Chapter 14
Lucy
I’m sitting on the couch reading a book when I hear the front door to the ranch house open.
My hours for watching Fern are up for the day, so Theresa took her on a nature walk so I could get some quiet time.
At first, I think it’s them returning from outside, but when I see Tate standing in the threshold, my heart tugs a bit.
I set my book to the side, standing. “Hi,” I greet but then immediately sense the tension in the air around us.
Tate is quiet. Silent. Standing there in the entryway, simply looking at me. My heart races in my chest as I slide through everything that could have happened. Anything I could have done. “Hey …” I try again, taking a tentative step forward, but Tate cuts me off.
“Are you married?” he asks. The question is posed quietly, but it’s as if he shouted it.
I stop in my tracks, my stomach dropping. How did he …? “What—” I begin.
“Are you married?” he repeats, more forcefully this time.
I think of all the things I could say right now. All the excuses, all the justifications, but faced with Tate’s demeanor, with the prospect of lying, with the tension in the room that’s currently choking me, I simply reply, “Yes.”
His face doesn’t change. Not one bit. It’s expressionless, void—like the day I met him—and it’s just now that I realize how far has walls have crumbled in the past few weeks. And that they’re now back up. Keeping me out.
“Tate,” I begin, stepping toward him. “Let me explain.”
He holds up a hand, and I find myself obeying his silent command. “We’re done.”
I flinch at his words. It’s strange—I’ve been yelled at, screamed at, much worse, and yet this hurts more than maybe anything ever has.
“I want to fire you too, but I know that’s not fair. We shouldn’t have even dated in the first place. So you can stay if you want. But anything that was going on between us is over.” He’s stating everything like a robot, staring ahead, barely looking at me, his arms rigid at his sides.
“Please let me explain,” I beg, unable to stop myself from crossing the room.
But Tate shakes his head, turns on his heel, and walks out the front door. I follow him just in time to see his truck door slamming and hear the engine starting. And then he’s pulling out and driving off.
I stand there in the doorway watching him go, feeling sicker as the seconds tick by.
I whirl around, staggering back into the house as tears prick the corners of my eyes. As my breathing speeds up, as my heart races.
Tate is gone. Maybe the only good man I’ve ever been with. And he was justified in everything he said. I shouldn’t have lied. I shouldn’t have kept this from him.
Because he’s right. I am married. As much as it was the biggest mistake of my life, Matthew is my husband. And I should’ve been honest from the start.
But more than that—more than my breaking heart—my mind flits to Matthew. How did Tate find out? Who would have told him? And if Tate knows about Matthew, presumably someone knows that I’m here at Thatcher Ranch. And what if that information gets back to Matthew? What if he knows where I am?
My vision is blurring both with tears and lack of oxygen. I reach out my hands, finding the kitchen table to steady myself as I suck in breath after breath.
No, no, no, no.
I’d felt so safe. Like Thatcher Ranch was my haven. Like Tate would protect me. But everything is crumbling away, and here I am alone again.
Alone for him to find me.
“Lucy?”
The concerned voice pulls me from my tortured thoughts, and I turn to see Theresa and Fern standing in the room.
I suck in a shaky breath, trying to compose myself.
“Honey, why don’t you go play in your room?” Theresa leans down to suggest to Fern. Fern seems a bit reluctant, possibly sensing my mood, but eventually heads off to her room.
I feel Theresa’s arm around my shoulder, guiding me to sit at the kitchen table, and she sits next to me. “What’s going on?” she asks gently. “Are you okay?”
I swallow, sniffling back tears and still trying to gather myself. “I … hurt Tate,” I finally say. “And he’s angry.”
Theresa hums in understanding. “I’m sure everything will be fine,” she says confidently. “He probably just needs time.”
I’m shaking my head before she even finishes her sentence. “No, it’s bad. I lied, and he’s angry, and … it’s over.”
Theresa seems shocked by this and is quiet.
“Which means I should probably go. I mean, he didn’t fire me, but I shouldn’t stay here.”
Theresa reaches out to place a hand over mine on the table, and I look up to meet her gaze.
“Lucy,” she says softly. “I obviously don’t know what happened, but …
” She takes a deep breath. “I’ve never seen Tate as happy as he’s been since you’ve arrived.
Or Fern,” she adds with a smile that tugs on my heart, making it hurt even more.
“Whatever this is, I think you should stay and work it out. If you want to, that is.”
I stare at her for a long moment. A moment that stretches and stretches until finally, everything bursts. Everything I’ve been holding in. Not just these last few minutes, but for years. The things I’ve been too afraid to tell my friends, my family, maybe even myself.
A sob shudders out of me, and Theresa grips my hand tighter.
And I don’t know if it’s my anguish in this moment, all the time that has passed, the fact that Theresa feels like a safe space far from my old home, or everything all combined, but I find myself telling her everything.
That I married Matthew right out of high school because we were young and I thought I was in love.
That he was never “that bad” to me until years down the line.
And that the abuse started slow, like almost everything does.
It started with mean comments, then yelling, then neglect, then physical harm—moving along this sliding scale so slowly that by the time I realized I was the frog in boiling water, it was too late.
That somehow, leaving him felt like an impossibility. A pipe dream I fantasized about for years. Something I tried, only to be sucked back in—sometimes physically.
Until finally, I knew the only way out was to run away. To leave everything and everyone behind and get so far away that he could never find me.
Only it seems that dream has failed as well.
And by the time I’ve expelled all my thoughts and tears, I find myself wrapped in Theresa’s arms, my head on her shoulder as she runs her hand through my hair, down my back, over and over, rocking me back and forth as if I’m one of her own children.
And she says the words I’d hoped would come from Tate, but it still means the world to hear them. “You’re safe here, Lucy,” she promises me. “You’re safe.”