Recalling that choking collar she once wore had her tugging at her shirt. When she realized what she was doing, she lowered her hand.
“I hated all of it,” she said. “I have no idea why. I never should have hated it. The hunter way was all I knew while growing up. I would be a wife and mother; my duty was to care for my husband and children. They drilled it into my head from the second I was born, so I should have been as indoctrinated as others. For some reason, I wasn’t.
“And for all I know, they all hated or at least disliked it too; they just didn’t want to go against everything they knew. And I get that. Walking away from that life was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
“And extremely brave.”
“Or stupid.”
Logan chuckled. “Maybe,” he allowed. “It sounds like your compound was the same as ours, especially for the women. At least, until the Alliance.”
“That did change things for everyone.”
“Do you think it was for the better?”
She pondered this before replying. “Even though it cost me time with my parents, I do. I haven’t been to the compound much, but I’ve seen the changes in the women. They’re all happier than they used to be, which is so strange to me.
“When I was six. I asked my mom why we couldn’t leave like the men and were trained to be wives while they were fighters. She shushed me and told me it was the way things were. I was so confused that she’d accepted her role while I wanted nothing to do with it. She was happy. That was the strangest part of it all to me. She was this perfect, happy homemaker, and I was questioning everything.”
“Did you ever ask her about it again?”
“Never. Who was I to question what made her happy? Everyone deserves that in life, even if you don’t agree with them.”
“True. Did you ever speak with anybody about it again?”
“No. I’d have only gotten the same reaction.”
“What made you decide to run away?”
“I would have died a slow death if I stayed. While the idea of being on the streets, with nothing and no one to help me, was terrifying, it was nowhere near as frightening as the fate I was raised to live.”
“Did you ever regret your choice?” Logan asked.
“I regret the damage it caused to the relationship with my parents. I regret that my father and I still weren’t as close as we once were before he died, but it was the best choice for me. I really would have rotted away and died there, especially with Mateo as my husband.”
It would have been far worse than anything she’d ever imagined.
“What was it like when you first left the compound?” he asked.
Elena pondered this for a minute. How did she explain to him how horrible it was in the beginning? “If I were to die and go to Hell, I would wake up on those streets again.”
Logan pulled his attention away from Asher’s car to look at her. She remained staring out the window, but he saw her reflection in the glass. She wasn’t joking, and Elena didn’t strike him as the type to exaggerate.
“That bad?” he asked.
“Worse,” she whispered.
Lifting a finger, she drew a tiny heart on the window. She had no idea why, other than it was something to do to distract her from the memories clamoring to break free of the vault where she’d sealed them years ago.
Logan stared at her as he willed her to open up to him, but when she didn’t speak, he shifted his attention back to the road and Asher’s car. If he saw the slightest movement up there, he’d blare his horn so loud they’d hear it in Texas.
He glanced back at her and was about to ask more but decided against it. When she was ready to open up to him, she would, but she’d been through enough lately. And after everything that occurred with Mateo and his hunters, he wasn’t going to push her.
She’d stopped looking at him like he was a monster, but he still worried that was how she viewed him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Elena staredat the wooden and stucco buildings of the small town they drove through while her past and present churned in her mind. When she glanced at Logan, she saw that his attention remained riveted on Asher’s car. Concern for his friend etched every plane of his handsome face.
