Raven had no sympathy whatsoever. “You’re too young to know what real love is. You’ve barely had a long-term relationship with any man in your life. You’ve just been traumatized by what you’ve been through, and you found a man who can protect you against all that. Stockholm syndrome. It’s not real.”

Magnus gripped her thigh. “Ma petite amie—”

“Stay out of this.” Raven didn’t look at him.

He didn’t get a word in, but I appreciated the fact that he tried. He was on my side. I knew he was. “Raven…” I wiped away my tears with my fingertips and breathed until I was calm enough to speak. “I know it’s wrong…I do. If I could just not feel this way, I would. I know Magnus and Fender are totally different people, but how are you going to be with a man who continually works at the camp? Maybe he doesn’t like it, but he still participates. Fender doesn’t like it either, but he feels like he has no other choice. Why can you be with Magnus, but I can’t be with Fender? Magnus has never actually tried to stop anything.” I didn’t mean to throw him under the bus, but I viewed the brothers as the same person. They were both good men doing evil things because they were still in survival mode, even though they’d made it back on their feet a long time ago.

Raven’s gaze turned cold. “He saved us, didn’t he?”

Magnus turned his gaze on me, looking past Raven’s head. “I will stop it.”

My eyes focused on him, the only person who understood exactly how I felt.

He broke contact and looked at the wall again. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

Raven inhaled a deep breath, and a look of pride came over her face.

Magnus spoke again. “But I understand, Melanie.”

My eyes slowly softened, and I wanted to reach for his hand, my lifeline. When I wasn’t in the room and Raven said how terrible I was as a person, he would be there to defend me, to ask Raven to have compassion rather than hate.

Raven looked at him, unsure of the meaning of his words.