45
Talia felt like she had been hit by a train.
That was the first thought that made it through the dark.
Not a smart thought. Not poetic. Not helpful.
Just pain.
A thick, pulsing, full-body pain that seemed to live in her bones, behind her eyes, beneath her skin, everywhere at once.
Her head throbbed so badly she was afraid even thinking too loudly might crack it open.
Her mouth felt dry. Her limbs felt wrong, heavy, pinned down by weights she could not see.
She tried to open her eyes.
Nothing happened.
At least, nothing useful happened.
Her eyelids fluttered, but her body did not seem interested in obeying her. She tried again, gathering what little strength she had and pushing it toward the simple command.
Open.
Her eyes cracked.
Light stabbed through her.
She shut them again.
A sound came from somewhere nearby. Voices. Low voices. People talking. About her, maybe. Around her. Over her.
She could not make the words behave at first. They drifted in and out, broken apart by the pounding in her head.
“...lucky…”
“...found when they did…”
“...not sure yet…”
Lucky.
Talia wanted to disagree.
Lucky was not seeing a tornado literally drop out of the sky close enough to make the whole world tilt.
Lucky was not feeling her car slide sideways on a slick road while rain hammered the windshield so hard the wipers became a joke. Lucky was not gripping the steering wheel and whispering no, no, no while wind shoved at the car like it had hands.
Memory came in violent flashes.
The sky turning the wrong color.
The warning on her phone shrieking, then losing signal.
Her tires catching, then skidding.
A shape ahead. An old house off the road, dark and sagging, half-hidden by overgrown brush.
She had known better than to stay in the car.
Every safety warning she had ever heard screamed at her at once.
Get low.
Get inside.
Find shelter.
She had scrambled out into rain that felt like thrown gravel. Wind ripped at her clothes and hair, nearly knocking her off balance. The air had that terrifying pressure, like the whole world was holding its breath before it screamed.
She ran toward the house.
The front door was bolted from the outside.
Condemned.
Of course it was condemned. Boards over parts of it. Wood rotted. Windows cracked. The kind of place no one should enter unless the sky was trying to kill them.
She grabbed a rock or brick or something from near the porch.
Her hands had slipped. She remembered that.
The panic of trying to hold onto something while rain blinded her.
Then glass shattered. She knocked enough of it away to crawl through, cutting herself, barely feeling it, only thinking of the sound behind her.
That awful sound.
The freight-train howl everyone talked about and no one truly understood until it hunted them.
Inside, the house smelled like mildew, old wood, damp plaster, and abandonment. She stumbled through darkness and broken furniture, one arm out in front of her, searching for something, anything.
A bathroom.
The old cast iron tub.
She barely reached it. Barely climbed in. Barely curled herself low and covered her head before the howling swallowed the house.
Windows exploded.
Walls groaned.
The air filled with flying things.
She remembered praying, though not words. Just fear thrown upward.
Then something heavy struck her.
After that, nothing.
Nothing until now.
Now there were lights behind her eyelids and voices she could not hold onto.
Now there was pain.
Now there was a hand holding hers.
Talia tried to move her fingers.
She was not sure if she succeeded.
A voice came closer.
Not the doctors.
Not the nurses.
This voice she knew.
Low. Rough. Wrecked around the edges.
Gordon.
Her heart recognized him before her mind fully caught up.
Gordon.
She had been trying to get to the ranch.
To him.
That truth rose through the fog, bright and sharp.
She had not been running away. Not anymore.
She had gone home, grabbed clothes, chargers, and the things she thought she might need, then turned back toward Sunset Springs with tears still drying on her face and love making her foolish enough to drive into worsening weather because she could not wait one more day to tell him.
She had been coming back.
She needed to tell him that.
She needed him to know.
Talia tried to speak.
His name formed somewhere in her mind, whole and desperate.
Gordon.
What came out of her mouth was only a rough grunt.
The hand holding hers tightened.
The voices stopped.
Talia tried again.
Her throat felt scraped raw, and her tongue did not want to move correctly. She pushed through the fog, through the pain, through the weight pressing her down.
“Gor…”
It was barely sound.
Soft and low.
Maybe not even his name.
She tried again.
“Gordon.”
This time, someone heard.
A chair scraped.
The hand holding hers nearly trembled.
“Talia?”
Something touched her face. Warm fingers, careful against her cheek.
“Talia, sweetheart, can you hear me?”
That was Edye.
Talia wanted to answer, but her body was too far away.
She tried to open her eyes again.
Harder this time.
Light flooded in, blinding and white. She saw shapes first. Dark forms against brightness. A ceiling. Movement. A blur leaning over her. Another shape at the side of the bed.
Her vision swam.
She shut her eyes, then forced them open again.
Everything remained bright and blurry.
She felt the touch on her face again.
“Talia,” Edye whispered, voice breaking. “That’s it. Try for us, honey.”
Talia’s lips moved.
She did not want Edye.
Not first.
She needed Gordon.
“Gordon,” she said.
Clearer.
Still weak.
Still broken by effort.
But his name.
The shape beside her shifted fast. A rough breath broke in the room.
“I’m right here.”
The words reached her through everything.
“I’m right here, Talia.”
His hand enclosed hers more firmly, but still carefully, like he was afraid she might shatter. She wanted to squeeze back. Wanted to open her eyes enough to see his face. Wanted to tell him she had turned around. She had come back. She had been on her way to him when the storm caught her.
But words were too heavy.
Her body was too tired.
“I’m right here,” he said again, closer now. His voice shook. “I’m not leaving.”
Talia exhaled.
The sound was small, but it carried something out of her.
Fear, maybe.
Or the part of her that had been searching in the dark for him and finally found him.
Gordon’s fingers brushed her hair back from her temple. “You don’t have to do anything right now. You hear me? Just rest. I’ve got you. I’m going to take care of you.”
Take care of you.
The words settled over her like warmth.
She wanted to argue, maybe. The old Talia would have. The woman who took care of herself because no one else could be trusted to stay. The woman who left before needing became too visible. The woman who had mistaken survival for strength so long she had nearly missed the difference.
But she was too tired to argue.
Too relieved.
Too loved.
The bright lights blurred again, fading at the edges. Her body pulled her downward, back toward sleep, but this time the dark did not feel as empty.
Gordon was there.
His hand held hers.
His voice followed her as she slipped away again.
“I’m here, Talia. I’m right here.”
She let go.
Not of him.
Of the fear.
Her body relaxed, and sleep took her under.