Page 26

I woke up in the bed at the Bitterroot House. It wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d be doing again. But that look on Lucas’s face, and the desperate way he’d asked me to stay...

It seemed like he wanted to help me. And I was so tired of running.

My immediate instinct was to go to work, but I still felt jittery, and odds were that Lena was going to send me home anyway, so I stayed on the ranch, giving her a quick call to let her know.

But while I was here, I didn’t want to be cooped up in the house. Lucas had said that the ranch was secure, and I believed him. It would be safe enough to walk around here. At the very least there wouldn’t be strangers that surprised me.

I craved the quiet and the open air that I knew I could find outside, and it almost made me laugh, how quickly I’d adapted to needing and wanting this atmosphere. It was warm and sunny, which felt good. The air no longer felt suffused with the sum of all my panic.

After Lucas had dropped me off here last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not Nathan was here. And if he was here, him hurting everyone would be my fault. I didn’t want to leave, but leaving was the only way to fix it. Nothing would protect them from him except removing myself from the equation.

But I was still here.

I walked toward the stables, and I saw Lucas almost immediately. He was working with the same horse that he’d taken out to the field. Good. I’d been hoping to see him. The mere thought of him made me blush now. I could count on one hand the number of people who’d seen me go through an episode. And I wished that he hadn’t. I didn’t want him to look at me like that—like I was broken.

As if a magnet spun between us, Lucas looked over at me. He waved and started guiding the horse back toward the stables. Now that I was here, I wanted to run back to the safety of the house, but I held my ground, waiting for him to come back. I was glad he took his time with the horse so I could get myself under control. But as he walked toward me, I couldn’t seem to get over this new shyness.

“Hey,” he said, leaning on the fence from the other side.

“Hi.” I prayed he wouldn’t notice how hard I was blushing.

“How are you?”

I looked at the ground. How was I doing? I honestly didn’t know. Fine, but still spinning? Worried that I’d made the wrong choice? Weirded out that I suddenly enjoyed silence?

Lucas climbed over the fence and dropped down in front of me. He was close now, which did nothing for the state of my blush, but I managed to look up at him. There was nothing but concern in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” I stopped the lie that nothing was wrong from coming out. If I was going to let him help me, I had to be honest with him. At least about this. “I wanted to apologize about yesterday. I’m... embarrassed. That you had to see me like that.”

“Embarrassed? Ev, you don’t have to be embarrassed about that.”

“I don’t want you to think of me like that. I’m not broken.”

Lucas shook his head. “I promise you, Evelyn, I would never think you are broken. No one is broken.”

I bit my lip. I was, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Remember when I told you that Resting Warrior helps people?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Well,” his mouth curled up into a half smile, “we actually help people like you. People with post-traumatic stress disorder. We also train animals for use in therapy for that specifically.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have PTSD.”

Lucas’s eyebrows rose. “I’m not a medical professional, and I would never pretend to be. But I have a lot of experience with PTSD, and what happened to you yesterday is right out of the book.”

“But it’s not possible,” I said. “I’m not a soldier. I can’t have that.”

“You don’t have to be a soldier to have PTSD. There are lots of things that cause it. And they cause flashbacks. Panic attacks. A whole shit ton of other fun symptoms too.”

I’d never considered the possibility that that’s what all of this was. It was just the way things were in my brain now. I barely remembered a time when my mind didn’t have a constant thread of worry and panic running in the background.

“That’s what the others are here for?”

He nodded. “We work with people in Garnet Bend. A couple of therapists, physical therapists, and psychiatrists. The ranch provides a place to stay and for animal-led therapy. And of course, the training.”

My chest tightened. How was it that I’d ended up here randomly? Serendipity, maybe? A light clicked on in in my brain. “That’s why you offered me the house. You saw something was wrong.”