Chapter 1
ONE
brIAR, ONE WEEK LATER
I wait for him to come back.
That’s my first mistake.
Sitting on the ground among the trees near the trailhead for hours before eventually sheltering in an old hunter’s cabin I never paid much attention to.
Because whenever I was here before, I was too busy getting lost in the beauty around me.
Too busy loving Brooks.
But all I see now is darkness.
And now I’ve spent a week waiting for him to come to his senses, to walk through the door, to tell me this has all been some sort of horrible mistake and he’s so damned sorry.
He’ll beg me to take him back.
And I’ll make him sweat—but only for a few minutes.
Because I love Brooks, love the life we’ve built, the man he’s become—
Except that man looked at me with ice in his eyes just before he walked away from me on our wedding day.
And he hasn’t come back through the door.
He hasn’t come back period. Not that day, not over the last week, not today.
After Brooks’s car pulled away, Jace tried to get me to go home with him, to dry off and warm up, to change my clothes and take a minute.
But I refused.
I fought.
And eventually, he left me in the rain, in the trees. Though, not for long. He came back…and carried me bodily into the cabin, stocking the place with some groceries, blankets, and fresh clothes—clothes I refused to change into until this morning.
Because I was holding out hope that Brooks would come back.
The letter beside me on the bed makes it clear he won’t.
It contains information about an account in my name, an apartment, also in my name, and strict instructions not to come to his house.
He won’t see me.
He’ll have security remove me if I so much as approach the gate.
Because I don’t need to go back—all of my belongings have been packed up and delivered to my new apartment.
He’s boxing me up and shipping me off.
Discarding me.
My lungs hitch and my eyes fill with tears.
But this isn’t the first time that’s happened to me, isn’t the first time I’ve had to start over.
I know how to survive.
I leave the letter on the bed, slip my feet into the sneakers Jace brought, and though I want to leave everything behind—a kernel of hate for anything that involves Brooks growing in my stomach—I know I need to be smart.
So, I pack up the clothes, the food, even the envelope of cash—though it makes that kernel inside me grow.
I tuck them all carefully into a bag, along with my purse.
Then I leave, hiking my way out of the mountains and down into the little town.
I take a bus to the city.
I find a place to stay. A job.
And for a while, everything is fine. I’m sad. I’m heartbroken. But I’m alive and safe and moving forward.
Eventually, though, even that bit of peace is broken.
It starts with a woman with model-like looks and long blonde hair approaching me, telling me of a “fabulous opportunity,” and when I blow her off, a different approach is made by a man who doesn’t like it when I tell him no.
At all.
That’s when the harassment begins. When my life starts falling apart—one friend, one job, one apartment at a time. Until I’m desperate and alone, and when I’m ripped out of my bed in the middle of the night, I know I have no choice but to follow the orders given to me.
To survive, I do things that haunt my dreams, that fill me with regret.
And all the while…
That kernel of hate inside me continues to grow.