The Promises We Broke (Willowbrook #4)

Prologue

Gage

T he beeping was the first thing that cut through the fog. Steady, mechanical, relentless. Like a metronome counting down the seconds of a life I'd wasted.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I tried to open my eyes, but the light felt like knives slicing through my skull.

Everything hurt. My leg throbbed with a bone-deep ache that suggested something was very wrong.

My shoulder felt like it was on fire, and the road rash that covered what felt like half my body burned like someone had taken sandpaper to my skin and followed up with salt.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the weight sitting on my chest, pressing down like a concrete slab.

This was what I deserved.

The thought drifted through my mind like smoke, settling into every corner of my consciousness.

Eleven years of running, eleven years of punishing myself with dangerous jobs and dangerous choices, and this was how it ended.

Broken on a hospital bed, machines keeping track of how close I was to finally paying the debt I owed.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent a decade choosing the most dangerous work I could find.

Oil rigs that could explode, fishing boats that could sink, construction sites where one wrong step meant death.

And it was a simple ride through Oregon that had finally done me in.

A driver who'd fallen asleep at the wheel. Wrong place, wrong time.

Or maybe it was exactly the right time.

"...need to contact his family…"

The voice was distant, professional. A doctor, maybe. Or a nurse. Did it matter? I tried to focus on the words, but they kept sliding away from me like water through my fingers. The medication, probably. Painkillers strong enough to keep me from screaming.

Family.

The word hit me harder than the motorcycle hitting the asphalt.

Trace. Booker. Xander. Dex. The brothers I'd abandoned in the middle of the night because I couldn't face what I'd done.

Couldn't face what I'd helped our mother do to Trace and Delaney.

Couldn't live with the knowledge that I'd been the tool she'd wielded to tear apart the one pure thing in my brother's life.

They'd be better off without me. They'd moved on, built lives, probably barely remembered they had another brother who'd been too much of a coward to stick around and face the consequences of his choices.

Trace had probably found someone else by now.

Someone who wouldn't bring the shadow of what Regina had done into their relationship.

Booker and Xander had their own paths, their own futures.

I'd been nothing but a liability to them anyway. The screw-up, the one who'd never quite measured up to what a Farrington was supposed to be. Regina had seen that weakness in me and exploited it, used my desperate need for approval to turn me into her accomplice.

"...motorcycle accident, extensive injuries…"

More voices now. Medical terms I couldn't quite grasp floating past like debris in a river. Compound fracture. Torn ligaments. Possible spinal compression. I tried to hold onto them, tried to make sense of what was happening to me, but consciousness kept slipping away like sand through my fingers.

The pain was getting worse, or maybe the drugs were wearing off.

I could feel every scrape, every bruise, every place where the asphalt had tried to claim pieces of me.

My left leg felt wrong, twisted at an angle that made my stomach lurch when I tried to move it.

My arm was immobilized, strapped down tight against my chest.

But none of that mattered. None of it compared to the relief flooding through me.

Maybe this was how it was supposed to end.

Maybe the universe had finally decided I'd caused enough damage.

No more running from job to job, state to state, trying to outrun the memories that followed me everywhere.

No more waking up in anonymous motel rooms with the crushing weight of guilt as my only companion.

The Portland construction job had been like all the others.

Good pay, dangerous work, no questions asked about my past, because frankly no one gave a damn.

We all had similar stories, and curiosity only invited questions in return.

I'd told myself it was just another stop on the endless road I'd been traveling for eleven years.

Another place to disappear into for a few months before moving on.

But lately, the running had been getting harder.

The jobs more punishing. The isolation more complete.

Maybe I'd been looking for this outcome all along.

The memories crashed over me like a tide I couldn't hold back.

Billie's face the night I left her. The way she'd looked at me like I was her whole world, right before I shattered it.

The letter I'd written her, trying to explain what I couldn't say out loud.

Trying to make her understand that leaving her was the only way to protect her from the poison that lived inside me.

I wondered if she'd even read it. If she'd thrown it away unopened, the way I probably deserved. If she'd moved on, found someone worthy of the love I'd been too broken to accept.

God, I hoped she had.

She deserved everything good in this world.

Deserved someone who could love her without reservations, without the crushing weight of guilt and self-hatred that followed me everywhere I went.

Someone who could give her the life she'd dreamed about when we were kids, sitting by the swimming hole and planning our future like we actually had one.

The irony was that I'd become exactly what Regina always said I was. A disappointment. A failure. The weak link in the Farrington chain. She'd just helped me see it sooner.

"...address listed as a P.O. Box in Nevada…"

"Try the emergency contact."

Emergency contact. I almost laughed, but it hurt too much.

I hadn't updated that information in years.

It probably still listed Xander from when he'd been in medical school, back when I'd still believed my brothers might want to hear from me someday.

Back when I'd still thought there might be a way back from what I'd done.

Xander would answer the phone and get the news that his worthless little brother had finally managed to crash and burn. Literally. He'd probably be confused at first. Why was his name still listed as my emergency contact after all these years? Why was he the one getting this call?

Would he even care? Would any of them?

Part of me hoped they wouldn't. It would be easier if they'd written me off completely, deleted me from their lives like a bad memory. They could keep their perfect lives and their happiness. They could keep pretending the fourth Farrington brother had never existed.

But deep down, in the part of me that still remembered what it felt like to belong somewhere, I knew they would care. That was the worst part. They'd drop everything and come running, because that's what family did. Even for family that didn't deserve it.

Even for family that had betrayed them.

The darkness was pulling at me again, soft and welcoming. It would be so easy to sink into it, to let it take me away from the pain and the crushing weight of everything I'd destroyed. So easy to finally stop running.

I'd been running for eleven years. From Willowbrook, from my brothers, from Billie, even from myself. Never letting anyone get close enough to see the rot inside me.

Maybe this was how it was supposed to end. Maybe the universe had finally decided I'd caused enough damage.

My last coherent thought before the void claimed me was relief.

At least this way, when they got the call, it would finally be over for all of us.

Billie

The rehabilitation center was quiet at seven-thirty on a Tuesday evening, most of the staff long gone for the day.

I was finishing my notes on my last patient of the day—excellent range of motion improvement in her shoulder following her rotator cuff surgery—when my phone rang, the sound sharp in the peaceful silence of my office.

Xander's name on the screen made me smile.

It had been good seeing him so happy with Blake and little Amelia over the past year.

The Farrington family had been through so much, and watching them heal had been like watching a garden bloom after a long, brutal winter.

Xander's recovery from alcoholism, his integration back into the family, his relationship with Blake.

It had all been beautiful to witness from the sidelines.

"Hey, Xander. What's up?"

The silence on the other end lasted too long. When he spoke, his voice was strained in a way that made my blood run cold. I'd heard that tone before, in the ER when I'd worked at Seattle General. The tone that meant bad news was coming.

"Billie, I need to ask you something, and I need you to know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

My pen stilled on the page. Outside my office window, the last rays of sunlight were painting the ranch property in shades of gold, highlighting the horses grazing peacefully in the pasture. Normal. Peaceful. About to be shattered.

"What's wrong?"

"It's Gage."

The name hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I hadn't heard it spoken aloud in... God, how long had it been?

Years. Gage Farrington. The boy who'd been my best friend, my first love, my everything.

The boy who'd disappeared into the night eleven years ago, leaving nothing behind but a letter that had shattered my heart into so many pieces I'd never quite managed to put it back together right.

I'd trained myself not to think his name. Not to wonder where he was, what he was doing, if he was safe. It was easier that way. Cleaner. But hearing it now, from his brother's lips, brought everything rushing back like a dam bursting.