The Call of the Desert. ABBY GREEN

children was the last straw. There wasn’t enough to keep us together. I’m glad there were no children. It wouldn’t have been the right environment to bring them into.”

      Julia had never told Kaden that she was adopted, or about her own visceral feelings on the subject of having children. She’d never told anyone. It was too bound up in painful emotions for her. And perhaps she hadn’t told him for a reason—because on some level she’d been afraid of his judgement, and that what they shared hadn’t been real. She’d been right to be afraid.

      She was aware of tension emanating from Kaden and didn’t want to look at him, afraid he might see the emotion she felt she couldn’t hide. Her face always gave her away. He was the one who had told her that as he’d held her face in his hands one day …