We move in that direction and come upon a sweet little rill, lined with ice but still running, tracing a babbling silver path through the woods. There’s a massive stump next to it, which Ash brushes the snow off of, and then we sit together, pink noses and frosty breath, listening to the narrow stream trickle past.

Ash doesn’t speak for a long time, and I don’t push him, even though his uncharacteristic unhappiness has me worried.

Is he going to end things between us?

The thought slams into me like a meteor, sending buried fears and insecurities flying like debris. Is this about Embry? About the glances we can’t help but exchange in the hallways or those mostly accidental brushes of the shoulder in the elevator?

Or was Morgan right? Is he sleeping with someone else?

Oh God, what if it’s her?

I knew this was too good to be true. I knew it. And I chose to believe anyway, because I wanted it so badly.

I’m curling my fingers against my palms, trying to control the panic racing through me, when Ash finally speaks. “Do you believe we’re responsible for the sins of our fathers?”

I’m startled by the unexpected topic. “No, not at all.”

“Original sin?”

“As much as I like St. Augustine, no.”

He smiles at me, small lines crinkling around his eyes. “You’re a bad Catholic.”

“I love the Church, but it’s hard to convince me that two words can sum up human nature. Especially since Jesus himself never mentioned it.”

The crinkles go deeper. “Hippie.”

I put my hand on his leg, squeezing the firm muscle. “What’s wrong?”

The smile fades and he looks away from me, stretching out his legs, making it impossible for me to keep my hand there. As if he doesn’t want to be touched. By me. That meteor is still glowing hot and destructive in my chest, and my cheeks flush red with embarrassment and fear.

“I wanted this to be a happy getaway. Just the three of us, no work or stress. No papers for you to grade. Just us and popcorn garlands and the snow.”

“It is happy,” I say, trying to search his face for answers. “I’m happy. Are you not?”

He lets out a long breath. “No. I’m not.”

I’m being burned alive with fear now. There’s no way this conversation will end happily, no way he brought me out here to tell me something good. I reach for him. “Ash, if this is about—”

He holds up a hand. “I guarantee you that whatever you think this is about, it’s not.”

“I don’t know,” I reply slowly. “I’m thinking a lot of things right now.”

He pauses, and then speaks. “It’s about Morgan Leffey.”

My hand freezes in midair. “What?”

“I know. I know.”

I drop my hand, and my voice trembles when I ask, “Are you…are you sleeping with her?”

His head snaps to mine. “Excuse me?”

“Is that why we haven’t slept together? Because you’re sleeping with her? Because you go to the club with her, and maybe you secretly want someone less submissive in bed and—”

In an instant he’s straddling the stump so he can frame my face with his hands. “Angel,” he says. “I haven’t been to the club since I saw you that Sunday in church. And I certainly haven’t slept with Morgan again—and I can vow to you right now that I never will. You’ll understand why in a few minutes, but I just want you to know right now that you are perfect for me in every way. In bed and out of it.”

“Then why are we talking about this?” I whisper.

“We’re not. We’re talking about the sins of our fathers. Well, just my father, actually.”

His father. Penley Luther.

“Merlin told me he explained the whole story to you, except I think…well, I know he didn’t tell you the whole story.”

I wrinkle my forehead. “There’s more?”

He blows out a big breath. “Yeah. One thing more. The name of my birth mother. Do you know it?”

I shake my head. Presidents live on in history books and Vice Presidents live on in crossword clues, but senior advisors certainly don’t live on anywhere. Much less a senior advisor that died before I was born.

“Her name was Imogen.” He closes his eyes. “Imogen Leffey.”

“Leffey,” I repeat.

“Yes.” He opens his eyes. “Leffey. She was also Morgan Leffey’s mother.”

There it is. The rumors Abilene and Merlin alluded to. The crucial fact I had forgotten about Morgan at the State Dinner. The fact that her dead mother used to work in the Presidential Cabinet. And that indescribable something I saw in her that reminded me of someone else…it hadn’t been Embry at all. It was Ash I saw in her face, Ash’s green eyes and black hair and high cheekbones and sensual mouth.

Ash, Ash, Ash.

Her brother.

“You and Morgan had the same mother?” I ask slowly, numbly. “You’re…you’re brother and sister?”

“Half-brother and half-sister, yes.”

“And you…you…”

All the disgust I could ever feel, all the horror and revulsion and judgment, all that and more is in his voice when he answers. “Yes. I fucked her. I fucked my own sister.”

He looks up to my eyes, and in those green depths I see wells of self-hatred and guilt so deep they scare me. “I didn’t know the truth at the time. I still don’t know if she did. What is it that T.H. White says in The Once and Future King? ‘It seems in tragedy that innocence is not enough’? Well, it’s true. She came to visit Embry while we took an R and R in Prague, the first woman out of uniform I’d actually talked to in months, and I pursued her. Fucked her against an alley wall with the Prague castle looking down over us. Took her back to my hotel room and we barely left it the whole week. She was the first woman who ever let me dominate her. Who encouraged it. And I took that encouragement and spent the week using her every way she’d let me.”