4. Tomorrow A New Beginning #2
No backup plan, no safety net, no pack or family to call for help even if my phone worked.
I force myself to breathe slowly, counting like the therapist taught me back when I could afford to learn coping mechanisms. In for four, hold for four, out for four. The technique still works, even if everything else in my life doesn't.
The panic recedes to manageable levels, leaving exhaustion in its wake.
Okay. Facts, not feelings.
I'm in Sweetwater Falls with a broken car I can't fix.
I have a safe place to sleep tonight thanks to Wendolyn's generosity.
Tomorrow I'll need to figure out how to get to the ranch, assuming it even exists and isn't just another disappointment waiting to happen.
None of this is ideal, but it's survivable.
I've survived worse.
The thought brings a bitter smile. Yes, I've survived Blake’s escalating control, the fire that followed when I finally said no, the months of recovery both physical and emotional. I've survived my parents' disappointment, society's judgment, my own designation working against me at every turn.
What's one more impossible situation?
Maybe that's what Wendolyn recognized— one survivor seeing another.
Maybe that's why she offered help without making it feel like charity.
She knows what it's like to lose everything and have to rebuild from scratch, to walk into a town where you know nobody and make it home through sheer determination.
I change into sleep clothes, movements automatic.
The room is warmer than anywhere I've slept lately, and the quilt smells like lavender and something indefinable that might just be safety. Through the window, Main Street glows softly under its antique streetlamps.
Somewhere in this town, my grandfather's ranch waits— another unknown, another risk, another chance for disappointment.
But also, potentially a chance for a new beginning in the heart of this small little town.
I'm so tired of running, of starting over, of being strong. What if I stopped? What if I let Sweetwater Falls be where the running ends, not because I've found home but because I've run out of road?
The bed creaks as I crawl under the covers, and I half-expect Fitzgerald to materialize as promised. But I'm alone with my thoughts and the fairy lights and the strange feeling that maybe being stranded isn't the worst thing that could've happened.
I could be the universe's way of saying "stop."
Tomorrow I'll deal with the car, the ranch, the reality of being stuck in a town where I know exactly one person.
Tonight, I'm going to sleep in a real bed in a room above a bookstore, gifted by a rebel Omega who collects vintage dresses and hairball stories.
It's not the life I planned, but maybe that's okay. My plans haven't exactly worked out anyway.
Time to see what happens when I stop planning and just survive, one day at a time, starting here in Sweetwater Falls where every heart supposedly finds home.
Even inappropriate hearts like mine.
Sleep won't come.
Despite the comfortable bed and warm quilt, despite exhaustion that goes bone-deep, my mind refuses to quiet. I slip out from under the covers, bare feet silent on the old wooden floor, and pad to the window.
The fairy lights from the porch cast everything in soft focus, like looking at the world through a gentle dream.
Sweetwater Falls sleeps peacefully below.
A few windows still glow with warm light—night owls reading or watching TV, living their ordinary lives. A pickup truck rumbles down Main Street, heading home from some late shift. The mountains ring the town like protective walls, their dark shapes just visible against the star-filled sky.
It's postcard perfect, almost aggressively so, like the town knows exactly how charming it is and leans into it.
I press my palm against the cool glass, watching my breath fog a small circle.
Twelve hours ago, I was just trying to make it to the ranch before dark. Now I'm standing in a borrowed room above a bookstore, taken in by a woman who sees rebellion as a kindness and kindness as rebellion.
The whiplash of it makes my head spin.
How did I get here? Not just to Sweetwater Falls, but to this moment—twenty-eight years old, running on fumes both literal and metaphorical, placing my trust in strangers because I've got no other choice?
Tomorrow feels like a mountain I'm not sure I can climb.
Find a way to the ranch—hitchhike maybe, or see if there's a bus.
Figure out what condition it's in, whether my grandfather left me a gift or just another problem to solve.
Try to make a broken-down property into something resembling a life, with no money and no experience and lungs that still protest when I breathe too deep.
But tonight? Tonight I'm safe.
The word sits strange in my mouth, foreign as a new language. When did I stop feeling safe? When Blake's protection became possession? When my parents' disappointment became distance?
Or earlier, the first time someone told me Omegas like me need to know their place?
A light flicks on in the building across the street—someone else who can't sleep, probably.
I wonder what keeps them awake. Lost dreams?
Found nightmares? Or just the ordinary insomnia of ordinary lives?
There's something comforting in knowing I'm not the only one awake, not the only one standing at a window wondering what comes next.
The mountains feel closer in the darkness, like they've crept forward to peer at the newcomer.
Somewhere beyond them, my grandfather's ranch waits.
Cactus Rose Ranch—even the name sounds like something from a movie, all thorns and beauty and Western romance.
He sent letters for a while when I was young, before my parents made it clear contact wasn't welcome.
I remember his handwriting, careful and slanted, telling stories about horses and sunsets and the way the desert blooms after rain.
I wonder if he knew what was ahead of me?
Maybe that's why he left it to me— not to the William my parents wanted, but to the Willa I became.
A place for someone who exists wrong, who fits nowhere, who needs somewhere to run to when the running from gets to be too much.
Or maybe he just had no one else, and I'm inheriting neglect and decay along with the land.
Tomorrow will tell.
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm room.
The unknown stretches before me, vast as the darkness beyond the mountains.
But for the first time in months— years —it doesn't feel entirely bleak.
There's Wendolyn downstairs, probably reading romance novels with Fitzgerald purring on her lap.
There's a bookstore that feels like home and a town that might, maybe, possibly have room for one more misfit.
It's not much. But it's not nothing either.
The clock on the dresser shows 11:47. Less than fifteen minutes until tomorrow, until I have to figure out how to move forward when every path seems blocked. But right now, in this suspended moment between one day and the next, I let myself feel something dangerous: curiosity.
What would it be like to stop running?
To plant feet somewhere and grow roots, thorny and deep like the cacti that presumably gave the ranch its name? To drink pumpkin spice lattes and smell like cinnamon and befriend women who wear victory rolls as armor?
To be Willa—not the William my parents wanted or the Omega society expects, but just Willa, messy and scarred and stubbornly still here?
Frightening.
Impossible.
But also...glorious to dream about.
The courthouse clock begins to chime midnight, twelve deep notes that resonate through the quiet town. With each toll, I feel something shift inside me, subtle but significant. Not hope exactly—I'm not ready for hope. But maybe its quieter cousin: possibility.
I'll wake in Sweetwater Falls with problems to solve and a life to somehow rebuild.
I'll face the ranch and whatever ghosts or gifts it holds.
Tomorrow I'll have to decide if I'm brave enough to stop running, to try trusting, to see if a heart that's been labeled inappropriate might still find its home.
Tonight, I stand at this window in a borrowed room above a bookstore, watching a sleeping town that doesn't know what to do with me any more than I know what to do with it.
The last chime fades into silence.
October 15th begins…