But seeing him, seeing the man who’d raised me for half my life, the closest thing I’d had to a father now, broke something in me.
I made it three steps from the cabin before my knees buckled. I went down hard, hands in the dirt, the image of her bruised body burned into my retinas. A sound escaped me—something primal, wounded, furious.
"Let it out, son." Owen's voice, calm and steady. I hadn't heard him approach, but suddenly he was there, his hand solid on my back. "Let it all out."
"He hurt her." The words tore out of me, raw and bleeding, between sobs. "There's not a part of her that isn't bruised. She's covered in his handprints like he was trying to own her, break her."
"But he didn't break her. She's here. She's safe. She's healing."
I looked up at him, his face blurred through my tears. “I should have been there. Should have protected her."
"You can't protect someone from eight hundred miles away. But you got to her as fast as you could. You brought her home. That's what matters now."
Owen helped me stand, kept his hand on my shoulder, grounding me. "Channel the anger into protection. Into healing. Into making sure she knows she's safe now. The rest—the justice, the reckoning—that'll come. But right now, she needs you steady."
Clay's truck pulled up just then, and my brother got out carrying a guitar case—not Stephy's, but a new one, the tag still hanging from it.
"Picked this up at that music shop in Austin," he said, not quite meeting my eyes, embarrassed by his own thoughtfulness. "Was there for the rodeo and thought... well, music helps sometimes. When she's ready."
"Clay." My throat was too tight to say more.
"Don't make it weird," he said, but squeezed my shoulder. "Just... when she's ready. Music is healing, you know? Thought she might need something that doesn't have bad memories attached."
He left the guitar and drove off before I could properly thank him, which was probably intentional. Inside the cabin, I set up my phone with a small speaker, put on a Spotify playlist of soft instrumental music—nothing with words, nothing that might trigger memories, just gentle guitar and piano that filled the silence.
Stephy stirred slightly when the music started, and something in her face eased.
Day four, Ivy came.
"I want to help," she said simply when she arrived. "I know what it's like. The fear. The feeling like you'll never be safe again. Let me sit with her. You need rest."
It was the beginning of something—a friendship that would grow from shared trauma into shared strength. Ivy sat with Stephy for hours, sometimes talking softly about books, recipes, anything gentle and normal. Sometimes just sitting in silence, holding her hand.
“She squeezed my hand,” Ivy told me when I got back from a forced shower. “And she woke up for a minute.”
My heart dropped into my boots. “She asked for me?”
“She did,” Ivy said, smiling. “She whispered, ‘Lee?’ And I told her you were here… but we’d sent you to shower because you were stinking up the place.”
A choked laugh escaped me. “Yeah? How’d she take that?”
“She gave the tiniest smile,” Ivy said softly. “Then she went right back to sleep.”
Stephy was still fighting in her sleep that night—pushing at invisible hands, whimpering "no" and "stop" and my name likea prayer. I'd put on the soft music Clay had suggested, and it seemed to help. She'd settle faster, go deeper into real rest.
On day five, she woke up.
Really woke up.
It was barely dawn, that gray hour before the world commits to morning. I was dozing in the chair, the guitar Clay had brought leaning against the wall, soft music still playing, when I felt her watching me. Her eyes were open, clear for the first time since LA, focused on my face like she was memorizing it.
"Hey," I said softly, not moving, afraid I'd spook her.
"Hey." Her voice was rough, barely there. "How long?"
"Five days."
Her eyes widened slightly, tracking around the room—taking in the flowers, the guitar, the evidence of care everywhere. "Five days? I've been sleeping for five days?"
