“That’s what Alec said last year about my cousin, Angelina,” Cate whispered. “She saved his life, you know.”
Keira nodded. “I know.”
“Liam said—” She swallowed hard to keep her emotions at bay. “Liam said you have to go on instinct. You don’t have time to consciously think about what you’re doing. You just have to pray your instincts are right.”
“He’s right.” Keira was silent for a moment, watching Cate with those soft brown eyes so like Liam’s, then shattered the last remnants of Cate’s self-control. “You love him.”
Cate caught her breath on a sob as tears welled, but she fought them back. “How could I not?” she asked, choking a little. “You...he’s your brother, so maybe you don’t see him as I do, but...”
“He’s my brother, but I know he’s pretty special. All my brothers are.”
“Alec is a wonderful man, and I admire him, too. But Liam...” Fresh tears threatened. “I didn’t want to love him. I didn’t want to love anyone because I don’t des—” She broke off as she realized what she was saying. Who she was saying it to.
“Because you don’t deserve to be loved?” Keira asked, her voice steady. “Is that what you were going to say?” When Cate didn’t respond, just turned her head away, Keira said softly, “You’re so wrong about yourself, Cate. If Liam loves you—and he does love you, doesn’t he?”
“He thinks he does.”
“I know my brother. If he says he loves you, he does. And if he loves you, then you deserve to be loved.”
“He doesn’t know...” Cate’s voice trailed off miserably.
“Doesn’t know what?”
“That I... I wasn’t Vishenko’s prisoner for the entire time I was with him.” The confession poured out of her. “Yes, he raped me.” She shuddered at the memories she would never be able to completely suppress. “And yes, he kept me a prisoner for...it seemed like forever. And I did fight him...at first. But eventually I realized the only way to escape was to...to pretend. To let him think he’d won. To let him think I was...willing.”
Keira’s next words dropped like a bombshell. “I know. We heard.”
“What?” Suddenly light-headed, Cate stared at Liam’s sister in incomprehension.
“When Vishenko confronted you on the path, we heard everything he said. Everything you said.”
The constriction in her throat only allowed her to utter one rasping word. “Liam?”
Keira nodded. “All of us. But, Cate,” she said, placing a comforting hand over both of Cate’s hands again. “He already knew.”
She shook her head in denial. “He couldn’t. I never told him.”
“He had to know, because he wasn’t shocked. I saw his face, Cate. He... I’ve never seen him so angry. But he wasn’t shocked.”
She couldn’t take it in. Liam had known? Had he known all along? Did Alec tell him? she wondered feverishly. Then she remembered Liam denying Alec had told him anything except who she was running from when she went underground. That Alec had said anything else should come from Cate herself.
She breathed a quick sigh of relief that Alec hadn’t betrayed her trust. But the pain returned sharp and deep when she realized somehow Liam had known the truth anyway, even though she’d never told him. Had he known when he said, “You can tell me anything. Don’t you know that by now?” Had he known when he said, “What do you think love is, Cate?... It’s a choice. A commitment...” Had he known when he said, “I haven’t just fallen in love with you. I choose to love you...”
And when he’d made love to her so tenderly, so carefully. Wanting to make it right for her however he could, because he knew what she’d endured at Vishenko’s hands and wanted to break through her mental barriers. Had he already known the truth, the truth she so desperately wanted to keep from him...because she so desperately wanted him to love her?
Then she thought about what Keira had said, that Liam—that all of them—had overheard what had passed between Vishenko and her, and a hot tide of shame and humiliation swept through her. She’d walked into that courthouse days ago, prepared to enter the courtroom and be vilified in the eyes of the jury...and in the eyes of the world. “‘I am one,’” she’d told herself that morning—a lifetime ago—believing she could do it. But she hadn’t been prepared for this. To be confronted with her sordid past after Liam had told her to relinquish it, to let him shoulder the burden for her because she’d carried it long enough...