Windows down, letting in that crisp Montana air that still surprises me, mixed pine and wildflowers and something indefinably clean that you'll never find in New York City.
Six weeks. Six weeks until I can file the petition myself, challenge the guardianship, maybe claw my life back from uncle Richard's greedy hands. I repeat my daily countdown mantra.
But right now, I've got more immediate problems than legal documents and court dates. Like the fact that I'm about to face a man whose texts are still sitting in my phone like live grenades, and I'm driving straight into the blast radius.
Still thinking about that moment in the barn.
God, so am I.
Can't stop replaying it, the solid heat of Beau behind me on the ATV, his hands sure and gentle when he'd lifted me down. The way he'd looked at me in the barn afterward, like I was something precious and bewildering all at once.
Sweet dreams, Sunshine.
Nobody's called me sunshine since Mom died. She used to whisper it when the treatments made her sick, when I'd curl up beside her hospital bed. "My little ray of sunshine, even on the darkest days." The fact that Beau sees that in me...
But it's not just Beau making my chest tight and my thoughts scatter. It's Colt with his wounded green eyes and that crooked smile, the way he growls "Shortie" like it's something sacred.
Yesterday when he'd pinned me against the supply cabinet, I'd wanted nothing more than to drag him down and taste that smart mouth of his.
And Gabriel. Jesus, Gabriel who almost kissed me last night, who looks at me like he's trying to solve me, save me, and consume me all at once. Whose jacket I definitely slept in because it smells like cedar and promises I can't afford to believe.
Three men. Each one calling to a different broken piece of me, and I want them all with a desperation that should probably scare me.
That's not normal, the voice in my head whispers.
The same voice that wondered if uncle Richard was right, if I really was unstable.
If wanting too much, feeling too much, was a symptom of something broken in my brain.
The memory hits like ice water. Men in white coats appearing in my bedroom late at night, calm voices and clipboards while I screamed that I wasn't sick.
Uncle Richard's forged medical records and his pet judge making it all legal, all clean.
Rosewood Behavioral Institute, buried in the mountains where no one could hear you scream, designed to "reform" wealthy kids whose families found them inconvenient.
Where I met Matty, a senator's son whose only crime was loving the wrong gender, whose parents thought they could torture the gay out of him.
Who taught me that survival sometimes means playing along until you can run, and who still sends coded messages through Craigslist personals to make sure I'm alive.
That's not normal.I shake my head hard, trying to dislodge the doubt.
Gaslighting. Matty taught me that word. Showed me how they'd twisted every normal reaction to loss into symptoms of mental illness. How my rage at being caged became "violent tendencies." How my tears for Mom became "emotional dysregulation." How my insistencethat I didn't belong there became "lack of insight into her condition."
Matty kept me sane when sanity was a luxury they were trying to steal. Helped me plan, helped me run, helped me get this van that became my freedom and my cage all at once.
But sometimes the doubt creeps back in like smoke under a door. What kind of person fantasizes about belonging to three men? What kind of girl dreams about being shared, cherished, fought over?
Emma's casual words from last night echo back:"They were together. All three of them."
Colt and Beau had shared someone before. Loved her as a unit, not rivals. It had been real enough that Emma mentioned it like unusual but not unthinkable. If they could do that, if that kind of love was possible...
My death grip on the steering wheel eases slightly. Maybe I'm not broken. Maybe I'm just a girl who's been alone too long, who's found three damaged men that call to different parts of her equally damaged heart.
But Gabriel seems like the traditional type. One woman, one man, one perfectly normal relationship that doesn't involve complications. Then again, Gabriel's got depths I haven't even begun to—
The impact hits like a sledgehammer to the spine.
My head snaps back against the headrest as the van lurches forward, heart instantly hammering against my ribs.
