“Well, it was my honor, anyhow.”

His honor . . . He did have that, in a way. And not long ago at all, he’d had her respect, her admiration.

And I still have his, if only because he never got to find out about my own mistakes.

She knew he was hurting, from how she’d rejected his past. Maybe he’d feel just a little better if she shared her own mistakes with him now. A little relieved, like maybe he’d dodged a bullet himself. It wasn’t as though he was the only monster. She was far from perfect.

“Listen. Sit a minute.” She patted the bed. “If you can spare it.”

He sat and she did the same, facing him.

“You told me about your past,” she said. “I still owe you mine. Maybe it’ll help you understand why it is I need everything in my life going forward to be on the up-and-up.”

“You don’t owe me anything, but I’ll listen all the same.”

“It’s . . .” A ragged breath hijacked her chest, but she forced out a long exhalation, calming some. Damn, one word in and already she was a mess.

“You don’t need to say it if it’s only going to upset you.”

“No, I do need to. Because I . . . I’ve made such a train wreck of my life.” She raked her hair behind her ears with her fingers, struggling for composure.

Casey moved closer and put a hand on her knee, rubbing. Such a familiar gesture. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re not the first girl who got knocked up by the wrong guy, you know. And you won’t be the last.”

“It’s not that.” She sniffed loudly and sat up straight, wiping her nose on her sleeve’s cuff.

“Hang on.” Casey got up and grabbed a box of tissues from the dresser. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She honked her nose and he waited patiently.

When her breathing had slowed some, he coaxed, “So if you’re not talking about the pregnancy, what?”

She laughed miserably. “Where to begin? The baby’s just about the only thing I’ve managed to do even half-right, these past few years.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“The beginning . . . God. Okay. Well, I guess everything first started going wrong when I was fifteen. I got into a relationship with . . . with my preacher.”

His eyes grew round, belying his calm voice. “All right.” Between those two words were sandwiched a few others, to the tune of, Okay, so that is a little fucked.

“And I should tell you, my name wasn’t Abilene back then—it’s not even my legal name. My real name’s Allison Beeman. And I’m twenty-two, not twenty-four.”

He nodded, not looking completely surprised. “Raina said once she wondered if your ID was fake.”

She met his eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Well, I got the fake one when I left home, and started lying about my name and birthdate. But if you ever saw my medical records, they have my real information on them.”

“That why you wouldn’t let me pick up your mail for you?”

She smiled her apology, feeling shady in an instant.

“And why you wouldn’t let me come inside the hospital with you, after the baby was born?”

“That’s why.”

“You’re not evading the law, are you?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t even know how to, like, get a fake social security number or anything like that. I really only changed my name because I didn’t want people plugging me into Google and finding out why I left my hometown—it made the papers, after all.”

“What did, honey?”

Honey. She’d missed that name more than she’d realized.

“My preacher, he was about forty-five,” she said. “And married. And I’m from, like, the quaintest little God-fearing town in Texas you ever saw. Church was everything, and everybody adored him. So did I.”

“And he took advantage of that.”

She offered another sad, sheepish smile, and Casey’s expression changed—from concerned to surprised in a beat.

“You approached him?”

“Not exactly. But I wanted him, in a way, and he could probably tell. You have to know my family for it to make sense, maybe . . . My dad was a retired colonel—I mean, he still is. My parents are still back there, alive and married and probably trying real hard to pretend I never existed. Anyhow, they’re both hyperconservative Evangelicals, and it was just implied that I’d wait until I was married to have sex.”

“Right.”

“But I was always curious about that stuff. I was precocious, was how my grandma put it. Anyhow, my preacher seemed so . . . I dunno. He was handsome, and he was holy, so it felt like the attraction wasn’t as sinful as it could have been, somehow. I got completely infatuated with him. And he must have known it.”

“And eventually, he exploited that?”

She shrugged, not knowing the answer. “I couldn’t say. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want it, and it wasn’t like I ever told him no. Quite the opposite. I was fifteen, and so suppressed by my parents and the church . . . I know it seems like, oh, of course, it was the adult who’s to blame.”

“Well, yeah.”

“He was only human. We both were. He was weak, and I was curious. I only wanted the attention, and to know what sex was like, and to feel wanted by a father figure, maybe, because my dad was so cold and strict.”

“But he was still the adult,” Casey said. “The one with enough years and sense to say no.”

“You can make that argument, but I wasn’t the innocent one in it, either. I have that energy that does something to certain men—makes them want to save me. And even at that age, I knew it.”

He nodded grudgingly, letting her know he knew what she meant but didn’t like it.

“It attracts both savior types and also some real creepers.”

Casey smiled. “Which am I?”

She eyed him, curious. “I’m not sure. You tell me.”

He replied after a long moment’s consideration. “For me, it was never about that. It was partly about you being as pretty as you are, but I mean, when we met, you weren’t exactly an easy target—you must’ve turned me down two dozen times. I think it was just your smile, or your eyes. Both. And how you laugh. Wanting to make you laugh. It was never about thinking you needed saving or protecting.”

“Or corrupting.”

He shook his head. “Nobody winds up in Fortuity because they’re innocent. Well, almost nobody.” He glanced at the baby. “But anyhow, what happened with you and the preacher?”

“We carried on for six months or more, and I got in real deep with him. I thought I was in love, and maybe I was. It’s hard to know, at that age. I was so caught up in the feelings, I started losing track of my values—and I was a God-fearing girl, let me tell you. But I got this idea in my head that he’d leave his wife and we could run away and escape my stupid hometown and all those awful, small-minded people, but of course he told me that was impossible.”

“So?”

“So I told his wife. In my imagination, I thought that would drive them apart, and he’d have no excuse not to be with me.”

“But what actually happened?”

“She went a little crazy. I think she meant to just sweep it under the rug, but then she lost it in the middle of the Sunday service during a sermon he was giving about temptation. She stood up and screamed to the entire congregation what had been happening. The whole town was there.”

“And you ran away because you were humiliated?”

“Not entirely. I ran away after . . . I ran away because a week later, his wife killed herself.”

Casey’s face fell. “Jesus.”

She nodded, tears welling anew. “I’d felt awful after she told everyone—like everybody was either looking at me as a slut or a child-abuse victim. With pity or contempt. But after she committed suicide, I realized, in this massive, suffocating rush, how selfish I’d been. And reckless.” She paused then, registering what she’d just said. Selfish. Reckless. Those unforgivable crimes she’d been holding against Casey. “I realized how blind I’d been, when all that time it had felt like some big romantic drama. She’d never been a real person to me. A real person trapped in the same oppressive community I’d grown up in, with a real life I was destroying.” Her voice broke, shoulders beginning to shake.