I get up, take of my pajamas, and head into the shower.
The hot water stings every mark on my body and I stand under it with my eyes closed and my forehead against the tile and let it.
I have a choice to make.
I can get in my car, drive three hundred miles back to my apartment, and wait.
Wait for Presley to finish her internship and come home.
Wait for the anger to fade. Hers and his. Wait for time to do what time does, which is sand down the sharp edges of everything until it's bearable.
That's the safe choice. The quiet choice.
The choice that the younger version of me would have made—the girl who ran, who chose distance over confrontation, who let silence do the work because silence was easier than truth.
Or I can stay.
Not for Harlan. I need to be clear about that, even if I'm only being clear with myself while standing naked in a motel shower with his bruises on my hips.
I'mnotstaying for a man.
I did that once. Followed a man's gravity into his orbit until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began, and it took me years to find my way back to my own center of gravity.
I'm staying for Presley.
My daughter is on that ranch.
She's working, she's learning, she's building a relationship with a father she just met.
She's doing the thing I should have let her do years ago, and I am not going to sit in an apartment three hundred miles away while she does it without me.
Not because she needs me. She's made it clear she doesn't think she does right now, but because a mother doesn't leave.
A mother stays close even when her daughter is furious, even when being close is painful, even when every instinct says run.
I ran once. I'm not doing it again.
Which means I need more than a motel room.
I need a life here.
A reason to be in Sharp that isn't Harlan and isn't dependent on whether my daughter decides to forgive me.
I need something that's mine.
I need a salon.
I dry off, pull on the cleanest clothes from my suitcase—jeans, a high-necked shirt that covers the bruises on my throat, boots I packed without thinking because boots are all I've ever owned.
I put on enough makeup to look like a woman with a plan instead of a woman who slept three hours in a highway motel after being fucked against a wall by the man she's been hiding from for two damn decades.
I check out of the motel, get in my car, and drive into town.
Sharp, Texas, in the morning light is exactly the way I left it and nothing like I remember.
The bones are the same.
The single main street, the feed store, the gas station, the water tower.
