Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,64

here in Caldwell.”

“Did you ask your… the people who raised you about it?”

“I took the papers out into the living room and put them on the coffee table in front of my ma—the female who raised me.”

Trez pictured the scene, conjuring out of no specific details about the house, the rooms, that box, or the other female, some approximation of the confrontation. And meanwhile, the other half of him was protesting the attempt. The story itself.

This wasn’t part of their history.

Yet he could not deny that it had been part of hers.

Trying to reconcile the two versions of her life distracted him, and with force of will, he forced himself to focus on what she was saying.

In the midst of his breakdown, she had honored him, and he would do the same for her. It was the only decent thing to do. Later… he could try to sort it all out.

Although how much more luck was he going to have with that?

“She froze,” his female murmured. “And it was the stricken expression on her face that told me it was all real. I said to her… something like, ‘Well, this was unexpected.’ Then my brother and me had a showdown in front of her and my dad. She didn’t say much. She just sat on the sofa, while the male who raised me and the male who I’d been raised alongside did a lot of talking. They didn’t get where I was coming from. They didn’t understand that it was a violation of my history. Does that make sense? I tried to explain the betrayal to them. The hurt. The anger. Things grew even more heated and I left. I just had to leave… my brother and I were at each other’s throats and she was upset and it was a mess.”

“And then you came to Caldwell.”

“As soon as I left the house, I realized I had nowhere to go. Who could I stay with? My cousins? They were not my cousins.” She shook her head. “My people were not my people. My own brother knew, and I didn’t—so how far did the secret go? Who else knew? Who had known all along? It was like being stripped naked and everyone seeing it but yourself. Lies that are fundamental hurt fundamentally. Imagine if between one second and the next… all of the people in your life were replaced with actors. Or maybe it’s more… the parents I assumed were real were being played by actors.” She shrugged. “Maybe someone else would have felt differently—”

Trez cut in. “It doesn’t matter what someone else would have felt. It’s you.”

“That’s what I tried to tell my brother. He was too busy protecting them to hear it. And you know, losing him was just as hard as losing… well, what I thought of as my parents.” She shook her head. “I mean, families tell the truth, right? They’re the only people in our lives who can really do that even when we don’t want to hear it. Because blood makes us stuck with them.”

He thought of iAm and felt uneasy. “Yes, but they can also be wrong.”

Trez had to say that. For himself. He had to believe that… Fates, he didn’t even know what to believe anymore. He was so damned wrung out, his thoughts totally disjointed, his body weak, his head starting to ache.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t having such a great night, either. With a curse, she put her own head in her hands and shuddered. “I hurt her. That’s the fucked-up thing. My ma—that female—looked ruined as I walked out that door. And as I dematerialized to my apartment and packed up some stuff, I blamed myself. Like it was my choice, though? I got the fallout of her decision to stay silent. Not the other way around.”

When there was a long pause, he felt like he had to say something. Do something. But he couldn’t seem to form anything coherent for his mouth to speak.

Grasping at straws, he mumbled, “Why did you choose Caldwell?”

She frowned. And then looked at him once more. “You know, it’s funny… I don’t have a good answer for that. I remember so many things about all of it with unbearable precision. But as for what brought me here? That… I don’t know. I guess I was just called to Caldwell.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Therese tried to flex her tired brain and access the piece of information about exactly why she’d ended up where she did. But there was nothing. No