“I’m so happy you’re better, but you need to stay in bed,” Rebel said.

“Forget that.” Justin pulled a t shirt over his head and pulled it down over his chest. “Christian said I’ve been in bed for a week. I finally feel a little bit like myself. I can breathe without coughing up a lung, I can get up, stay awake and speak to people. I’ve had enough sleep to last a lifetime.”

“Christian said you still needed to rest.”

“Is Christian a doctor?”

“No, but I’d say he’s the closest thing we’ve got, and it’s good advice. You really should be in bed, taking it easy.”

“I need to get out of this bed or I’m going to lose my mind. I was able to take a shower on my own and get myself dressed. I’m weaker than normal, but I’ll be okay. I’m dressed now, you can turn around.”

Rebel turned. “Okay. At least it’s the morning and not super hot yet.” She glanced at her watch. “Come on, let’s get going. I’m sure Phoebe and Rachel are making breakfast. The other women might be up too. They’re bunking down in the tour bus parked next to us. We can start there. You can meet everyone at breakfast.”

“Everyone? How many people are living here? I’ve met everyone already, right?”

She’d walked up the hall of the RV to the front door as he was talking, expecting him to follow. She opened the door and said over her shoulder, “Including you, there are eleven people here.”

Rebel stepped outside. Justin followed behind her, and now they were both standing in front of the RV. He took a deep breath, smiled and looked around at the open space. His black eyes sparkled with good humor. She expected it must feel pretty good to him, being outside again.

“Eleven people?”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? For all those months we were completely alone and now we’ve found other people. We aren’t the only ones.”

“Who’s that? That guy walking up?” Justin lifted his chin to indicate somewhere behind her.

She turned, and her stomach fluttered with anticipation. She hadn’t seen Trevor since they’d kissed goodbye at the crack of dawn as he’d left to join the men on an early start, working on clearing the yard of that house he was hoping they’d move into. It had been on the tip of her tongue then to tell him she loved him. To finally admit it to him. But she’d decided to wait. Wait, until tonight when she’d tell him over dinner, just the two of them, when they had plenty of time to talk.

Her palms were sweaty, just thinking about admitting her feelings, letting him in. But as she watched him walk toward her, her heart bursting in her chest, heavy with the love she felt for this man…it all seemed so right. Righter than any decision she’d ever made in her life.

“Oh, that’s Trevor. Good, I was just about to tell you about him. Now I can reintroduce the two of you. You’re going to be embarrassed when I tell you how you acted the first time you met him when you were sick.”

Trevor was getting closer and she could tell he was in a serious mood. The light in his eyes was gone and his body seemed tense, his fists clenched. She wondered what was wrong.

“I think I remember him,” Justin muttered.

And then Trevor was there, his arm going around her waist and bringing her into his side. “Hey,” he rumbled in that deep voice she loved.

“Hey,” she said back. “Look who’s awake.” She turned her head. “Justin, this is my boyfriend, Trevor.”

Trevor looked up and met Justin’s gaze. “I heard you were up.” He leaned forward and put his hand out to Justin. “Hey, man, nice to meet you, I’m Trevor Mason.”

Except Justin didn’t grip his hand in return, and his face was as dark as a thundercloud. “Rebel, stay away from him,” Justin ordered.

Rebel laughed nervously, leaving her arms wrapped around the waist of the man she loved. The man she was letting into her life. The man she was going to tell about the baby and give him the option to stay. “What are you talking about? Justin, this is Trevor, my boyfriend. Come over here, I’ll introduce you. You’ll see—”

“Rebel, I don’t know what lies he told you while I was sick, but this guy is a criminal, a dangerous ex-con. You can’t trust this man. Let go of him and come and stand by me.”

Her chest tightened. “What? This isn’t true. Trevor, tell him it isn’t true. It’s a mistake.”

Trevor sighed, a pained expression etched across his face. “No, Rebel, he’s right. It’s true.”

“What is true?” She let go of him and stepped back. “What’s going on?”

“Justin is telling you the truth, like I should have before. I was in prison before the end.”

“Prison?” she repeated stupidly. “No, you couldn’t have been. You-you didn’t tell me—”

“I was,” he answered gently. “Baby, I was. Justin’s right, no more lies, you need to know the truth about me. When the outbreak started, I was in prison. I escaped when all the guards died and I was able to walk out of there.”

“He wasn’t just in prison,” Justin snarled, “like some country club prison. Rebel, he was in the fucking Aryan Brotherhood. Look at him, look at his tats. The swastika and the four-leaf clover on his neck. They signify his membership in the Aryan Brotherhood. It was the most vicious, racist gang in America, and he was part of it. You can’t trust this asshole.”

She looked into Trevor’s eyes. Those beautiful eyes. Those lying eyes. “You were part of a gang?”

“A prison gang,” Justin said.

“A prison gang,” Trevor agreed.

“And if he was in the Brotherhood he wasn’t just any other prisoner. He was a vicious murderer. You have to prove your loyalty to those fuckers by killing someone on the inside. That’s how he got the four-leaf clover tat.”

She looked away, her eyes on the mountains in the distance for a moment. Then she turned back at Trevor. “You were in prison for…?”

His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened. “Murder,” he spat out. “I was serving a life sentence for murder.”

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Murder was the reason you were in prison, and while you were there you just kept on killing?”

She looked around at the faces surrounding her. Christian, Rachel and Sebastian were standing next to them now. She’d sensed people approaching, heard their steps, but she was so…so… She searched their expressions for clues. Some marked with guilt, eyes sliding away, not meeting hers, some softened with pity. It was as if a fist plowed into her stomach. They all knew. Hell, Josie probably knew. Everyone knew. Except her.

She looked over at Tiana, Kati and Krissy. “Did you guys know too? Am I the only idiot who didn’t know?”

“No,” Kati whispered. “But honey, we suspected.”

She looked back at Trevor. “Who are you?” she hissed.

She was an idiot! How could she not have seen the truth? It was literally marked all over Trevor’s body. People will tell you who they are, and when they do, believe them, Maya Angelou once said. Why hadn’t she read the signs? Goddammit, she’d been blind and deaf to it all, wanting to believe she’d finally found a man who was different than the rest.

But she hadn’t, had she? In fact, he was worse.

She looked at Trevor again and took a step back. “You lied to me.”

“I—” he started before she cut him off.

“I asked you point blank what those tats meant and you lied to me. You fucking lied to me.” Her voice rose as her anger reached a boiling point. It swept through her like a fever.

“You said you couldn’t be around ex-cons.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“And drug dealers.”

“That’s right,” she whispered, a cold chill sliding down her spine.

“I was a drug lord, Rebel. Before I went to prison I dealt drugs, a fucking lot of drugs. How could I have told you that? What would you have done if you’d known right from the beginning?”

“I would’ve run the other fucking way!”

“Exactly.”

“No!” she screamed. “No,” she said again, choking out the word.

Voices were arguing around her; she couldn’t hear them clearly. Justin’s voice registered. And Christian’s. She didn’t know what they were saying.

Rebel wiped her wet face with the sleeve of her shirt and straightened her back. She looked right into Trevor’s eyes. “I need to talk to you, alone,” she hissed.

No one else heard, the cacophony of voices drowning hers out. But Trevor heard her. He’d never taken his eyes off her.

She walked away, around the corner of the RV so they could have privacy. He followed right behind her.

She had to do this. Do it right now. Rip the Band-Aid off and be done with it.

Rebel turned around and looked up at him. The man she’d given her heart, her trust, her loyalty to just a few hours ago. The man whom she’d bared her soul to. The man she prayed would sign up for the job of being the father of her unborn child. The man she’d shared her secrets with and hoped he was the one to stay.

To finally be the one to prove her wrong about men in general.

He hadn’t.

Trevor watched her, waiting to see what she would say. At least he had the decency to look anguished.

“My brother died of a heroin overdose.” She told him straight out.

“Jesus, baby.” He reached a hand out toward her. She stepped back.

She took a deep breath and continued. “He was four years older than me. He was my hero, he was everyone’s hero—the quarterback of the football team, handsome, good grades, nice guy—all the good qualities. My parents had divorced, and Mom was with me in Hollywood and Tanner was with Dad in Vegas. But I still saw him all the time. We were close, really close. I loved him. I was so proud of him. He was being scouted by colleges when he hurt his back in a game mid-season during his senior year. It was bad, a career-ruining injury. He recovered, but he couldn’t play football ever again. But he hadn’t planned on going pro anyway, and what he really wanted was eventually to go to law school and become a lawyer, and with the money I was making with the acting, paying for his college wasn’t a problem. He would have recovered fine and moved on with his life, except he became addicted to the pain meds.”

“Fuck.”

“None of us even knew. He was buying Oxycodone off the street, sucking it down like candy. The drug dealers took him in like they were his “friends” advising him, helping him to see that it was smart to switch to heroin because it gave a similar high but was easier to get ahold of and a little bit cheaper. We sent him to rehab twice. No good. Mom, Dad and I all had to be trained on how give him a “shot” to resuscitate him in case he overdosed. It was terrible. By then he was a ghost of his former self. A skinny, wasted druggie with track marks all over his arms, caught in the grip of something he wasn’t able to shake. One day he overdosed and none of us were around. And he died. My beautiful brother…died, from something totally fucking preventable.”

“Baby.” He reached out again.

“Don’t touch me! Drug dealers killed him, Trevor.”

“Rebel—”

“And you were a drug dealer.”

He dropped his hand.

“I’ve never taken drugs, I never will, and I don’t associate with anyone who does. Especially with someone who fucking dealt drugs. You were that person, Trevor, that type of person who killed my brother. That could have been you.”

She heard him take a sharp breath.

“It’s over between us,” she told him with finality. And she turned around and walked away.