In a world of raiders, indent gangs, and acid rain, Living with several secrets means isolation…
Travis has been caught between all the women in his life. Mostly, his sister and his adopted mom, Rowan. Recently, between the little family that came to Ridge Lake to help Yugi’s Bar survive the influx of reporters and business during the war with Eli, the courtroom drama of several Town Council members having been arrested, and then… there was Mert McCreal, fallen head of the Ridge Lake Town Council who held his family helpless between the burden of heavy taxes and the guilt of forcing people to freeze to death.
He feels abandoned by both Rowan and Kyla. Kyla, because, as much as he loves his sister, she doesn’t get that constantly redecorating the bar in order to help Rowan sell her liquors is not the same as running the business of Yugi’s. She has her own products, to be sure, but it is not the same. Rowan has all but disappeared from the bar and public view. She is finally living out her dream full time, brewing almost non-stop, day and night, and has been for months.
Both mother and sister have cut him deep. Ro, by lying to him for months. Kyla, by exposing his capture and torture as a little boy in the clutches of Eli’s slave market to whomever she opens her mouth and heart. She has no idea what she has done. Travis knows if he speaks of it, his sister will collapse. But he feels it. Again. The whispers. The looks. The same he grew up with, in Ridge Lake after Rowan brought them home from the slave barn. The fear of who he is and what he witnessed coming off women. Some men, too.
Ivy has been caught between her overbearing mother and overprotective sister nearly all her life. She had no voice and no say in what will be. That is, until she came to Ridge Lake and, through a lung disease, was separated, for the second time, from Mattie and Willow. Breathing room. While the thought makes her giggle, it causes pain, too. Growing pains. And rage. Internal rage that had begun during Willow’s capture by the City Wards of Taliville when they were much younger. It hasn’t quite burned itself out. Though she sees her sister and mother every day, Ivy has learned that her very life is no longer dependent on her blood kin. Nor does she need to be bounced between two very forceful personalities to the point where her own suffering is silenced. She has no idea how to deal with the lack of suffocation…