Chapter 5
Jada
The hum of the tires was steady beneath me, a rhythmic vibration through the worn leather seat of Hunter’s ancient truck, but it did nothing to ground me. Nothing could. Not after what he’d just said.
I kidnapped someone.
My hands curled into fists in my lap, fingernails biting into my palms. My mind lunged in every direction, searching for something— anything —that would prove him wrong. A memory, a feeling, a sense that I couldn’t possibly be the kind of person who would do something like that. But there was nothing.
Just an empty void where my past should be.
I sucked in a breath, but it came too fast, too sharp. My chest squeezed tight, and I pressed my back against the seat, forcing myself to breathe slower. In. Out. I gripped the fabric of the scrub pants, focusing on the pressure, trying to stop the trembling in my hands.
I didn’t even know Kenzie Hurst. At least, not in any way I could recall. But according to Hunter, I’d not only known her—I’d taken her. I’d stolen another human being from her life, from her family, and I couldn’t even remember why.
My stomach churned. God. What kind of person did that?
I turned my head just enough to glance at Hunter. He kept his eyes on the road, his jaw set tight, his knuckles white where they gripped the wheel.
“I don’t remember,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Not a single thing about what you’re saying.”
His gaze flicked toward me, unreadable in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “I know.”
I swallowed hard. “Then how the hell am I supposed to live with myself?”
The silence grew thick between us, heavier than the truth I’d been running from. I needed him to say something, anything, to fill the space with more than just the sound of my own doubts.
The words came out before I could stop them, bitter and raw. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?”
Hunter didn’t answer—why would he? He didn’t know me. He adjusted the rearview mirror, his jaw set, as if he was weighing how much of the truth I could handle. I waited, the ache of it swelling in my chest.
I thought of the Alan and Kenzie he’d talked about, their faces as blank as the memories I couldn’t find. If I could kidnap someone, what else was I capable of? Suddenly, everything was up for grabs, everything dark and ugly that I’d never thought to question while sitting in the motel for the last couple days.
Who was I, really? A criminal? A sociopath? My mind spiraled, twisting around questions that had no answers.
“You did some messed-up things,” Hunter said at last, his voice level. I flinched, the confirmation slicing through me. “But you also stopped Alan from killing Kenzie. That counts for something.”
I stared at him. His profile was unyielding, a stone wall I couldn’t climb. But his words were like a life raft. I’d stopped Alan from killing Kenzie.
Did that mean I wasn’t a monster? Or just that I was a monster with a conscience?
The truck roared down a highway, and I stared out the window, feeling a mix of emotions I didn’t know how to hold. Maybe I wasn’t completely awful. Maybe I was. I tried to breathe through it, to make sense of the mess inside my head.
“What kind of person does that make me?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. “I don’t even know what I was trying to do.”
Hunter shrugged.
If I’d gone so far off the rails that I couldn’t even remember doing something so terrible, what did that say about me? That I was reckless? Dangerous? Just plain stupid?
The questions gnawed at me, relentless and sharp. I pressed my hands together to stop them from shaking, but it didn’t help.
“How do you know me?” I asked, my voice barely rising above the hum of the engine. I braced myself for an answer that might change everything again.
Hunter didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on the road. “I don’t, really,” he said. “The Resting Warrior Ranch guys came in to help with the Kenzie kidnap situation, and I jumped in as added help. That’s it.”
Resting Warrior Ranch. That didn’t sound familiar beyond Hunter mentioning it at the cabin that night.
“Resting Warrior Ranch. What are they again?”
“Former SEALs. They run a ranch in Montana that helps people with PTSD. And since Kenzie is the girlfriend of my cousin Lucas’s friend, they volunteered to help. They’ve got the training and step in when family’s involved.” He said it like it was the most normal thing in the world, a bunch of ex-military guys playing cowboy and vigilante all at once.“Lucas runs the ranch with six other guys.”
“So you don’t know me at all?” I asked, needing to hear it again.
He shook his head. “Not beyond the other night,” he said. “And before you ask, I don’t know what you were doing with a guy like Alan. But I know Kenzie’s fine now, and Alan’s back in prison. He’ll go to trial for attempted murder, probably more than that.”
Kenzie was fine . The words settled over me like a cautious balm, soothing and disconcerting at once. Hunter spoke them without fanfare, without the kind of weight they seemed to carry for me. I wondered if he thought I didn’t deserve the relief they brought.
Alan back in prison. I tried to imagine him, this man I’d apparently tangled my life with, but couldn’t. Evidently, it hadn’t been a match made in heaven if all my bruises and my memory loss were because of him.
Hunter drove on, the cityscape stretching endlessly around us. He seemed as solid and unyielding as the mountains in the distance, a man who saw the world in black-and-white while I was stuck in an endless gray.
I absorbed what he’d told me, feeling like I was putting together a puzzle with half the pieces missing. His words should have made things clearer, but instead, they left me with even more questions.
What had I been doing with Alan? How had I let myself be manipulated enough to kidnap someone? And if Hunter didn’t know me, why was he helping me now?
The details swirled in my head, a confusing blend of clarity and chaos. I felt like a character in someone else’s story, a bit player in the drama Hunter described. And yet here I was, running from the law with a man who said he didn’t know me, struggling to recognize the shape of my own life.
I pressed my hand against the window, the chill of the glass grounding me. At least it was something I could feel, something solid in a world that had gone fluid and strange.
But it also meant the question I couldn’t escape kept coming to the forefront of my mind. “Should I just turn myself in?”
Hunter’s reaction was immediate and more forceful than anything else he’d said so far. “No. Absolutely not.”
His vehemence startled me. I hadn’t expected him to care so much, not when he’d made it clear he didn’t know me beyond the mess I’d gotten myself into. “But the cops are after me,” I said, my voice wavering between panic and resolve. “I can’t just keep running.”
“You can’t turn yourself in while you can’t remember anything,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “They’ll chew you up and spit you out.”
I flinched at the image, the thought of being at the mercy of the law—or worse, Alan—when I didn’t even know who I was or what I’d done. But wasn’t running worse? Wasn’t it an admission of guilt? I felt the weight of it all pressing down on me, guilt and fear intertwined so tightly that I couldn’t separate them.
“I feel like I should pay for what I did,” I said, almost a whisper. “Like I have to make it right.”
Hunter’s grip on the wheel tightened, his knuckles white against the faded black leather. “And you can. But not like this. Not until you know what you’re up against.”
His certainty was a stark contrast to the muddle of my thoughts, a lifeline in a sea of doubt. I wanted to believe him, to let his confidence bolster my own flimsy resolve. But the idea of hiding felt wrong, cowardly.
“What if they catch me first?” I asked, picturing sirens and handcuffs, the shame of being dragged away when all I wanted was to make amends.
“They won’t,” Hunter said, and the finality in his voice almost made me believe it.
Hunter
The garage door of the safe house rumbled shut, sealing us inside. Safe. I should’ve felt relief, but the pressure in my chest didn’t ease. If anything, it pressed down harder, my ribs tight, my lungs slow to catch up.
I kept my hands on the wheel, fingers locked, knuckles aching. If I let go now, they’d shake. The tremors were already creeping in, the warning signs of a PTSD episode flashing bright in my brain—rigid muscles, blurred vision, that electric hum in my veins like a charge waiting to detonate.
I needed to move. Needed to be alone. But I had to make it out of this vehicle and into the house first.
A breath. Then another. I forced my fingers to release their grip, one by one, swallowing against the nausea crawling up my throat. The truck’s interior felt too small, the air thick.
“Hunter?” Jada’s voice was soft, careful.
I didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. I already knew what I’d see—concern, exhaustion, something else creeping in at the edges. Something like trust.
I wasn’t the man for that. Not now. Probably not ever.
Talking to her as we drove had taken every bit of focus I had. Now that we were in relative safety, I had very little left in me.
I forced myself out of the truck and over to the door leading inside the house. The keypad was just an arm’s length away, but when I reached for it, my hand didn’t cooperate. My vision went swimmy, the numbers smearing together. I gritted my teeth, blinking fast, forcing my body to obey.
I barely got the code in, my fingers shaking against the keypad. The numbers blurred, edges soft, like my brain was short-circuiting. Get it fucking together, Everett . I forced my hand steady enough to hit the last digit. The lock released with a soft beep, but the sound barely cut through the ringing in my ears.
Jada stepped inside first, hesitant. I followed, shutting the door behind us. Locking it. Locking myself in.
She turned to me, waiting, expectation heavy in the space between us. I didn’t let her get a word out.
“I need to be alone.” My voice came out too sharp, too rough, but I didn’t fix it. “Do whatever you want. Just don’t leave the house. You’re safe here.”
She flinched, just a flicker, but I caught it. The way her shoulders stiffened. The way something inside her pulled back.
“Hunter, talk to me. Please.”
I shook my head, already stepping away. Talking wouldn’t fix this. Wouldn’t stop my pulse from hammering like incoming mortar fire, wouldn’t force my muscles to unclench. Wouldn’t erase the bodies, the blood, the weight of everything I’d done and how it had stolen part of my mind.
Jada didn’t know who she was. She had no past to hold on to. She wanted reassurances from me, but I had none to give either of us.
“No, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Her expression cracked, just for a second, something raw flashing in her eyes. Hurt. Not from fear, not from anger. Just…hurt.
I hated that I saw it. Hated even more that I couldn’t stop it.
I turned away before she could say anything else. Before I could.
One foot in front of the other, forcing my body forward. The hallway blurred at the edges as I stumbled forward, muscles locking, breath coming too fast. Too tight. I shoved through the door at the end of the narrow hall, slamming it behind me.
The gym—if I could call it that—was nothing more than a battered mat, a rack of mismatched weights, and a punching bag hanging lopsided from the ceiling. Didn’t matter. It was enough.
I sagged against the door, chest heaving. The dizziness came in waves, tilting the room, making the floor feel unstable beneath my feet. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms.
Get on the floor. Move. It was the only thing I knew to do when I got like this. The only thing that had ever worked. The only thing that could take me out of my head when the walls started closing in.
I dropped hard, catching myself on my palms, arms shaking from the impact and began doing push-ups.
One. Two. Three.
I counted in my head, breath rough, every muscle screaming. Faster.
Twenty.
The pain didn’t quiet the noise. Not yet. I kept going.
Fifty.
My breath was a wreck, sweat sliding down my spine. My arms burned, my chest tight, but my head? Still too loud. Still thrumming with the ghosts I couldn’t shake.
Not enough.
When my arms gave out, I rolled over and turned to sit-ups, moving faster and faster until that exercise was impossible too.
Exercise after exercise, movement after movement, I pushed harder, faster, body shaking, punishing myself. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. If I didn’t burn this out, it would take over. It always did. I might lose days in a PTSD fog.
Jada was here. I couldn’t afford to disappear into myself. Not now. Not when the past was still chasing both of us.