Page 192 of Redeemed

Haven winces while she pulls her shirt on. “He really doesn’t like being apart from Xander for the holidays, huh?”

“Wouldn’t you hate it? Not being with the person you love?”

She looks away. “You think I don’t?”

Shit.Haven may hate Isaiah, but I’ve never really thought about the fact that she had to abandon her family to leave the cult. Her parents, her siblings, her aunts and uncles.

“Right. Sorry.”

“I’ve gotten used to it,” she says quietly.

“You have four siblings? Thomas, Hannah, Esther, and Jeremiah?”

She nods. “At least, that’s how many I had when I left. Two brothers and two sisters, all younger.”

I narrow my eyes. “The way you said that makes it sound like you could have more siblings that you don’t know about.”

“My parents were trying to have another. Five children is a low amount of kids to have there.”

“That sounds horrifying.”

She nods, expression haunted. “Yeah.”

“How… how old is she? Your mom?”

“In her late thirties. She’s at the point where pregnancies start getting riskier, especially since her one with Thomas was so hard on her. But that’s never what matters.” Her tone turns bitter. “When it comes to women, the only thing any of them care about is whether we can produce another child.”

“I can’t even imagine what that would be like. I’m so sorry, Haven.”

“Again, I knew what was expected of me, so it made it a little easier. My mom was married off when she was fifteen, too.”

“So your mom had you pretty early, then?”

“When she was sixteen, yeah.”

“You… you and Isaiah, though…”

I can’t finish the sentence. All I can do is pray that Haven isn’t about to reveal that her past is even worse than I thought.

“I couldn’t get pregnant,” she says, and if I’m not mistaken, shame coats her words. “It’s not uncommon for girls to have a miscarriage or two before their bodies can handle a pregnancy. I never even got to that point, though. My cycle was pretty irregular, and I was still so young.”

“I’m sure being terrified out of your mind didn’t help, either.”

Haven doesn’t say anything, and the look on her face tells me I’m losing her to memories I wish I could take from her. But I think she needs to face them, and I’d prefer she didn’t do it alone.

“He got angry about it, didn’t he?” I ask. “That you couldn’t get pregnant.”

Haven’s gaze drops to her lap. “I should shower.”

“Angel. Did he?”

“You already know the answer,” she whispers.

With a sigh, I move closer to her. She’s still sitting on the table, so I step between her legs. “You’re allowed to be angry, you know.”

She shakes her head.

“Haven, you—”

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