We picked up Trever and continued driving until we were out of the city and on a winding mountain road. The two men carried on a terse discussion from the front seat, while I lay in the backseat with my head against the glass.

Coke used to give me such a high, but now the euphoria only seemed to last for a few minutes. Once those few minutes were up, I was overwhelmed with sadness again.

It made me want my mom.

You know how, as a kid, moms could fix anything? That was how I felt—completely despondent and in need of my mom to step in and make everything right again.

I just needed to lay my head against her chest while she stroked my hair—well, it was definitely not going to happen in this lifetime, but I yearned for it nonetheless. Thinking of her caused my throat to tighten. I wasn’t going to cry over it. Not now.

I reached down and felt my side. Blood was still trickling out, but it seemed as if it had slowed some. I was still struggling to stay awake though. Maybe Clint was taking me to a doctor.

Yeah, that was it.

He was going to find me a mountain doctor that worked with outlaws all the time. He’d know just what to do to fix a stab wound.

I closed my eyes and dozed until the truck stopped suddenly and my head hit the seat in front of me.

“Neve, wake up. We’re here.” Clint had the back door open before I was even fully conscious. I was completely disoriented as he pulled me from the warmth of the truck and out into the cool mountain air. It didn’t matter that it was July—Colorado was always chilly at night; even more so up here in the mountains.

I wrapped my arms around myself and stumbled on the uneven ground as I fought to remain upright. We were in the middle of the woods. Maybe the doctor’s place was hidden back in the trees?

Trev’s face made me pause. He looked scared. I held a hand up and waved at him weakly. “I’m fine. It’s just a scratch, really.”

Clint wrapped his arms around my body and I leaned into him, as crickets chirped around us. “Baby, the man who came to the house—did he give you a name?”

I shook my head and snuggled closer into him. The light breeze made the hair on the back of my arms stand up and I wanted nothing more than to climb back into his truck and fall asleep again.

“What exactly did he say?” His tone was different, but in my weakened state, I was unable to determine if he was angry or not.

I held on tightly to him as I repeated the same thing I’d told him back at the house. “Well, he said you had twenty-four hours to get him the money or what he did to me would seem like nothing once he got ahold of you.”

His fingers dug into my shoulder blades painfully. “He said all that, did he? Was this before or after you fucked him?”

The addict was back.

I stiffened as my brain sent out a warning, seconds too late. He shoved me and I fell back against the soft earth, cracking my elbow on a large stone as I landed. Pain shot down into my fingers and I clutched at my arm in agony.

“Clint! I didn’t even know the man—I’d just gotten home—”

He was on top of me before I could finish my sentence. “Tell me the truth!” His eyes were wild and unfocused, indicating that he’d done a lot more than just coke tonight.

I shook my head and tried to pat his chest with my good arm. If I could just calm him down, he’d see how crazy this was. Trever made no move to interrupt, choosing to turn the music up in the truck to drown out our voices instead.

Clint’s hand cupped my face before moving down my body. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, his fingers dug into my side, reopening the wound again. The breeze hit the wetness on my shirt, only making me feel colder.

“You lied, Neve. I saw it in the mirror. You were with him. How long have you been sleeping with him behind my back? Did you tell him where it was?”

Gone was my high and just like every time before, my heart broke as the madness overtook him. Why couldn’t he see what he was doing to me? It hadn’t mattered that I’d never once cheated on him, the Addict was convinced that I was on a mission to destroy him.

I’d just opened my mouth to reply when his hand shot up and wrapped around my throat. I brought both arms up and attempted to break his contact, but he easily blocked me.

“I don’t know who all you’ve been talking to, but I’m not going down because some cokehead bitch can’t keep her mouth or her legs shut.” He squeezed harder as tears rolled down his cheeks and fell onto my face. The cracks in my heart spread as his words pierced me until only caverns remained.

This wasn’t him.

I struggled in his grip, but he didn’t let up. Being choked was just one more thing that wasn’t at all how it was portrayed in the movies. According to Hollywood, the person being choked would make all sorts of loud gurgling and coughing noises. That wasn’t even close to real life though.

As Clint’s hands squeezed, the only noises that escaped my lips were little puffs of air as it was forced from my body. I clawed at his arms and face, but still the only real sound was coming from the stereo in the truck.

Clint made small grunts as he put all of his strength into his hands. “I want to rip you apart until you hurt as badly as I do. Why’d you talk to him? I trusted you!” He roared as more tears fell from his eyes.

My vision began to blur and my bladder released. I was going to die listening to Clint sobbing above me and Eddie Vedder wailing from the truck about the lost love of his life shining like a bright star in someone else’s sky.

My eyes rolled back into my head just as there was a loud metallic sound.

Heaven’s made of metal and the moon’s made of cheese.

“Neve, get up!” The voice sounded close by.

God?

Only good girls made it to heaven…

Yeah, I was definitely in Hell. God would’ve let me rest.

“Neve, wake up.” The voice was insistent, even going as far as hitting my cheek.

My eyes fluttered open to Trever’s face mere inches from mine. “Get up. You have to get up.”

I coughed until I thought a lung would come up, my eyes streaming.

He pulled me to my feet, but my limbs didn’t feel like my own. Nothing about my body seemed familiar. He shook my shoulders roughly.

“You have to run. Run, Neve! Don’t stop!”

I looked down and saw Clint sprawled out on his stomach, a shovel lying nearby. Trever hooked a finger under my chin and brought my eyes up to meet his. “He brought you here to kill you. He thinks you’re a nark. If he comes to and sees you here, he’ll finish it. Nod if you understand.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. Clint groaned from nearby and Trever shoved me toward the tree line. “Go!”

I’d thought that failing every class my first semester and losing my scholarship was the scariest thing I’d ever been through. I now realized how incredibly naïve that had been. I forced my body to move as fast as it could. Luckily, there was still enough coke and adrenaline in my system to push me along. I knew that if he caught up to me, I wouldn’t get another chance.

He was probably killing Trever at this very moment.

I didn’t want to die.

That thought propelled me forward and I jogged faster, low-lying tree branches and limbs scraping along my face and arms. Blood poured steadily from the wound in my side, but I refused to stop, even as my lungs felt ready to explode.

I had to keep going.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion…

Fine time for my brain to make a reappearance.

“Aghhh!”

An object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

My ankle caught on a tree root and I cried out in a harsh whisper before slamming to the ground. My brain urged me to get up and keep running, but my body was done. I’d twisted my ankle; with my luck, it was probably broken. I was also losing a lot of blood from where Clint reopened my stab wound. On top of all of that, the bastard had just tried to choke me to death and it felt like I’d swallowed a million razor blades. My limbs were so heavy—there was no way I could move them.

What was I even running toward anyway?

I had to be a hundred miles away from Boulder and at least twenty from the nearest town.

I was done.

Just then, I heard a loud crashing sound coming from the direction I’d just run from, so I forced myself up onto my forearms and army crawled over near a fallen log. He was going to find me, but I wasn’t going to lie still and wait for death. Dirt and forest debris clung to my side. If only it were fall; I could’ve used a pile of leaves to hide in right about now.

The crashing got louder and then stopped. I held my breath and closed my eyes, as if doing so would make me invisible. Clint had to be within five feet of me.

Right then and there, I sobered up long enough to pray that he suffered from night blindness.

Anything that would keep him from seeing me lying on the forest floor.

I continued holding my breath, even as my body pleaded for air. There was a loud retreat back into the trees and then the sounds of the forest were the only thing surrounding me again.

The air turned colder and I shivered involuntarily as I inhaled a grateful breath, my tank top and Bermuda shorts doing nothing to keep me warm. I pressed my body up against the log, seeking warmth from any source I could find.

The trees above me looked like a giant blanket, just begging to be pulled down over my body. I couldn’t have chosen a more perfect place to die.

Apathy? Wasn’t that a sign of hypothermia?

I fought to stay conscious, but with that thought, my vision swam and everything went dark.

“Fuck if I know how she got here, but we can’t leave her.”

“Charm’s gonna flip his shit over this. We can’t just bring random women back to the club—”

“Well, what do you suggest we do with her? Leave her here to die?”

The male voices continued arguing nearby and I struggled to open my eyes. My body, on the other hand, disagreed with even the mere thought of consciousness so my eyes remained closed.

I listened to the men, but their voices were unfamiliar to me. It didn’t sound like Clint or Trev. In fact, I was certain I’d never heard them before in my life. He hadn’t found me. That was really the only thing I had going for me at the moment.

Hands touched my throat and I stiffened in response. “She’s got a pulse.” From there, they moved down my side, stopping at the wound that was making me feverish and delusional. “But, she’s in pretty bad shape.”

Maybe I was hallucinating this entire thing. I’d fallen in the middle of nowhere. There was no way that someone had found me so soon. I’d simply conjured up a mountain doctor in my mind, a man ready to piece a cokehead like me back together. He’d probably discovered me as he’d taken his evening constitutional. I pictured him having a cane that he’d carved himself and cheeks that were permanently rosy.

I was losing it. The reality of my situation was that I’d stranded myself in the middle of the wilderness. There were no hiking trails that I’d passed as I ran for my life and it was even more impossible to assume that someone had just miraculously stumbled upon me.

“She’s been stabbed. It needs to be treated.” If I was going to keep with the narrative in my mind, I’d call that voice Doc. He seemed to know what he was talking about.

The faint scent of cigarette smoke and cologne hit my nostrils and for whatever reason, it reminded me of my dad, even though he’d never smoked a day in his life. This was the best hallucination I’d ever experienced—my whole body was participating. Maybe I was still high.

“Fuck, do whatever you want. It’s your funeral.” That was obviously Grumpy.

There was a loud sneeze followed by a curse. “Did she have to end up in a pile of flowers? Shit, my eyes are watering like a motherfucker.” That one would be Sneezy.

“I think we should keep her,” a chipper voice added. I’d call him Happy.

I mentally ticked off the list of my imagined rescuers. Obviously, I was still missing a few. Strong arms lifted me up off the ground and an involuntary groan of pain escaped past my lips. I felt as if I’d been forced through a meat grinder. My elbow gave a sharp protest at the movement, another reminder that last night had not been some drugged-up dream. Fingers dug into my ankle and I damn near cried out again.

An object at rest will remain at rest, unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

Hello, unbalanced force.

“Careful with her. We don’t need to add to her injuries.” Maybe Grumpy had a heart after all. “I, for one, don’t want her staying any longer than she has to.”

Maybe not.

I was jostled along uneven terrain before being placed gently in the backseat of a vehicle. I needed to sit up and take in my surroundings.

I could get a grasp of where exactly I was—maybe find a landmark. Just in case I had to run again.

The vehicle hit a bump and all plans of moving went out the window. Pain barreled through me like a locomotive and I couldn’t think of anything but how badly I hurt. Beads of sweat ran down my face and I couldn’t distinguish whether it was from the fever or the movement.

I flirted briefly with the idea of sitting up again before fully committing to unconsciousness.