She paused, the pause heavy.
“I ran from the people inside the church.”
For a second, Jake just sat there staring at her like she’d told him the world was flat.
Running from God was one thing. Jake had known folks who drank themselves stupid and called it sin.
But running from the church itself?
That was a different storm.
Jake kept his voice calm, the same voice he used with horses that had been mistreated—soft, steady, patient.
“You can tell me,” he said. “No one else is here.”
Elise stared at her hands. They were shaking.
She took a breath that didn’t quite make it all the way down.
“Back at the mission in Dodge City,” she said, “things… were not holy anymore.”
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