Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
It had been ninety-four days since she’d been rescued and eighty-six days since she’d been home.
But ‘home’ wasn’t a place anymore. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t the sprawling ranch house she’d grown up in.
This house was just another kind of prison, only this one had softer walls and guards who wore their heartbreak at what she’d endured on their faces.
From her window seat, Enya watched a cardinal land on the branch of a live oak. It was a startling slash of red against the muted greens and browns of the winter landscape. The bird puffed its chest out, sang a sharp, clear song, and then was gone.
Free. It’s so free.
The thought was a flat, gray stone dropped into the murky water of her mind.
God, how I wish I was free.
Why won’t this nightmare stop?
I just want it to stop.
“Enya, honey?” Her mother’s voice came from the doorway, soft and tentative, as if Enya were a spooked mare who might bolt at any sudden noise. “I brought you some soup. Your daddy said you didn’t touch your breakfast. You have to eat, baby girl.”
Not unless you want me to throw up.
She was so tired of the burning feeling in the back of her throat and the churning queasiness in her stomach.
Rather than face her momma’s sorrow, she kept her gaze fixed on the empty branch where the cardinal had been.
She could feel the cloud of worry and love that was her mother’s presence behind her, along with the scent of chicken noodle soup.
A smell that once meant comfort and care now made her stomach clench.
Food was a problem when all she could remember was the cloying sweetness of the granola bars she and Maria had bought in that dusty little store when they’d tried to escape.
Her mother sighed, a sound Enya had come to know intimately over the past three months. It was the sound of defeat. “I’ll just leave it here on your desk, okay? Try to have a few bites, baby.”
The bedroom door clicked shut. The sound was too loud in the silent room, echoing the finality of a lock sliding into place.
Her body might be home, but most of her mind was still locked in a shack in the jungle.
Knowing she was the reason for the sadness in her mom’s eyes morphed into another round of churning in her stomach.
Enya stared out the window, watching the gray clouds drift across the sky, until the soup in the bowl was cold, and she could legitimately say it had gone cold, so she didn’t have to eat it.
I’m a mess.
I know I’m a mess.
But how do I fix it?
How?
I’d have been better off if I hadn’t come home…
Everyone would be better off if Rowan had never found me.
Later, she found herself on the front porch, a thick afghan her grandmother had crocheted draped over her legs. Her eyes drifted to the corral and Rain as he stood with his head drooping low and his legs splayed wide as if he was posting himself out.
I should sell him.
I don’t deserve him.
He doesn’t deserve to be stuck with me.
Rain had a lifetime of achievements. Trophies, plaques, and more wins than she could count under his hooves. There were so many riders who would bite her hands off for a chance to own him.
The screen door creaked open behind her, the hinges groaning softly in the cold.
Enya didn’t bother to turn around. She recognized the rhythm of her father’s heavy and deliberate footsteps.
She braced herself against the pause that came just inside the threshold, knowing her dad had one boot hovering over the warped porch boards as if he were bracing himself for speaking to her.
Bracing his heart against spending time with her.
He’s afraid. Afraid of me. Of what I’ve become.
Without having to look, she could picture his calloused fingers flexing at his sides, his broad shoulders tense beneath his worn flannel, and his breath fogging up the evening air. She’d seen the pose often enough over the last three months that she didn’t need to look to know it was there.
“Cold out here.” Her dad’s voice was rough as gravel.
We’re all going through the motions.
I should leave.
They’d be happier without me here.
Enya pulled the afghan tighter around her shoulders, her fingers digging into the thick wool.
She missed when the woodsmoke and damp earth smell of the blanket meant crackling bonfires after a long day’s ride, or autumn leaves crunching under Rain’s hooves as they cantered through the back fields.
Now, it was almost the scent of the ghost of the life she’d left behind, and she hated it.
Even so, she tucked her chin deeper into the folds, praying the echo of comfort she’d always found in the stitches her grandmother had looped together years ago could somehow push past the big brick wall in her mind and make everything better like it always had before.
Now you’re just being dumb.
The rocking chair beside hers groaned as her father settled into it. The sound was familiar, and made her chest ache for the quiet nights watching the stars and listening for the fox family who lived in the next field over, hunting in the dark.
Her dad rocked his chair, slow and steady, the way he had when she was small and he’d tell her stories about the fairies, goblins, princes, and they all lived happily-ever-afters.
I used to believe in second chances.
I was wrong.
There are some things you just don’t come back from, no matter how much you believe in yourself.
The chair’s rhythm was hypnotic, but she knew the creak of the runners against the porch was really a countdown to whatever conversation her dad wanted to have.
Ignore him.
Maybe he’ll leave me alone.
Enya kept her gaze fixed on the corral, on Rain standing motionless in the far corner, his head still lowered as if the weight of the world had settled between his ears. His coat, once glossy and shiny, now looked dull and lackluster.
Someone else could love him enough to go down there and groom him.
I don’t have the strength.
He deserves so much better than the me I am now.
“I see you watchin’ him.” Her dad’s voice cut through the quiet like a hot knife through softened butter.
Her fingers twisted in the fringe of the afghan, the yarn rough against her skin.
Of course, he noticed.
He always notices.
The tension coiled in her stomach, the same way it always did when someone mentioned Rain or when they wanted her to be the old version of who she was now.
“Yeah.”
Camden exhaled through his nose, a sound that wasn’t quite a sigh but carried the weight of frustration. “He’s wastin’ away.” His words were low and heavy. “Just like you.”
The truth landed like a kick to the ribs. Enya flinched, her breath catching in her throat.
He’s right. God, I know he’s right.
But I can’t fix it.
He’s better off without me.
She could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes, but she blinked them back and swallowed them down. She wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not ever again.
“Ain’t sayin’ it to hurt you, baby girl,” her dad’s voice dropping to a rough murmur. “But you know it’s true.” He paused, the chair still rocking, relentless. “That horse loves you… and you’re killin’ him.”
The air left her lungs in a rush, as if she’d been punched.
I know.
I know, and I don’t know how to stop.
She could taste bile at the back of her throat, bitter and burning.
She wanted to argue, to scream that it wasn’t her fault, that she was trying, that she didn’t know how to fix any of this.
But the words stuck in her chest in a tangled mess of guilt and grief that refused to release the grip it had on her soul.
“You ever think about what he’d say if he could talk?” Her dad’s chair kept moving, back and forth, back and forth, like the pendulum of a clock counting down to something inevitable.
Like time’s running out.
“He’d tell you to get your damn boots on and ride.”
Enya’s breath hitched. For a second, she could almost hear Rain’s nickering, low and insistent.
She could almost feel his nudge on her shoulder as if she leaned against his stall door, his warm breath puffing against her neck as he welcomed her in the morning.
She could almost feel the ghost of his muscles bunching beneath her legs as he surged forward into the arena, the wind tearing at her hair, and the barrels blurring past, followed by a wave of voices cheering them on.
The way he’d run for her as if nothing and no one could touch them.
But she knew better now. The echo of how Rain had screamed as the darkness pulled her under told her she wasn’t enough.
They could have hurt him. She’d been too weak to stop them from taking her.
If they’d wanted her boy, Rain, she wouldn’t have been able to stop them.
Her hands clenched into fists, the afghan’s fringe biting into her palms.
“I can’t…”
He needs someone who can protect him.
It can’t be me anymore because I’ve proven I can’t protect myself, never mind him.
“Why not?”
The question was simple, too simple, and Enya’s throat worked, but no words came.
How do I explain it?
How do I make him understand that the fear isn’t just in my head—it’s in my soul?
How did she explain that the girl who had ridden like the wind, who had lived for the thrill of speed and the trust of a thousand-pound animal, was gone?
That all that was left was this shell, this stranger who flinched at shadows and jumped at loud noises, who couldn’t even look at a saddle without feeling the despair she didn’t know how to begin to escape?
“Enya.” Her dad’s voice cracked like a whip as he clearly reached the end of his rope. “You get back on that horse tomorrow, or I swear to God, I’ll sell him myself.”
Her head snapped up. It was one thing for her to make the decision she grappled with herself, and quite another for someone to make it for her.
He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
But she knew he could and he would.
The rocking chair swayed behind her dad as he got to his feet. His face was a storm of emotions, but it was his eyes that found one of the few unbroken pieces inside her and took a hammer to it. His eyes were wet with emotions she didn’t want to name, yet couldn’t escape.
Disappointment.
Fear.
Grief
She couldn’t imagine the emotions that came from watching your child drown and not knowing how to pull them out, but she figured they had to be similar to the ones that came from loving Rain so much it hurt to look at him, knowing nothing would ever be the same again.
“You don’t mean that.”
She knew it was best for Rain. Hadn’t she had similar thoughts? But now that her dad had put those thoughts to words, she wasn’t ready. Would she ever be ready?
I have to be… for Rain.
“I do.” His voice was raw and filled with pain. “I’d rather see him with someone who’ll do right by him than watch you both rot.”
The screen door slammed shut behind him, the sound echoing through her like a gunshot. The cold seeped into her bones, and her fingers grew numb around the edges of the afghan.
He’s right.
He’s always right.
I’m no longer fit to be Rain’s human.
I shouldn’t be here.
Everyone hurts because of me.
She sat there, listening to the distant nickering of the other horses in the barn, the rustle of wind through the bare branches of the oak tree, and the distant hum of the highway. Sounds that should have meant she was home, but instead felt more alien than ever.
How am I supposed to fix this?
How am I supposed to fix me?
I can’t.
I don’t know how.