Page 159 of Heartbeats & Highways

His expression softened. “Can we sit? On the couch?”

“Okay.” I gingerly walked to the couch and perched on the end. Savage took the spot in the middle and just stared at me.

“I’m gonna try and put into words what’s going through my mind,” he began. “Normally, I’d get on my bike or go to The Ring. But if I left you now, you’d think . . . Hell, you’d think I was abandoning you but I’m not.” His jaw clenched. “I’m mad at you for not trusting me. But I’m mad at myself, too. When we met, I knew you were hiding things from me, but I didn’t suspectthis.”

I swallowed.

“You were working under the table and living in a motel. I thought you were fleeing a domestic abuse situation. And even after you told me he’d died . . . I didn’t even consider that you’d killed your husband.”

I flinched at the ugliness of the truth. “Did you tell Colt? About how you really met me?”

“No. I left that out. Because that would implicate me in shit I shouldn’t have been involved in.” He cocked his head to the side. “You left that out too—of your story.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets, I guess.” I rubbed my third eye. “So, what do we do now?”

“Come here.”

I scooted closer to him. He reached out and gently cupped the back of my neck and stared into my eyes. “You can’t keep shit from me when it’s really important, Evie. Never again.”

“I promise.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Was it rape? Is that how you got pregnant?”

Rape. Such an ugly word.

“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t rape.”

“Then how did you get pregnant? If he didn’t force you?”

“If I had any chance of escape, I couldn’t let him know that I’d overheard him and his father talking. So I . . . played the role of his beloved wife. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I had to survive.”

“While plotting to kill him.”

I recoiled.

“No babe, I didn’t mean—I told you what I did to my foster father. It wasn’t a judgement. It was understanding.”

“Oh.”

“Fuck, I can’t believe I just . . .”

“What?”

“I said I wanted a big family. You probably think I’m just like your husband.”

“No!” I emphatically shook my head. “You’re nothing like him, Savage. You love me. You protect me. You’d do anything to make me happy. When you said you wanted a big family, how were you supposed to know about my past?”

“I was supposed to know because you were supposed to trust me with this.” His jaw clenched. “Do you have any regrets? About what you did?”

“Regrets? No.” I shook my head. “It was me or him, you know? But I don’t think I’ve dealt with it, Savage. It feels like someone else did it.”

He dropped his hand from my neck so he could pull me into his arms. “I wish I could say that’s the end of it, but it won’t be. It’ll come for you in the moments you don’t expect. A flash in the middle of happiness, a feeling of anxiety. You’ll remember what you’ve done, and you’ll have to process it each time.”

I placed my hand on his heart.

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