The words came slowly at first, each one feeling like defeat. But she kept her hand moving, kept her breathing even, kept the part of her mind that was still working running quietly beneath the surface.
Every decision I’ve made has led me here. I don’t know how to find my way back.
She paused at the end of the line.
That part, at least, was almost true. Not the meaning they intended—not the giving up, not the ending—but the raw fact of it.
She had made decisions that led her here. To this kitchen. To this pen. To this moment she was trying to survive one careful second at a time.
She thought about Wes. Not as her rescuer. Not as someone who might come through the door in time.
Just as Wes. She thought about the way he’d looked at her across the tailgate at the overlook with all those stars above them. The steadiness of him. The way he’d waited through every deflection and every performance without ever making her feel like she owed him a better version of herself.
She’d left him once because she thought there was something bigger waiting for her out there in the world.
She’d been so wrong.
She wanted another chance. Not at Hollywood. Not at any of the things she’d spent ten years chasing.
With him.
At whatever they might have been if she’d been brave enough to stay.
Please,she prayed.Just let me have that chance.
She reached the bottom of the page.
The first man leaned forward and looked at what she’d written. He took the note from her without comment and read it through once before setting it aside.
Then he grabbed the orange prescription bottle. The pills shifted inside with a small, hollow sound.
“Take them,” he said.
Rowan looked at the bottle.
Then at Lauren, whose hand had risen to cover her mouth.
Then at the back door, and the afternoon light still coming through, and the ordinary world still existing just beyond it.
She froze, unable to move. Unable to think about what would happen if she actually swallowed all those pills.
There might be no coming back.
And she wasn’t ready to face that.
“Ms. King.” The man’s voice stayed even. “We’ve been patient. That’s over now.”
CHAPTER 47
The curve brokeopen ahead of him.
Wes didn’t wait.
He pulled left and pressed the accelerator hard, closing the distance between the truck and the farm equipment in seconds. The gap was tighter than he’d like—the trailer’s edge skimming closer than was comfortable as he came alongside it.
For one lurching moment the trees on his left seemed to rush toward him before the road opened up and he was through.
Wes exhaled once and pushed harder.
