Chapter 46
Wes ran Caleb’s truck hard through the mountain curves.
Remington sat in the passenger seat, upright and alert in the way he got when he sensed something was wrong. The dog hadn’t needed to be told. He’d simply understood.
He mentally calculated a timeline. Ruby’s house was an hour from Refuge Cove. From what he understood, Rowan had left Refuge Cove at least an hour and twenty minutes ago.
He pushed harder on the accelerator.
His phone rang through the truck’s speakers. Caleb.
He answered immediately, praying for an update. “Tell me something good.”
“I can’t.” Caleb’s voice was tight. “Rowan’s still not picking up. Naomi tried twice. Nothing.” A pause. “Wes, why would she go out there alone today of all days?”
“She had a reason.” Wes kept his voice even. “I just don’t know what it was yet.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s not supposed to.” He checked the mirror out of habit, then looked back at the road. “How far out are you?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe less. Naomi’s driving.”
“I’ll get there first. I’ll call you when I’m inside.”
“Sounds good. I’ll call the police in the meantime.”
They ended the call.
Remington shifted in the seat beside him, and Wes reached over and rested his hand on the dog’s neck. The contact pulled him back from the edge of the thing he was trying not to think about.
He thought about it anyway.
He’d spent years convincing himself that Rowan King was somewhere in the world living a life that didn’t include him, and that it was okay. The mindset shift hadn’t been easy. But it had been manageable. Their distance alone had made it easier to accept.
Then she’d nearly run him off a mountain road, and every careful wall he’d built in the years since California had come down in about forty-eight hours.
He wasn’t ready to lose her again.
He especially wasn’t ready to lose her like this.
Don’t go there, he told himself. Not yet. Stay on the road. Stay on the problem.
The truck crested a rise, and the road straightened ahead of him for a good quarter mile before curving left toward the valley below.
The tension in his shoulders eased just slightly.
Then he saw it.
A battered green farm truck crawled along the road ahead, a wide equipment trailer hitched behind it. The load—some kind of wide, awkward tractor attachment—extended past the trailer’s edge on both sides. It ate up the shoulder on the right and drifted close to the center line on the left.
Wes checked his speed and eased off the gas.
The road was too narrow to pass safely. Trees pressed in close on both sides. The dense mountain growth left no margin for error.
Ahead, the curve came up fast.
He couldn’t see far enough around it to know what was coming the other way.
He pressed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel once, hard.
Remington looked at him.
“I know,” Wes muttered.
The farm truck showed no sign of speeding up. It rocked along at its own pace, completely indifferent to anything behind it, the trailer swaying slightly with every uneven patch of road.
Wes checked the time on the dash.
Then he checked the mirror.
Then he looked at the trees on the left side of the road, measuring the gap between the truck’s trailer and the edge of the asphalt.
It wasn’t enough. Not quite.
But the curve was coming up, and after the curve the road might open up enough to get around it.
It had to.
He pulled closer and waited for the curve to break.
The pen felt wrong in Rowan’s hand.
Her fingers seemed to understand what they were being asked to do before the rest of her had fully caught up.
Rowan stared at the blank line at the bottom of the page.
The first man stood just behind her left shoulder, close enough that she could hear him breathing. The second had positioned himself near the back door they’d come through, his attention moving between the window and the room in a slow, practiced rotation.
They were both professionals. She was certain of it.
She’d played characters in danger before. She knew how to perform fear, how to let it read across her face and through her body in ways that felt true without actually being true.
This was different.
This fear was real, and it had no one to perform to.
How she wished that wasn’t the case.
She looked at the note in front of her, at the words she’d been forced to write.
I can’t keep doing this. I’m so tired of fighting . . .
The opening line stared back at her, waiting.
She thought about all the contracts she’d signed over the years. All the scripts she’d been handed and told to make her own. She’d always been good at finding the truth inside someone else’s words, at locating the real emotion underneath the written ones and pulling it to the surface.
Now someone had written her final scene for her and handed her the pen.
The irony of it landed somewhere so dark she almost wanted to laugh.
Instead, she glanced at the counter where she’d left her phone.
She squinted.
It was gone.
What . . . ?
Her gaze moved to Lauren.
Lauren pressed her lips together and looked at the floor. “I turned it off. They told me to.” She swallowed. “I’m so sorry, Rowan.”
Rowan looked at Lauren—at the guilt carved into every line of her face, at the way she held herself like someone waiting to be told she’d done enough damage for one day.
She thought about Ben. About Lauren getting a phone call from someone who had her boyfriend and a list of instructions. About how there was no version of that scenario where Lauren had a good choice to make.
“It’s okay,” Rowan murmured. “It’s okay.”
Lauren’s eyes filled with moisture. She blinked hard and looked away.
Rowan turned back to the page and set the pen to the paper.
“Keep writing,” the man beside her barked.
He’d typed up a script. All she had to do was write it in her own handwriting.
The words came slowly at first, each one feeling like defeat. But she kept her hand moving, kept her breathing even, kept the part of her mind that was still working running quietly beneath the surface.
Every decision I’ve made has led me here. I don’t know how to find my way back.
She paused at the end of the line.
That part, at least, was almost true. Not the meaning they intended—not the giving up, not the ending—but the raw fact of it.
She had made decisions that led her here. To this kitchen. To this pen. To this moment she was trying to survive one careful second at a time.
She thought about Wes. Not as her rescuer. Not as someone who might come through the door in time.
Just as Wes. She thought about the way he’d looked at her across the tailgate at the overlook with all those stars above them. The steadiness of him. The way he’d waited through every deflection and every performance without ever making her feel like she owed him a better version of herself.
She’d left him once because she thought there was something bigger waiting for her out there in the world.
She’d been so wrong.
She wanted another chance. Not at Hollywood. Not at any of the things she’d spent ten years chasing.
With him.
At whatever they might have been if she’d been brave enough to stay.
Please, she prayed. Just let me have that chance.
She reached the bottom of the page.
The first man leaned forward and looked at what she’d written. He took the note from her without comment and read it through once before setting it aside.
Then he grabbed the orange prescription bottle. The pills shifted inside with a small, hollow sound.
“Take them,” he said.
Rowan looked at the bottle.
Then at Lauren, whose hand had risen to cover her mouth.
Then at the back door, and the afternoon light still coming through, and the ordinary world still existing just beyond it.
She froze, unable to move. Unable to think about what would happen if she actually swallowed all those pills.
There might be no coming back.
And she wasn’t ready to face that.
“Ms. King.” The man’s voice stayed even. “We’ve been patient. That’s over now.”