I’m going to expose Landon. It won’t give me back the years he stole, but it will take his future. That’s a fair enough trade.
The people of Wildflower Canyon County may have ignored a girl’s cry for help a decade ago. But they will never vote for a proven rapist. Even if the law can’t touch him, the truth still could. It’s a long shot, I know, but I have to do this or live with the regret of letting fear rule me.
I unlock the front door.
I don’t leave it open the way Daddy used to.
The people of Wildflower Canyon have turned mean, meaner than I remember. I’ve already had to replace my tires after someone slashed them—and I had to pay extra to haul a mechanic in from outside of town.
It didn’t break me. It won’t.
Aunt Gemma, who rescued me, became my home after I left Wildflower Canyon and left me everythingin her will, enough that I can walk away from work altogether if I want to.
But I don’t.
I love being a vet, and I’m grateful for people like Aria and Mav, who stand by me without hesitation. They don’t know much about the old scandal, but Elena does. She was blunt the first time we met, reading the discomfort on my face while I braced for her to turn away like everyone else had.
“Can’t stand politicians. And it’s 2025, darlin’. You say he assaulted you, I believe that the sumbitch did.”
I appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt the good people of Wildflower Canyon will believe their golden boy capable of the crime I accused him of—even in the year of our Lord, 2025.
Why would they, when my own father didn’t?
I step into the house, where the air is cool, and set my keys down on the kitchen counter. The same counter where my father once stood, his jaw set like granite.
“Don’t lie to me, Sarah.”
“I’m not lying, Daddy. He?—”
“You’d been drinking. Landon said you came on to him.”
“That’s not what happened! He?—”
“How could you do that to Cade? With his own brother?”
Tears stream down my face. “Daddy, I love Cade, I’d never?—”
“Enough!”
The sound of his hand slamming the table still echoesin my head, sharp as a gunshot. I flinch now, in the present.
How naïve I was. I thought the truth mattered, that if I said it enough times, someone—at least Cade and my father—would believe me.
No one did.
Not Cade, who looked at me with disgust after Landon spun his tale about how I’d hit on him more than once. Cade stood by him. He was my first, my only for a long time—and he believed my rapist when he said I wanted it.
Not my so-called friends, who seemed almost gleeful that Cade and I were over. Hell, he even married Jeanine—one of them. She’s gone now, died in a car accident. The way Mrs. Lowell told it—Daddy’s old housekeeper, who moved two towns over but still keeps in touch—Jeanine was driving drunk that night. It’s hard to hate a dead woman. Harder still when she left behind a little girl, who’ll never know her mother.
Not the deputy sheriff, either, who looked me in the eye and told me to stop causing trouble. They didn’t send me to a hospital. Didn’t do a rape kit. Didn’t do any of those things thatLaw & Order: SVUmakes you believe cops do.
No one believed me.
So I left.
I had to. If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have survived—not just the vitriol that came my way, but the way my own mind twisted under it. The way the shame settled on melike a second skin that took years and years and years to shed.
There was a night in California, in my aunt’s guest room, when I almost didn’t wake up. After that, the court ordered counseling. I went. I didn’t get better.
