.

My voice still preferred to hide, but I could find it for him. Telling Liam the truth didn’t scare me like it did when I thought about other people. Because he’d already seen me panic and helped me through it. I knew—or I hoped—he wouldn’t judge me for it. Especially since I’d already let him in.

But that didn’t mean it was easy.

His hand rested on the doorknob, ready to turn it, and all I wanted was for himnotto go.

Thankfully, the relief was clear on his face. He didn’t want to go either. Liam was the first one to come and see if I was okay.

Slowly, he came back and sat on the couch. Close enough to reach out and touch, far enough he wasn’t crowding me. “What happened to your ankle?”

“I fell,” I said quietly. “While—while I was setting up the cameras.”

Now that I’d broken the silence, it felt easier. It was always easier once I started, but sometimes the silence was so loud and so impenetrable it felt impossible. “I’m okay,” I told him. “It’s already better. In a couple of days, I’ll be good as new.”

Exhaustion pulled me down. I was tired. I didn’t want to be afraid. I wanted to take more control of my own life. I didn’t want to be defined by this. But the reality was that once I told him, I could never go back.

I rubbed my palms on my knees to ease the nerves.

Liam leaned forward, elbows on his own knees. “Why do you need them? The cameras.”

Pressing my lips together, I closed my eyes. “I grew up in a cult.”

The air around me felt charged, and I opened my eyes to see the horror and disgust on Liam’s face. But there wasn’t any to find. He was just looking at me, waiting for me to tell him more.

I could have gotten lost in staring at him. Because Liam looking at me like that? It was a dream come true.

“I mean, not at first. I wasn’t born there. We joined when I was six, and we didn’t know. It was supposed to be this great, communal place. My dad was gone, and for my mom, the idea of having help to raise us was too good to be true. And it was.”

Blowing out a breath, I put a hand on my chest. So many words at once wasn’t my normal, but this story had been waiting to come out of me for a long time.

I couldn’t tell him everything yet—I wasn’t ready for that, and he wasn’t either. But I could tell him enough.

“But it wasn’t that. It was…very different. My mom disappeared when I was thirteen. We’d been planning to leave, and then she just walked out our door one morning and never came back.”

“Mara—”

I held out a hand. This story was one I needed to get through all in one go. “The leader, Malcolm Novic, he had his own beliefs and mandates. Including taking what he wanted from everyone. Including…” I shook my head. “He would choose girls and prepare them. Then they would be married to him. But through him, they would be married to every man in the commune. Shared.

“I was one of those girls.”

Liam’s eyes went wide, and I gathered all the courage I had left. “The compound was raided before it happened, when I was fifteen. I was young enough I hadn’t known they were being investigated for exactly that—grooming and sex crimes. And I…I helped put him in jail.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face and looked at me. Therewashorror there, butforme, not because of me.

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