“I’m grateful to him,” I admit. “And I guess there’s some part of me that’s interested. But the most important thing in my life is Delilah. It has to be her. I’m not sure I can be with a man at all, especially one whose entire life revolves around violence.”
Her hand touches mine. “Beth, our lives revolved around violence.”
And mine still does. “I can’t make it stop,” I whisper.
“Luca will help you.”
Luca will help me and hurt me. He’ll use me in every way until I don’t know where I end and he begins. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be wary. He’s more dangerous than Leader Allen ever was. “You have to promise me something.”
“Anything,” she says promptly.
I glance at Delilah, who’s scooted back to her toy. A Mozart sonata plays through the plastic speaker. My voice drops. “If I don’t come back, you’ll take care of her as your own.”
She gasps. “No.”
“Promise.”
“You’ll come back. Of course you will.”
Except she can’t be sure of that. I can walk into the crosshairs when it means keeping Delilah safe. I could walk through fire for her. I just need to know that she’ll be taken care of if I don’t come back. “As if she’s your own child.”
She looks away, her lower lip trembling. For the first time since she left Harmony Hills, she doesn’t look self-assured. She looks like the young woman we both really are, forced to grow up too soon. “She’s my sister, you know,” she murmurs. “Both of us came from the same man.”
I shiver. “I know.”
“Besides, I owe you. If I hadn’t run away, it would have been me in those prayer sessions. It would have been me with a baby.”
Shame coils inside me. “I hated you for that.”
Her eyes turn glossy with tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“I hated that I couldn’t go with you. That I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to run away like you.” It was a hollow kind of hate, weak and brittle.
Her mouth drops open. “Strong enough? God, Beth. I wasn’t strong enough to stay. I couldn’t stand the thought of him touching me, not for anything. So I ran, not knowing if I’d survive. Not knowing or even caring who had to substitute for me. That was weakness, not strength. You’re the strong one. You’re made of freaking steel.”
My throat feels thick. That’s what Luca said, but I didn’t believed him. He didn’t know everything that happened in Harmony Hills, and I prefer it that way. I don’t want to see the change in his eyes when he knows exactly what was done to me.
Candy knows. And she thinks I’m strong.
“Promise,” I whisper.
Her nostrils flare. “I promise.”
Relief flushes through me, swift and cool. “Thank you.”
“She’s my flesh and blood. I would always take care of her. It’s an honor, not an obligation. But you—God, you’re me. You’re everything that I am, that I’ve been. Come back, Beth. I know you’ll come back.”
Chapter Thirteen
Part of me expects Luca to have sex with me as soon as we were alone.
And that secret part of me even longs for his heat, his unexpected tenderness. Longs for that sense of comfort I drew from his larger body curved around mine like that night in my apartment.
But he doesn’t touch me in the black Escalade that takes us to the Tanglewood International Airport. He doesn’t touch me on the private jet we take to a small Chicago airport, a mile expanse of runway and flat green enclosed by city glass all around. And he doesn’t touch me on the limo ride into the city. If anything he seems to grow colder with every mile we take toward downtown.
Finally the frosty silence is too much for me. “Did I do something wrong?”
He glances at me, surprise flaring briefly. “Why would you think that?”