Chapter 24
sarah
Ikeep Evie close, my hand wrapped tight around hers. I continue to hold her even after we reach the stables, where I feel just a little safer, away from him.
Evie doesn’t notice how messed up I am. She’s too busy talking about the horses, about Bandit, about everything that isn’t shattering me inside.
Bandit is snuffling around. He’d been barking at Landon, but he followed us, protecting us.
I couldn’t let that man touch this innocent baby. I couldn’t let her breathe the same air as him. I couldn’t….
“Dr. K, do you think we could teach Bandit some tricks?” Evie asks and then looks at her new dog. I let her go from my tight embrace—she has no reason to be afraid, and she shouldn’t be burdened with my fears.
Evie stands close to her dog and looks down at him with focus. “Bandit, sit.”
Bandit continues to stand, wagging his tail, his eyes filled with excitement. He’s starting to respond to his name, but that’s about it.
She looks at me. “He’s not sitting.”
I take a deep breath. I don’t know if I can form the words. I have none.
“We gotta teach him, Princess,” Dodge speaks from behind me, and I gasp, putting my hand on my heart.
He looks at me. His eyes filled with regret and pain. “I’m sorry. I…didn’t mean to….”
I shake my head. Swallow. “It’s okay.” The words are a whisper, hoarse. Tears are clogged in my throat.
“Sarah?” Dodge asks softly.
I wrap my arms around myself. I’m shivering. I feel lost. I knew it could happen. I knew I might see him again. I didn’t think I’d become the scared girl he’d violated. He’d broken.
“No, Landon. Stop it. No. Please, no.”
“Dr. K—” Evie begins, but Dodge smoothly chimes, “Hey, Princess, maybe you and I work with Bandit. What do you think about that?”
“Do you know how to train a dog?” Her eyes are wide with awe.
“I sure do. I used to have a dog when I was your age.” His eyes are on me as he talks. I can feel his concern, his sympathy, but I don’t have the energy to respond.
“I…I need some air,” I say in a low voice.
His gaze softens with understanding. “You want us with you?”
My breath shudders. “No…you stay with Evie.” And then, as my legs begin to move, I look at him wildly, grab Evie’s hand. “Don’t let her close to him.”
“I won’t.” He nods once, and the weight of that nod presses into my bones. I don’t have to explain who I’m talking about. He knows.
I release Evie’s hand. It feels like tearing out a piece of myself. I can’t breathe in here, not with the scent of hay and leather closing in on me, not with the memory of Landon’s eyes flashing when he saw me.
I go through the stables blindly. I keep walking away from the stables, the house, and that man. I don’t know where I’m going. Just away.
The mountains rise in the distance, eternal and unmoved, blue-grey and solemn.
I stop at the edge of a cliff and glance down—it’s a long, sheer drop.
Once, I might’ve wanted that fall. Once, I thought ending the horror was the only way out.
But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m the woman who learned to live with it.
I lift my gaze from the abyss to the jagged, dramatic peaks of the Elk Mountains. Beautiful, fierce, proud. Home to the Maroon Bells, the most photographed mountains in North America. They’re more than scenery to me—they’re comfort.
I love the mountains. They’ve stood for millennia. Earthquakes, storms, fire, time itself—and still they endure. Their strength inspires me to believe that I can, too.
The tears come hot and fast, spilling before I can stop them, making me feel small. Pathetic.
I hear my therapist’s voice in my head: “You are tough, Sarah—but you are also human. The fact that you still respond to what was done to you doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. Triggers don’t mean you’re broken. They mean you survived.”
I bow my head, unable to keep the broken sounds from tearing free.
I cry for the girl I used to be, for the years stolen from me, for the child I just pushed into Dodge’s care to protect her from the monster in polished boots.
I cry because Cade never believed me. Because part of me still aches for him. Because all of it feels too heavy to bear.
The mountains don’t move. The wind doesn’t answer. It’s just me, breaking apart under the weight of it all.
My hands press into my waist, elbows jutting out as if I can hold myself together, but I can’t. I bend forward, sobs ripping through me, tearing out of my throat in jagged, ugly sounds I can’t swallow back. My whole body shakes.
Arms close around me, and I see bruised hands. I’m not afraid of this man, this touch. This is Cade. I know him. I know his smell. He holds me—my back to his chest. For a heartbeat, I let myself fall against him. For a heartbeat, I pretend it’s safe.
And then I scream, pulling away from him. The sound bursts out of me like fire, clawing up my throat.
He jerks back, his arms falling away as if I burned him. My cries echo against the mountainside, shrill. He stumbles a step away, his face pale, eyes wide.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking, ragged.
I shake my head so hard my braid whips my face. “No. Don’t. Don’t you dare.”
“Sarah—”
“You ruined me.” The words fly out, sharp as glass, cutting my own tongue on the way. “You ruined my life. You took everything from me when you looked me in the eyes and called me a liar.”
He blinks, and tears spill, fast and hot, carving lines down his cheeks. “I know. I know, Dove,” he chokes out. “I love you, baby. I never stopped.”
I let out a bitter, ragged laugh, a sneer twisted through tears. “You don’t even know what that means.” My voice trembles, rising. “Back then, you were a kid. Fine. You didn’t understand. But now? What’s your excuse for how you’ve been treating me now?”
His shoulders sag, his mouth trembles. “I don’t have one.”
Silence falls, heavy, unbearable. Only the sound of both of us breathing, breaking.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he confesses, his words so faint I almost miss them. “I couldn’t believe what you said about him.”
“But you believed what he said about me,” I fling back at him. And a fresh onslaught of pain rips through me. “You believed him. You believed him. You believed him.” I am shouting now.
He comes closer but doesn’t touch me. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You didn’t bust a fence post, Cade. You. Killed. Me. Sorry doesn’t cut it, cowboy.”
Tears are streaming down his face. He isn’t wiping them. His blue eyes reflect his pain. I have no doubt he’s hating himself right now. I have no doubt he feels guilty as hell.
I breathe slowly and narrow my eyes at him. “What happened, huh? How come you believe me?”
He looks at me, cut open, eyes full of horror. “I asked him. I saw it on his face.”
I study him carefully. “You asked him?”
He dips his chin, uncertain. “I…never asked him if he raped you. I finally did, and I knew from how he answered. I knew. I know.”
My voice quivers. “You never asked him?”
His face is a map of suffering, every line showing it. He shakes his head slowly, as if it’s too heavy.
“Not once?” I demand.
There’s a hollow ache in his eyes when he looks at me. “No.”
My temper ignites, sudden and sharp. “You just believed him?”
“I did.”
I scoff. “But now you believe me?”
“Yes.” His face is a map of suffering, every line showing it.
Air saws in and out of me. The truth I’ve begged for all these years is finally here, but it’s ash in my mouth.
“If you’d helped me,” I tell him, my voice deadly as I hold his gaze, “if you’d believed me, there wouldn’t be a string of women after me.”
The words hit him like bullets. He sways like he’s going to fall. “What?”
“There are others.” I take satisfaction in seeing all the color leave his face. “I was the first, but there are others.”
“How…how do you know?”
I let out a harsh laugh. “Because, unlike me, there are others who are not cowards, who didn’t just run away with their tail between their legs because their father and boyfriend branded them a whore. They came forward. They told their truth.”
He frowns, blinks, like he’s processing what I said, and the words don’t make sense.
“I am, too. Now.”
His legs go slack, and he sinks down onto his haunches.
I stare at him, my body vibrating, my throat raw. I feel a truth settle cold and hard in me: I am strong enough to stand. He is not.
“He rapes women?” He’s staring at the ground like it’s going to have the answers.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
I suck in a breath. “I’ve been told there are at least eight—but he’s paid some off, silenced them with NDAs. And they suspect there are more.”
“They?”
“Journalists. Law enforcement.”
He drops his face into his hands.
That’s when I push the knife deeper. “But those are the ones who are alive, Cade.”
He lifts his eyes to meet mine. They’re drenched in loss and grief. “No,” he whimpers.
“Yes,” I goad him. “There’s one who died by suicide.”
“Like you almost did,” he says more to himself than to me.
“I’m going to tell the world, Cade. I’m going to destroy your brother, your family name, and you can’t stop me.”
“Dove…not gonna stop you. Not gonna—”
“You can’t,” I scream at him, cutting him off. “You can’t stop me this time. No one can. I will speak my truth.”
“Dove…,” he starts again, but I turn, walk away from him, each step like ripping skin from bone.
I look over my shoulder at him on the ground, and I hope he feels it slip under him. “I carry the burden of those other girls, Cade. Now you can, too.”