Chapter 7 Lucy
Lucy
Dangerous ones. The kind that makes it harder to leave when the time comes. And it always comes.
I pull the sleeping bag up to my chin, the fabric rough against my skin, and try not to think about how it felt to be useful again today. To be seen as more than just another drifter passing through.
Or the way Colt looked at me when I handed him his coffee this morning. Like I was something precious he didn't quite trust himself to touch.
Outside, the clinic's security light cuts harsh white rectangles across the empty asphalt.
Montana nights in late March still bite with winter's teeth, and frost is already forming on my van's windows.
I'd parked here because it feels safer than the truck stops and rest areas I've been using. Close enough to civilization to deter trouble, far enough from Highway 2 that nobody pays attention to one more vehicle gathering dust.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
It has nothing to do with wanting to be close to the place where, for eight hours a day, I get to pretend I have a normal life. Where I get to pretend I'm Lucy Reid, temporary veterinary assistant, instead of Lucinda Kensington-Reid, runaway heiress with a target on her back.
I'm wearing my usual sleep uniform. Gray sweatpants and an oversized hoodie that's seen better days, thick wool socks, and sneakers. I learned that lesson the hard way six months ago in a truck stop outside Billings, when some drunk asshole decided a lone woman in a van looked like easy prey.
Running barefoot across broken asphalt at two in the morning, gravel cutting into my feet while diesel fumes burned my lungs, taught me comfort is a luxury I can't afford. Being ready to move is survival.
Always ready to move. That's been my life for over a year now.
The thought makes my chest tight with something that might be loneliness, might be exhaustion. In the endless string of highway towns and gas station bathrooms, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes I think they're the same thing.
I'm just starting to drift off when I hear it. A sharp clang of metal against metal that cuts through the Montana stillness like a gunshot, followed by a string of creative cursing.
I sit up, instantly alert, every nerve ending firing the way they've been trained to for over a year.
Through the van's back window, I can see the external staircase that leads to Colt's apartment, dimly lit by the harsh security light.
A dark figure is sprawled across the metal steps like a broken marionette.
My heart slams against my ribs. Someone's hurt. In trouble. Or worse.
Another curse echoes across the empty lot, this one more frustrated than pained, rough with alcohol and exhaustion. I recognize that voice even through the slur.
Colt.
I'm out of the van before my brain catches up, muscle memory taking over. My sneakers hit the asphalt without a sound, as I move toward the staircase. The cold night air slices through my hoodie like a blade.
But all I can focus on is the man struggling to untangle himself from the metal steps, muttering under his breath in a way that tells me he's three sheets to the wind and fighting gravity.
"Hey," I call out softly, not wanting to startle him into falling the rest of the way down. "Are you okay?"
He looks up, and in the harsh wash of the security light, I can see his eyes are unfocused. Drunk. Very, very drunk.
"Well, hello there, beautiful," he says, his voice rough velvet and whiskey, completely different from his usual professional restraint. He squints at me like he's trying to bring me into focus through a fog. "Didn't know angels made house calls in Montana. Must be my lucky night."
Heat floods my cheeks despite the bite of cold air. "Colt, it's me. Lucy."
"Lucy?" He blinks several times, slow and deliberate, and I watch recognition filter through the alcohol haze. "Lucy. Christ, what are you..." His brow furrows in confusion, then concern. "What are you doing out here? It's almost midnight, sweetheart."
The endearment hits me like a physical touch, unexpected and warm.
Panic flutters in my chest like a trapped bird. I can't tell him I've been sleeping in my van in his parking lot for three nights running. That would lead to questions I can't answer, concern I can't accept, offers of help I can't afford to take.
"I was just—" I start, then realize he's trying to lever himself upright again and swaying dangerously close to tumbling backward down the metal steps. "Hold on, let me help you."
I climb up to where he's sitting and slide my arm around his waist, trying to ignore the way he feels solid and warm against my side, like an anchor in a world that's been nothing but motion for too long. "Come on, let's get you upstairs."
"You're so pretty," he says, his voice soft and wondering as he leans into me, his weight both familiar and foreign. "Been trying not to notice for three days, but Christ, Lucy. You're beautiful."
My breath catches in my throat. "You're drunk."
"Very drunk," he agrees, almost cheerful about it.
"But not blind. You have the most distracting eyes. Like dark chocolate with little flecks of gold that catch the light. Makes a man want to do stupid things."
"Stupid things?" The question slips out before I can stop it, breathless and wanting.
"Like this," he whispers, and his hand comes up to cup my cheek with callused fingers that are surprisingly gentle.
For a moment, we're frozen there on the metal staircase, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone while his eyes search my face like he's memorizing every detail.
Time stops.
The cold Montana air, the harsh security light, the metal grating beneath us, it all disappears until there's nothing but his touch and the way he's looking at me.
My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I'm sure he can hear it, and every rational thought in my head is screaming at me to pull away, to run, to protect myself.
But I don't want to. God help me, I want him to kiss me. I want to know what it would feel like to be kissed by someone who looks at me like I'm worth something. Like I'm not just another problem to be solved or complication to be managed, but something precious he's afraid to break.
"Lucy," he breathes my name like a prayer, and his face starts to move toward mine.
I should stop this. Should remember that he's drunk and I'm practically homeless and this is exactly the kind of complication that gets people like me caught. Should remember that caring about someone means giving them the power to destroy you.
But when his lips are just a breath away from mine, when I can feel the warmth of his skin and see the way his eyes have gone dark with something that has nothing to do with alcohol, I forget every lesson I've learned about keeping my distance.
"Colt," I whisper back, his name a confession.
He leans closer, and I can almost taste the promise on his lips—
And then he sways.
The whiskey finally catches up with him, gravity wins, and the spell shatters like glass.
I catch him before he can fall, my hands fisting in his jacket as he steadies himself against me, solid and warm and suddenly too heavy.
"Sorry," he mumbles, blinking hard as reality crashes back in. "Thought... you're so young, and I'm such a fucking mess."
The disappointment that crashes through me is so sharp it steals my breath. But underneath it lurks something even more dangerous.
Relief that I don't have to make a choice I'm not ready for, relief that I can keep pretending this is just a job and not the first time in a long time that I've wanted to stay somewhere.
"Come on," I say, forcing my voice to stay steady even as my hands shake. "Let's get you inside before you freeze to death out here."
He lets me help him up the rest of the stairs, leaning on me more than he probably needs to but not more than I want him to.
His weight feels good against my side, solid and real in a way that terrifies me.
At the top, he fumbles in his pockets for his keys, cursing under his breath when they slip through his fingers like water.
I catch them before they can fall through the metal grating to the asphalt below. "Here, let me."
His apartment is exactly what I expected and somehow worse. Sparse, functional, with the kind of carefully maintained emptiness that speaks of a man who's given up on making a home.
A leather couch that's seen better days, a coffee table buried under veterinary journals and empty beer bottles, a kitchen that looks like it's never been used for anything more complicated than reheating takeout.
It's the home of someone who's just surviving, not living.
"You don't have to—" he starts, but I'm already guiding him toward what I assume is the bedroom, his arm draped over my shoulders.
"Yes, I do," I tell him firmly. "You can barely stand straight."
The bedroom is as bare as the rest of the apartment. Just a queen-sized bed with rumpled navy sheets and a dresser with nothing on top. No photos, no personal items, nothing that speaks of a life beyond work and solitude.
I help him sit on the edge of the bed, then kneel between his legs to untie his boots.
"You don't have to take care of me," he says quietly, and there's something raw in his voice that makes me look up. The flirty drunk is gone, replaced by someone who looks lost and lonely and bone-deep tired. "Nobody has to take care of me."
The words hit me like a punch to the chest. I know that feeling. The certainty that you're on your own, that needing someone is a luxury you can't afford.
"I know," I tell him, pulling off his boots and setting them neatly beside the bed. "But I want to."
The words hang in the air between us, too honest and too revealing.
I help him lie down, pulling the heavy quilt up to his chin like my mother used to do for me when I was small and scared of the monsters in the dark. He watches me with those green eyes that see too much, even clouded with whiskey and exhaustion.
"You make everything quiet," he says softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Didn't know I needed that until you showed up."
My chest tightens with emotion I'm not ready to name, dangerous feelings I can't afford to feel. "Get some sleep."
I slip into his bathroom and find aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Fill a glass with water from the tap and set both on the nightstand beside his bed, and turn on the small lamp in case he wakes up disoriented.
By the time I turn back to check on him, his breathing has already evened out into the deep rhythm of sleep.
He looks younger like this, less guarded. The lines of stress and grief around his eyes have smoothed out, and his mouth, the one that almost kissed me, the one that called me beautiful, is soft and relaxed. Vulnerable in a way he'd never allow when awake.
My hand moves before I can stop it, tucking a strand of golden-brown hair that had fallen across his forehead.
I lean down and press the softest kiss to the spot where my fingers touched, barely a whisper of contact.
It's not a kiss he'll remember, but I'll carry it like a secret pressed against my heart.
"Sleep well, cowboy," I whisper against his skin.
The walk back to my van feels endless, each step taking me further from the warmth I just left behind.
The Montana night cuts through my hoodie like a blade, sharp enough to make my eyes water against the wind that carries the scent of snow from the distant peaks.
Or maybe that's not the cold at all.
I climb back into my van and pull the sleeping bag around me, but the narrow bed feels smaller than usual. Less like a sanctuary, more like a prison cell.
One I built myself, lock by lock, mile by mile.
Through the small window, I can see the warm golden glow from Colt's nightstand lamp, a beacon in the darkness that calls to everything I'm not allowed to want.
For the first time since I started running, I let myself imagine what it would be like to stay. To wake up in a real bed, in a real room, next to someone who looks at me like I matter more than my inheritance or my last name.
To have morning coffee and inside jokes and the luxury of making plans that stretch beyond the next tank of gas or the next place to hide.
To have someone who might catch me when I fall instead of someone hunting me because I ran.
The thought terrifies me more than uncle Richard, more than the threat of going back to Rosewood, more than any of the practical dangers I've been running from for over a year.
Because wanting those things means hoping for them, and hope is the most dangerous luxury of all.
Hope is what makes you careless. Hope is what gets you caught.
Sleep, when it finally comes, is filled with dreams of green eyes and gentle hands and the taste of almost-kisses in the Montana night. Dreams of waking up somewhere I belong instead of somewhere I'm hiding.
And when I wake up in the morning, still alone in my van with frost covering the windows like prison bars, I pretend the ache in my chest is just from sleeping on the narrow mattress.
Not from wanting to be brave enough to stay.
Not from wanting to be brave enough to want someone who might want me back.
Not from the growing certainty that leaving Briarhaven might be the hardest thing I've ever done.