“It’s about your sister,” he says to me. “And her coming to stay with us after she’s released from the hospital.”

“Detective Rannali was the one who suggested it,” Lila explains, unbuckling her seatbelt. “But Ethan and I had already talked about it . . . I know she’s seventeen and is almost a legal adult, but with everything she’s been through . . .” She smashes her lips together, fighting back the tears. “We just thought it’d be nice if she had a place to call home.”

Even though I try to fight them back, a few tears manage to escape my eyes. I want to say so much to them. Thank them for everything, for giving me a home, for not giving up on me when things got hard. For giving me a family. But I’m so choked up, I can only manage a nod as I scoot forward and wrap an arm around her.

She gasps in shock, because I normally don’t hug.

“Thank you.” I suck back the tears. “And I mean that. Thank you for everything.”

“You don’t need to thank us for anything,” she says. “You’re our son, and we’ll always be here for you.”

We hug for a second longer before I move away. I clear my throat a few times and reach for the door to get out of the car.

As we walk into the hospital and toward Sadie’s room, I go over in my head what I’ll say to her if she’s awake. It’ll be the first time I’ve talked to her in almost five years and for some of those years, she was locked up in a house with people who tortured her. I worry there won’t be any of that spunky, lively, carefree sister that I grew up with, and I won’t have a damn clue what to say to her.

“Oh my goodness, she’s awake,” Lila says after she peers into Sadie’s room. She steps back and turns to me. “We’ll let you go in first and talk to her, okay? So we don’t overwhelm her.”

Nodding, I take a breath and step inside.

Sadie is sitting in the bed when I enter, staring out the window with a strange look on her face, like she’s deeply contemplating something. She must hear me walk in, because she turns her head and looks over her shoulder at me.

We both freeze and just stare at each other.

She looks different, yet the same; her brown hair is still long and her face is covered with freckles. But there’s a cast on her arm and a scar on her cheek, remnants that she’s not the same Sadie I knew five years ago. That she’s been beaten and tortured and God knows what else.

After a second or two goes by, I open my mouth to ask her if she knows who I am, but then she’s already running to me.

“Oh my God, I thought I was never going to see you again,” she cries as she wraps her good arm around me.

I start crying again, and it’s ridiculously embarrassing. I seriously need to get a grip on myself. But the fact that she’s here and alive, it’s so fucking overwhelming I can’t stop the tears from flowing.

She trembles as she hugs me, and I can sense that fear inside her, the fear of being touched. But she must be stronger than I was, because she keeps holding onto me.

“I’m so sorry,” I say through my tears.

She shuffles back, giving me a quizzical look. “Sorry for what?”

“For not finding you.” I wipe tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt. “I tried. I tried so fucking much, but no matter what I did, it all led to a dead end.”

Her eyes pool with tears. “You didn’t find me because they didn’t want you to find me. There was nothing you could’ve done. As long as our . . .” Anger and fear flash in her eyes and her hands tremble as she balls them into fists. “As long as he wanted me there, I was always going to be there.”

“How long . . .” I breathe in and out, trying to keep myself from crying again. “How long were you there?”

She turns her back to me, wrapping her arms around herself. “Ayden, I don’t want to talk about this.” She climbs back onto the bed with her feet dangling over the edge. “I’ve spent too much of my life surrounded by this shit, and now that I’ve finally gotten out, everyone just wants me to sit around and talk about what happened. I don’t want to. All I want to do is forget about everything.”

“I get what you’re saying.” I pull a chair up and sit down. “I forgot about what happened to us for a while and thought it was easier that way.”

“You forgot?” she asks, her eyes widening. “Really?”

I nod. “Up until a few weeks ago, I couldn’t remember any of the time we were in that house together.”