Page 17 of Finding Peace
“I know,” I whisper. “I know how it sounds.”
The silence stretches.
“Do you trust her?” Lincoln asks.
I look at my hands and think about Kat’s face as she was ripped away from me. The fear in her eyes. The way her voice shook when she said my name. “I—I don’t know how to feel,” I admit. “Part of me is just so… so mad. Part of me feels betrayed in ways I don’t even have words for.” I look up at them. “But I also know my sister. And I know what it looks like when she thinks she’s run out of choices.”
Lawson’s gaze sharpens. “That doesn’t mean she gets a free pass.”
“I know,” I answer quickly. “I’m not asking you to give her one.”
“Then what are you asking?” Jasper demands, pain flaring hot and bright in his voice.
I meet his eyes. “I’m asking you to remember that she gave upeverythingfor me. She protected me the best she knew how, just like any of you would have done—havedone.”
That does it.
Beau straightens as the rest of them go still. “We have to assume they caught her again. We can go look in the woods, but there’s no way she’d—”
“There’s no way she’d survive even the night out there,” I finish for him, and he nods.
Jasper looks like he might punch a wall. Whether that’s for me, for my sister, or for the entire fucked-up situation, I’m not sure. “I don’t know if we can trust her,” he says finally. The words raw and honest.
My chest tightens, even though I understand exactly where they’re coming from.
“If Abigail trusts her sister,” Beau says, his voice steady despite the storm raging in his blue eyes, “then so should we.”
“Trust,” Lawson says, “isn’t the same as forgiveness.”
Jasper, Lincoln, and Lawson look at him. Beau just shrugs. “Doesn’t mean we’re stupid about it. Doesn’t mean we don’t verify everything. But if she believes Kat didn’t want this, that she did what she did because she felt like she had to…” His gaze softens when he looks at me. “Then that counts for something.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive her,” I answer. “Hell, I don’t even know ifIcan forgive her. Not yet.”
My chest aches as the truth of that settles in. Because loving Kat has always felt like muscle memory. Automatic. Unquestioned. She’s my sister. My constant. The person who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms and whisper that everything would be okay, even when I was sure it wasn’t.
And now…
Now she’s also the reason my life nearly ended in the snow.
“I hate that she let them near you,” Jasper snaps, turning back toward me, pain blazing in his raw eyes. “I hate that she watched it happen. That she didn’t run to us the second she thought you might be in danger.”
“I know. I hate it too.”
“But you still trust her,” Lincoln says quietly.
I nod. Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. “When she ran last night, she didn’t look like someone protecting herself. She looked like someone who was already resigned to the fact that she might be punished. Or worse.”
Beau rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “That kind of fear doesn’t come from nowhere.”
“No,” I agree. “It comes from knowing exactly what happens if you make the wrong move.”
The room is quiet for what feels like an eternity before Lawson finally says, “Then we move forward under the assumption that they have her and that she’s alive.”
Emotion surges up so fast it almost steals my breath away. “Thank you,” I whisper as tears sting my eyes.
Lawson studies Beau for a long moment before nodding once. “We’ll do everything we can to get her back. Butyou”—he looks directly at me—“are our priority. Always.”
I nod, and Jasper drags a hand down his face. “We won’t let any of them touch you again,” he promises, voice shaking.
