Chapter 25
CHAPTER
Jenn
Later That Night
I THOUGHT I COULD escape.
I was wrong. He had found me. They both did. And now I was bleeding and scared, but with a resolve that hadn’t been there before.
I couldn’t count on anyone to save me but myself.
Then Lucy showed up, and I felt an odd sense of kinship with this woman everyone would have expected me to hate. I saw the loathing in her eyes and knew she blamed me for everything that had gone wrong in her and Rhett’s relationship.
But now, I thought we understood each other on some level. Yes, our backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, but at the end of the day, we were both women who had put our trust and love in a man who didn’t deserve it.
I hoped she was able to live her life on her terms, not on Rhett’s. I wished her well. I really did.
After Lucy left, I was alone again. I knew I needed to leave, but I felt too weak to move. I shivered in my drenched clothes. I picked up my backpack and knew I should start walking, but I felt too woozy to take more than a half- dozen steps before needing to sit down again.
“Why are you doing this to my sister and Rhett?” a voice called out, full of aggressive confidence.
I turned and found a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen, wearing a bright yellow raincoat. My muddled brain couldn’t put together what was happening. Why was this child, really not much younger than me, at this desolate spot so late at night in the middle of a rainstorm?
“What?” My voice sounded thready and without feeling. Black spots swam in front of my eyes. I was pretty sure I had a concussion.
The girl walked closer until she was standing directly in front of me. “You’re trying to take Rhett from me. From Lucy. You can’t do that.”
She sounded so, so young.
“No, that’s not—” I tried to shake my head, but that only made it pound harder. I felt bile rise up in the back of my throat and thought I was going to throw up.
The girl’s face darkened in a way that if she were a man, would have petrified me. “You are!” she shouted.
I was losing all sense of reality. My head was foggy and I thought, for a moment, I was back home out in the woods behind my house.
“Take it from me, you can’t trust anyone,” I mumbled, the world around me fading in and out. “Family will only hurt you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Family is the only thing that matters.” Her voice was high-pitched and vicious. I tried to turn my head to look at her but the action made my vision swim, so I closed my eyes.
“I wish that were true.” I let out a heavy sigh. “But Rhett’s the worst of them all. He will only use you to get what he wants. So watch out for him.” My voice sounded muffled. “He’s a predator.”
I was so sleepy. My head felt like it weighed a ton. I knew I needed medical attention, but I didn’t think I could make it back to town on my own.
“You don’t know Rhett at all.” The girl was still talking, but I could barely register the words. “Rhett loves my sister. He loves me. You’ve tricked him, that’s all.”
“He’s the worst kind of man there is. He said he loved me. He’s a liar,” I whispered, not sure if I was talking to her or myself.
“He never said that to you. You’re the liar.” The girl was getting worked up. I forced myself to look at her, even if it sent waves of agony through my skull. She was crying, but there was an odd glint in her eyes that should have given me pause.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“I’m Bailey. Bailey Herbaugh.”
Fear coursed through me. She was obviously Lucy’s kid sister. And Mr. Herbaugh’s other daughter. Did that mean he was here too? I was terrified that he’d find me and make good on his threat.
That man would kill me, I knew it. My life was worth nothing to him. He and my father were way too alike.
“I like your sister. She’s a good person. You seem like a good person too. Don’t let men like Rhett change that.”
Her mouth twisted into a strange semblance of a smile. “You don’t look so good, maybe I should have a look at that wound. That’s a lot of blood.”
“Yeah.” My voice faded away as I tilted my head back to look at the night sky.
The storm had passed and the stars were starting to shine again. I lifted my hand as if to touch them, reaching out …
My silver bracelets jangled together, sounding like windchimes. My heart ached at the memory of my mother giving them to me for my thirteenth birthday.
I missed her. I wondered if she missed me too.
There were times in a girl’s life where she longed for her mom, or at least the ideal of the mother she wished she had.
I had been on my own for so long that the horrible memories of my parents were starting to be whitewashed by a desperation for that connection you only feel at home.
I stared at the heavens, wishing I was looking at them somewhere else. Somewhere far away from the sadness that lived here.
I took a deep breath.
There was a blinding flash and the feel of my skull caving in.
Pain radiated throughout my head and into my extremities.
“Momma,” I murmured, and then it all went black.