Page 2 of The County Line (Whitewood Creek Farm #2)
Eleven years later…Present Day
The screen door of the tiny trailer I’ve shared with two strangers for the past year slams shut behind me, the creek of the wires and loud bang of the plastic echo like a gavel hitting a bench.
A verdict delivered.
A year in East Georgia, waiting for my divorce to be finalized, and an additional six months to save up enough money to prepare for my future is officially over and now I'm finally free.
Maybe it’s poetic, me landing here in the swampy South, crammed into a trailer not much bigger than the one that I grew up in.
Maybe it’s karma, a cosmic joke, or some kind of cruel, ironic justice.
I left my hometown at eighteen-years-old for a reason. Eager and naive, thinking I could escape everything that held me down back in North Carolina. Believing I could make something of myself. That I deserved better.
That I deserved more .
Or maybe I was just a young girl chasing answers I never had. Desperate for peace, for safety, for love. Searching for salvation in the faces of men who reminded me too much of my father and whose promises were just as empty and cruel.
And that was the problem. They didn’t just remind me of him—they were him in different shapes with different names.
Men who never let me close enough to know them, who dangled safety and security like carrots on a string, always just out of reach.
As if those things weren’t my right as a woman, as a human, but something I needed to earn.
Men who wielded their power like a weapon, bending me to their will, keeping me small, docile.
A good little girl who should be seen but never heard.
Who should be thankful for the breadcrumbs that they offered.
No more.
I’ve taken my power back.
Standing here now, under the muggy Georgia spring sun, I’m not the girl I used to be.
I’m a newly divorced woman with a decade spent working in law enforcement, ready to face whatever’s next.
The problem is, I don’t know what that is and I'm not sure where to go from here.
Where does someone go after spending the past ten years in Louisiana, followed by a year in this godforsaken savannah, waiting on a signature to make her freedom official?
I heave my single suitcase into the trunk of my beat-up car. The car’s overdue for an inspection, oil change, and tire rotation—tasks that my ex-husband Jordan never thought were important enough to handle, despite being “ his job, ” around our home.
Even if they weren't his job, I swear the next man I give my attention will find those things meaningful. Will take care of me the way I deserve. Will want to know that I’m safe and not driving a car that could break down at any moment.
The rubber grip on the steering wheel cracks under my fingers as I clench and twist it, swallowing the surge of resentment I still feel and trying to bite back the tears of anger.
Something pulls at me, deep and unrelenting.
A tug on my heartstrings that I can’t ignore, whispering for me to head north.
Back to the place that built me then broke me.
I don’t overthink it, not this time. I start the car and just drive.
Straight back to my roots.
To Whitewood Creek, North Carolina. The one place that knows how to rip me apart, expose my scars, and maybe—just maybe—this time, piece me back together again.