Honor glanced at Ace, who was now watching her with avid interest, then back at Erin. Their low opinion of him was her fault. She’d never told anyone the details of what happened to cause the break-up, not even Erin. She was too ashamed of everything about it, how she’d reacted, how she’d handled it, and couldn’t bear to see her friends’ expressions when they found out what a coward she’d been. If there was such a thing as karma then she’d definitely received the punishment she deserved because losing Liam had been the most devastating thing of all.

“It’s complicated.”

They both just kept looking at her, waiting.

Honor sighed and leaned her head back against her pillow, propped against the steel-frame headboard. “There were family issues involved on my end. Big ones. Stuff you’d see on a really bad reality show. Long story short, I handled it badly and I screwed up. Okay? I screwed up big time and now he won’t forgive me.”

Erin sat up. “Wait, does this have anything to do with why your family basically disowned you a few months ago?”

Ace’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Your family would do that to you?” Her appalled tone made Honor wince inside. She wouldn’t apologize or defend her family’s actions though, because there was no excuse for their narrow-minded view of the world and their hypocritical treatment of others. She’d just never been forced to outright confront that harsh reality before Liam. Not really.

And that made her feel like a coward too.

She shrugged. “It sucks, but to be honest it’s probably for the best. Something had to give.” The truth is, you probably did us both a favor. Liam’s harsh words still rang in her head.

“Wow, I’m sorry,” Erin murmured. “And I assume this is probably somehow related to the whole Liam thing?”

Honor could only nod, unwilling to spill the ugly details, even with her closest friends.

“Okay, no,” Ace said with a frown. “You need to back up and tell me the beginning of this story because I can’t stand not knowing now.”

Oh, God. Honor rubbed a hand over her face and decided to go for it. “All right. You know I met Liam because he was seeing my older sister for a short time, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how that all happened either. From what I know of Liam and your sister, she and Liam have nothing in common, so I can’t see them dating.”

“Yeah, it didn’t last long. Only a couple of dates spaced out over a few weeks. Charity met Liam at a bar off post one night and went nuts over him.” Honor winced at the choice of wording. “She’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder about a year before that. Manic highs, crazy lows. They’d found a combo of meds that seemed to help her, but from day one she somehow had it in her mind that Liam was The One.”

Ace’s eyes were wide. “Holy. From day one?”

Honor nodded. “She came home from the bar and went on about him for over an hour to me. A week later they went out to dinner before he left for a training mission. During the short time he was away they texted and e-mailed each other, and Charity became obsessed with him. It was scary to see her like that, to be honest. I knew she’d gone off her meds but my parents wouldn’t listen. They were ecstatic to see her so happy, couldn’t see how unhealthy her attachment to him was.”

“He picked up on it right away though,” Erin said to Ace.

“Yeah, he told me later that after their second date he’d already been thinking of ending things because of how obsessed she seemed to be getting,” Honor said. “Anyway, she invited me and a guy friend of mine to dinner with them on their second date. Liam and I hit it off right away and it was pretty clear we had way more in common than he and Charity did. I didn’t have any romantic intentions toward him or anything.”

“And that’s the night he realized he was with the wrong girl,” Erin said, a smug edge to her voice.

“That’s what he said later, yeah, but I didn’t realize it at the time. Charity called me later that week, bawling that Liam had broken up with her. I tried to point out that they’d only gone out a handful of times, but it hadn’t done any good. She’d built Liam up so much in her mind, she was devastated when he ended things. She’d already gone off her meds but after that she started drinking and threatening to kill herself if he wouldn’t take her back. It was ugly.”

“Whoa,” Ace murmured, propping up a little higher on her elbow. “What did she do when she found out you guys were dating?”

“We didn’t get together until months later, after we’d become good friends and gotten to know each other really well on the phone and by e-mail. Liam kept his distance at first. Kind of a cooling off period he later said, for Charity’s sake. We didn’t start officially dating until the day he came to surprise me down at Kandahar two years ago.”

“And how’d your sister take that news?” Ace asked.

Honor huffed out a breath. “Not well, but I knew she wouldn’t. She seemed to slowly accept it, though I never talked about him to her. That’s why Liam and I kept how serious things were between us a secret from my family for so long.” Her parents hadn’t taken the news of them dating much better than Charity had.

“Until they got engaged. Then the shit hit the fan,” Erin added to Ace.

“Okay, wow, I didn’t know all that,” Ace said, shaking her head in wonder. “And what happened when you got engaged?”

Honor fiddled with the edge of her blanket. “I’d rather not get into it.”

Ace’s eyes filled with sympathy. “Sure, of course. And so whatever happened is what led to the falling out thing with your family?”

“Initially, yes, but I did what I could to smooth things over with them after Liam and I broke up.” That had come at a price far higher than she should have been willing to pay. “No, the real problem was when I finally worked up the nerve to do what I should have done in the first place.” Sided with Liam instead of them.

Erin’s eyebrows rose. “What did you do?”

Honor shrugged. “I told them I’d been wrong to let him go, and that if I had to choose between them and Liam, then I chose him.”

Resounding silence filled the hut as the other two women stared at her.

“Holy shit,” Ace finally said. “I had no idea you were going through all that all this time.”

“Me neither, on the last bit,” said Erin, her expression showing a flash of hurt that made Honor feel badly for hiding everything.

Not that she ever wanted either of her friends to know the lurid details of what had happened the night they’d gotten engaged. Or the other events that had led to the break-up.

“I know. And it’s not that I don’t trust you guys or anything, it’s just that I’m ashamed of the way everything went down. I mean, my dad’s this well-respected preacher in my town and my family’s supposed to be this upstanding, Christian model for the rest of the community to follow, but the things they said and did, and then them forcing me into the position they did… The hypocrisy just makes me sick.”

Her fingers curled into the blanket, her stomach taut. The very reason she’d never defied her parents in the first place was because she’d instinctively known how they’d react. Looking back, she realized now that her being cast out one day had been inevitable. When it had finally happened, much as it shamed her to admit it, in a way it was a big relief. “I should have stood up to them a long time ago.”

Erin reached out and rubbed a hand up and down Honor’s leg in silent sympathy. “I’m really sorry, hon, that’s so shitty of them. As for Liam, maybe if you just go and apologize—”

“I have apologized. Several times. First by e-mail because he wouldn’t take my calls, and then today I finally apologized to him in person. He didn’t exactly throw it back in my face or anything, but he doesn’t believe me.” Well, maybe he believed she was sorry, but definitely not that she’d sided with him over her family.