Chapter 14 Lucy
Lucy
I grip the steering wheel like it's the only thing keeping me tethered to earth as I navigate the winding mountain road toward Blackwell Ranch.
Windows down, letting in that crisp Montana air that still surprises me, mixed pine and wildflowers and something indefinably clean that you'll never find in New York City.
Six weeks. Six weeks until I can file the petition myself, challenge the guardianship, maybe claw my life back from uncle Richard's greedy hands. I repeat my daily countdown mantra.
But right now, I've got more immediate problems than legal documents and court dates. Like the fact that I'm about to face a man whose texts are still sitting in my phone like live grenades, and I'm driving straight into the blast radius.
Still thinking about that moment in the barn.
God, so am I.
Can't stop replaying it, the solid heat of Beau behind me on the ATV, his hands sure and gentle when he'd lifted me down. The way he'd looked at me in the barn afterward, like I was something precious and bewildering all at once.
Sweet dreams, Sunshine.
Nobody's called me sunshine since Mom died. She used to whisper it when the treatments made her sick, when I'd curl up beside her hospital bed. "My little ray of sunshine, even on the darkest days." The fact that Beau sees that in me...
But it's not just Beau making my chest tight and my thoughts scatter. It's Colt with his wounded green eyes and that crooked smile, the way he growls "Shortie" like it's something sacred.
Yesterday when he'd pinned me against the supply cabinet, I'd wanted nothing more than to drag him down and taste that smart mouth of his.
And Gabriel. Jesus, Gabriel who almost kissed me last night, who looks at me like he's trying to solve me, save me, and consume me all at once. Whose jacket I definitely slept in because it smells like cedar and promises I can't afford to believe.
Three men. Each one calling to a different broken piece of me, and I want them all with a desperation that should probably scare me.
That's not normal, the voice in my head whispers.
The same voice that wondered if uncle Richard was right, if I really was unstable.
If wanting too much, feeling too much, was a symptom of something broken in my brain.
The memory hits like ice water. Men in white coats appearing in my bedroom late at night, calm voices and clipboards while I screamed that I wasn't sick.
Uncle Richard's forged medical records and his pet judge making it all legal, all clean.
Rosewood Behavioral Institute, buried in the mountains where no one could hear you scream, designed to "reform" wealthy kids whose families found them inconvenient.
Where I met Matty, a senator's son whose only crime was loving the wrong gender, whose parents thought they could torture the gay out of him.
Who taught me that survival sometimes means playing along until you can run, and who still sends coded messages through Craigslist personals to make sure I'm alive.
That's not normal. I shake my head hard, trying to dislodge the doubt.
Gaslighting. Matty taught me that word. Showed me how they'd twisted every normal reaction to loss into symptoms of mental illness.
How my rage at being caged became "violent tendencies.
" How my tears for Mom became "emotional dysregulation.
" How my insistence that I didn't belong there became "lack of insight into her condition. "
Matty kept me sane when sanity was a luxury they were trying to steal. Helped me plan, helped me run, helped me get this van that became my freedom and my cage all at once.
But sometimes the doubt creeps back in like smoke under a door. What kind of person fantasizes about belonging to three men? What kind of girl dreams about being shared, cherished, fought over?
Emma's casual words from last night echo back: "They were together. All three of them."
Colt and Beau had shared someone before. Loved her as a unit, not rivals. It had been real enough that Emma mentioned it like unusual but not unthinkable. If they could do that, if that kind of love was possible...
My death grip on the steering wheel eases slightly. Maybe I'm not broken. Maybe I'm just a girl who's been alone too long, who's found three damaged men that call to different parts of her equally damaged heart.
But Gabriel seems like the traditional type. One woman, one man, one perfectly normal relationship that doesn't involve complications. Then again, Gabriel's got depths I haven't even begun to—
The impact hits like a sledgehammer to the spine.
My head snaps back against the headrest as the van lurches forward, heart instantly hammering against my ribs.
Rearview mirror shows a white pickup with rust eating through the paint. Two men in the cab, faces I don't recognize but expressions I do. Predator smiles. Hunter eyes.
New York streets taught me plenty. Rule number one: never stop for an accident that feels wrong.
I floor it.
The clinic van wasn't built for speed, but terror makes up for what horsepower lacks. I take the next turn onto a side road too fast, tires shrieking against asphalt. They follow, engine roaring as they close the distance like wolves scenting blood.
Another hit, harder this time. The van fishtails, and I fight the wheel with everything I've got, barely keeping us on the road. My mind races through options while my hands shake on the wheel.
I yank right onto a forestry road I've never seen before. Gravel sprays like bullets, dust clouds billowing behind us. The truck follows, gaining ground on terrain they obviously know better than I do.
Think, Lucy. Think like you're still that street-smart kid from NY.
But thinking time evaporates when they ram me again, sending the van careening off the narrow road. Trees rush at me through the windshield.
I have just enough time to think this is really going to hurt before the world explodes.
The airbag hits me like a fist to the face, white and suffocating. My ears ring like church bells. Copper floods my mouth. Everything hurts, but I'm conscious, which has to count for something.
Rough hands drag me from the wreckage before I can orient myself, shaking me like a rag doll. The man's face swims in my vision, hollow cheeks, meth-rotted teeth, eyes like black holes.
"Where is it?" His breath reeks of cigarettes and chemicals, pupils blown wide as dinner plates. "I know you got it!"
"I don't—" His hand cracks across my face, snapping my head sideways. Stars explode behind my eyelids.
"Don't fucking lie to me! Check the van!" This to his partner, who's already tearing through the cab like a rabid animal. "It's gotta be here. He said it would be in the vet's van."
My brain struggles to process through the pain. The vet's van. They were waiting for it. This isn't random road rage, it's planned.
"What are you looking for?" I manage through split lips. "The antibiotics? Is someone sick?"
His laugh sounds like breaking glass. "You stupid bitch. Can't get high off antibiotics." His fist drives into my stomach, folding me in half. I hit the ground gasping, and he follows up with a kick to my ribs that sends fire through my chest.
Dirt and pine needles grind against my cheek. Blood pools in my mouth. This is bad. This is uncle Richard bad, Rosewood bad, the kind of bad where girls disappear and nobody asks questions.
"Nothing here!" The partner emerges from the van, face twisted with junkie rage. "Tore the whole fucking thing apart. No hidden stash, no secret compartments, nothing!"
"Check again. She's gotta know where it's hidden."
They turn back to the van with renewed fury, ripping out seats and tearing off panels like they're dismantling my life piece by piece.
I force myself to breathe through the agony. To think past the voice screaming that I'm caught, trapped, about to be caged again. But this isn't Rosewood. These aren't orderlies with clipboards and fake smiles. I'm not helpless.
Slowly, fighting every screaming muscle, I push myself up. The world tilts sickeningly, but they're distracted, cursing at each other as they destroy Colt's van looking for drugs that were never there.
I run.
Not gracefully. Not fast. But I run like my life depends on it, because it absolutely does. Into the trees, branches clawing at my clothes, stumbling over roots and rocks that might as well be landmines. Behind me, a roar of rage.
"The bitch is running! Get her!"
Footsteps crash through the underbrush. They're faster, stronger, not bleeding from multiple head wounds. But I'm smaller, more desperate, and I know exactly what cages feel like. I won't go back to one. Ever.
The ground vanishes.
One second I'm running, the next I'm falling into empty air.
The ravine opens like a hungry mouth, swallowing me whole.
I tumble down the steep slope, world spinning in a kaleidoscope of pain and terror.
Rocks tear at my skin. Branches snap against my ribs.
Something in my wrist gives with a wet pop that sends lightning up my arm.
I hit bottom hard, momentum carrying me forward into the creek with a splash that knocks what little breath I have left from my lungs. My head connects with something solid and the world explodes into white-hot agony.
Darkness creeps in from the edges like spilled ink. Above me, so impossibly far above, voices shout threats about finding me, finishing what they started.
Six weeks, I think hazily. Just needed six more weeks.
Creek water soaks through my clothes, stealing what warmth I have left. Cold. So goddamn cold. Or maybe that's shock setting in. Hard to tell when everything's going fuzzy around the edges.
I think about Darcy, sick and waiting for medicine that'll never come.
About three men who might wonder where I went, or might just assume I ran like everyone expects damaged goods to do.
Footsteps pace along the ravine's edge. Hunting.
"You see her down there?"
"Too steep to tell. But that fall? Rocks don't kill her, exposure will."
"We gotta bounce. Someone might've heard the crash."
"What about the stash?"
"Forget it. Wasn't here anyway."
Their voices fade, but I can't tell if they're actually leaving or if my hearing's going the way of everything else. The pain, the cold, the bone-deep fear, all of it dissolving into gray nothing.
Sunshine, Beau had called me, voice soft with wonder.
Shortie, from Colt, rough with affection he doesn't know how to show.
Trouble, in Gabriel's stern voice that promises safety I'm not sure I'll live to claim.
The last thing I see through the canopy of pine and aspen is the Montana sky, endless and blue and heartbreakingly beautiful.
Then nothing at all.