Chapter Two
Seth pounded on the door of his former apartment, each knock an urgent echo of his racing heart. He checked his watch. Forty-two minutes left.
No answer.
“Zach?” He knocked harder, ignoring his throbbing knuckles. “It’s Seth! You there?”
The peephole darkened before the door swung open, revealing Beck’s youngest brother in sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt.
His bushy beard and flannel shirts were long gone.
He no longer looked like a stranger from another century, but modern and at ease in secular surroundings.
Still, Seth saw the same haunted expression in Zach’s eyes that reflected back at him when he looked in a mirror.
Zach scanned him up and down, frowning. “It’s late. Is something wrong?”
“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Zach stepped back. “What happened? Is Beck all right?”
“Fine.” Seth kicked the door shut behind him. “But he and Heavenly gave me an ultimatum, and I have forty minutes left to decide if I’m willing to commit to them—marriage, kids, picket fence—the works. Or if I’m out. For good.”
“Ah.” Zach’s expression softened with understanding as he gestured Seth to the couch before easing into the nearby armchair. “And you’re struggling to practice what you preached at the wedding reception earlier tonight?”
Seth nodded. Fear had burrowed inside him like a parasite, feeding on every potential happiness and hope. He didn’t know how to stop it.
“Fuck, I can’t think straight.” Seth sank onto the sofa and raked his fingers through his hair, noting that the pictures of Zach’s late wife and daughter that had once dominated the mantle were gone. “I came here because…”
How could he put this into words?
“I’m the only one who truly understands what you’re going through?” Zach finished. “Because, despite your big speech earlier, you’re worried history will repeat itself?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Sure. But after our talk tonight, I decided that I can’t keep running in place. On my way home, I called Hannah, a woman I met in my religious order survivors’ group, and I asked her out. We’re having our first date. I’m picking her up at five.”
Seth’s head snapped up. “Tomorrow? That’s fast.”
But maybe that explained why Zach had tucked away Faith’s and Joanna’s pictures.
“So I should drag my feet?” He raised a brow. “I’ve been thinking a lot. Tonight, you gave me even more to consider. I’ve slept with a lot of women since I left the Chosen. Felt good…at first. But once you’ve known love, sex with strangers feels empty. Hollow. I want more.”
“And you’ve decided Hannah can give that to you? You barely know her.”
“You’re right. But she’s the kind of woman I can see myself marrying someday. We’ve talked. She understands where I came from, what I’ve been through. The cult, the grief—all of it. She’s been there, too.”
“So you’re ready to risk everything again? Just like that?” Seth snapped his fingers. “You’re not fucking afraid?”
“I’m terrified. But what’s the alternative? I’m thirty-one. I have a lot of life in front of me. Should I stay frozen in place?” Zach scoffed. “That’s just a slower way to die.”
That truth hit him like a punch to the jaw.
Zach was already thinking about building a new life, while Seth still felt paralyzed by fear.
The realization was a bitter pill. His chest tightened.
It felt uncomfortably like shame. He’d been hiding behind his grief like it was a shield. Zach was facing his future head-on.
Seth checked his watch again. Thirty-seven minutes.
“My therapist told me that we should honor those we’ve loved and lost by living, not by dying with them. Would your late wife have wanted you to bury yourself with her?”
Seth clenched his jaw. “It’s not that fucking simple.”
“It is. You’re just complicating it with fear.”
“But what if something happens? What if you married Hannah and lost her someday, too? Could you survive that?”
“What if I choose fear and then nothing happens? I’ll have thrown away decades of happiness,” Zach countered. “What if you abandon Beck and Heavenly and you end up spending the rest of your life alone? Think that won’t hurt? That you won’t be bitter?”
His words shot Seth right between the eyes with pinpoint accuracy.
Zach continued on in the silence. “According to my therapist, it’s tempting to cling to fear and keep everyone out, so you’ll never feel pain again. But that’s a lie, an illusion of control.”
“But I can’t go through that kind of agony again. I fucking can’t.”
“You’re already in pain, just a different kind.”
Another bullet. Another killing blow.
Seth stood abruptly, pacing the small living room. “You don’t understand.”
“You came here because I do, and we both know it. Loss comes; pain follows. Then we all face the same choice: stay half dead or risk living again.”
Seth stared at him, anger broiling in his chest. He wanted to argue, to tell Zach that his situation was different somehow.
Special. But the words died in his throat because deep down, he knew Zach was right.
They were mirror images of each other—both broken by loss, both hamstrung by guilt, both facing the same impossible choice.
The only difference was that Zach was choosing to move forward while he was standing still, letting fear dictate his future.
“I had a devoted wife and a perfect son.” Seth’s voice cracked. “And I got stupid. I pushed too hard on a cold case. They paid for my arrogance. They got fucking blown to pieces because of me.”
“I lost the family I loved because I tried to protect my daughter from a predator—my own brother. Jedediah had my wife and daughter killed. You think I don’t blame myself every single day?”
Seth clenched his fists. “But you’re already resolved to start over. How?”
Zach was quiet for a long moment. “I haven’t told anyone…
but before the raid at Messiah City, I found Faith’s journal.
She was afraid the elders would come for her and Joanna if they ever figured out what I was up to.
If the worst happened, she wanted me to move on.
Find happiness again. She didn’t want me to feel guilty for trying to do the right thing.
She knew what could happen. And I’m sure Autumn was well aware of the risks of being married to a cop who worked dangerous cases. ”
“She did…and she didn’t. We talked more than a few times about the possibility of something happening to me. Never her or Tristan.”
“All right, but if you could talk to her, do you think she’d want you to give up your chance at a happy future to spend your life alone?”
Shit. If Autumn could see him now, she’d be disappointed.
Seth’s shoulders fell as he sank back onto the couch, his fight draining away. He’d kept his body coiled tight since the day of the explosion. Now, all that seemed to dissipate, leaving him hollow but blessedly lighter.
“Fuck. You’re right. I’ve been using fear as an excuse to avoid risking my heart again.” Seth checked his watch. Twenty-four minutes. “I should go.”
“Home?”
Even though it was scary as hell… “Yeah.”
“Good. Choose Beck and Heavenly. Choose to live. Choose to love.”
“When the fuck did you get so wise? Because I know it had nothing to do with Jack and Connor. They’re dumb as dog shit.”
“They’re not that stupid.” Zach sent him a faint smile. “But once I thought about it, I realized I had nothing left but the truth.”
That made sense. He understood that. “Thanks. Good luck tomorrow with Hannah.”
Seth stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him. In the silence that followed, Zach’s words echoed in his head.
Choose Beck and Heavenly. Choose to live. Choose to love.
Seth intended to. If he was being honest, he’d made his decision the moment he’d walked out of the house, determined to find answers.
The question wasn’t whether he wanted a life with Beck and Heavenly.
He wanted that more than his next breath.
The issue had always been finding the courage to embrace that want without reservation or retreat.
If the past had taught him anything, it was that nothing in life was guaranteed. Not safety. Not tomorrow. Except, perhaps, regret. And his biggest one would be walking away from Beck and Heavenly and the love they shared forever.
Seth gunned the engine. Eighteen minutes left.
Just enough time to cut out that motherfucking parasite, get home, and show them that he refused to let fear win.
Seth floored the gas, pushing his SUV well past the speed limit. His eyes flicked between the road and the clock on his dash. Seventeen minutes left. He’d make it. He had to.
The wheels ate up the pavement as he replayed Zach’s words in his head. Choose to live. Choose to love. Simple in theory… Hard as hell in practice. Still, he couldn’t be a coward anymore. Otherwise, Heavenly and Beck would cut him loose and go on.
And that scared the shit out of him.
But even as he did his best to embrace Zach’s logic, dread sat heavy in his stomach.
Knowing something intellectually didn’t magically rewire eight years of terror.
He wished that was possible, but no pep talk could flip the magical switch in his gut.
His fear was still there, lurking beneath his resolve like a cancer.
That part of him still flinched at the thought of holding a tiny, vulnerable bundle and knowing its safety was in his hands.
He’d push through it and say yes to conceiving a baby because losing Beck and Heavenly wasn’t an option.
And maybe by the time the child actually came, he’d have figured out how to feel what he knew was right.
The surgeon’s desire for kids was hardly surprising. He was on the downhill slide to forty, and he’d been without family for decades. Of course he wanted roots.
Seth had family—his mother and his four younger brothers, whom he’d basically raised—but for years he’d been too mired in the past to care about any sort of future. He’d hooked up and whipped subs and called that a life.