“What do I remember?” I asked, blinking against the question. Blinking against a wall of blocked memories. I had been helped into a chair in my room after telling Slade I didn’t want to talk to the officer from the bed like an invalid, but now I almost wished for the protection the blankets would have offered.

Officer Whiten shifted his pen from his notebook and looked up at me. “Let’s go back a bit. When was the first time Clint Barston, err, struck you, ma’am?”

Slade gripped the arm of the chair beside me so hard it creaked. I didn’t dare touch him. Didn’t move a muscle in case he came up swinging. When he shifted, I flinched. The worst part was both Slade and the officer noticed my reaction. What Slade didn't understand was that it was a knee-jerk reaction. One instilled in me from Clint. One I’d never had until him. Never had a reason to feel like I had to defend myself before he came into my life.

“I think it might be best if you leave while I question Miss Lowell,” Officer Whiten stated.

Slade released his grip and clasped his hands together. “No offense, sir, but I’m not leaving her to do this alone.”

He looked at me, flinching at what he saw in my eyes. I tried to give him a smile, but I was fighting the urge to flee myself.

He cursed under his breath and then stood. Before he left, he turned back and said, “Gray, I’m still the same man I always was. And I’d die before I hurt you.”

He left before the first tear fell.

“Miss Lowell, I understand this is difficult, but the more I have on Clint Barston, the better. So how about this—you talk and I’ll listen,” Officer Whiten said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and fiddling with it for a brief moment. When he was done, I could see myself. I couldn’t help the gasp of surprise as I noticed for the first time how bad my face really looked. The red light was on to record my statement.

“First time you’ve seen yourself?” he asked, propping the phone against a pillow on the bed, putting us both in the frame.

I nodded. I hadn’t dared look in the bathroom mirror when the nurse helped me to the bathroom. Avoiding seeing my reflection for as long as I could seemed to be a coping mechanism I could no longer fall back on.

“Is it easier talking like this instead of me standing over you with notepad and a pen?” he asked, sitting down in Slade’s vacated seat.

I shrugged.

He sank back with a sigh and lifted his booted foot up, propping it on his knee as he looked around the room. “Never did care for hospitals much. Always have a feel about them, don’t they?”

I nodded.

“Saw Lucy yesterday,” he said.

I sat up straight. “Is she all right?”

“Misses you somethin’ fierce, but between Slade and the others, she’s doing fine,” he answered.

It shamed me in a way—to have forgotten about Lucy. Poor Lucy, pining for Slade like I had. Waiting for the day he’d come home. And all the while waiting, having to deal with Clint. It sickened me, but more than that, it made me angry. Angry enough to rehash all the hell I’d been through because of Clint. Enough to possibly break through whatever barrier holding back the memories of what happened to put me in the hospital.

“He wasn’t very nice to Lucy.” The gruff sound of my own voice startled me, but I kept speaking past the tenderness of my throat. “I think it’s because he knew she didn’t like him. Dogs have a sense for people, you know?”

A layer of warmth spread through me. I couldn’t tell if it was my body hitting me with a heavy dose of endorphins to relive the trauma, or if it was injecting me with my own inner strength. Either way, it came in handy.

“When you say he wasn’t nice… what do you mean by that?” he asked.

“He wouldn’t allow her on my bed anymore. She always slept at the foot of my bed. And then there were times where we’d go out to ride the fence. Lucy loved doing that, but he’d make her stay home. She spent more time in the backyard since Slade had been gone than she ever has in her entire life. I know he hit her when I wasn’t around. Well, I know now since I can remember her flinching and shying away if he made a sudden move when she was close.”

“And what about you? Did he start out just being mean, and then it turned into more over time?” Officer Whiten asked.

I nodded. “He was jealous of Slade. And I was oblivious to him for quite a while after Slade left. Even when Clint was around or taking me out to eat… date sort of things. But I never saw it like that at first. To me, he was trying to be nice. Trying to get me out of the house and out of my funk. But that wasn’t it at all. Before I knew it, he’d moved himself in. As terrible as it sounds, I just let him.”

“Did you love him?”

“No. God, no. I never had feelings for him like that at all,” I answered, curling my hand into a fist, fingernails biting into my palm.

Officer Whiten’s hands moved to the arm of the chair, his finger tapping slightly against the polished wood as he nodded. “Did Slade have any contact with you while he was away?”

Hot tears filled my eyes. “No. Not a word.”

“Did you reach out to Slade?” he asked.

Hurt swept through me. Slade hadn’t called, and I’d only tried calling him once. It was as if we were both caught up in trying to forget each other and move on. “Once, and it was just recently, but he never answered.”

“How would you say Clint acted with everyone else at the ranch?” he asked.

“Everyone else?” I repeated.

Officer Whiten nodded. “Just trying to get a clearer picture on him, if you’d oblige me.”

Clint had been sort of standoffish, often cocky and rude when he spoke to the others. I told Officer Whiten what I could remember and instances of odd situations where Clint had showed his mean streak, giving names and estimated dates, but it seemed unimportant to me. Mavis had always said there were two kinds of people in the world—the good and the ugly—but both could have good and bad days, depending.

While widely accurate, I understood her meaning more clearly now. Good people could just have a bad day and snap at someone. Bad people could have a good day and smile. It didn’t change who they were at the core of it.

“…if I ask the hands a few questions?”

“The hands?” I repeated, blushing hotly for zoning out and missing what he’d asked me.

“I’ll ask Lex as well, but I want your consent to talk to the hands about you and Clint. Maybe they can help piece together a few things for me. Things you might not have witnessed.”

“You can ask them. Lex won’t stop you, and neither will I,” I answered.

“Thank you, Miss Lowell—”

“Gracen. Please call me Gracen,” I said, fighting a wave of panic. Fighting the crawling sensation of something like fear that tried to skitter its dirty, unwanted feet up my spine.

Officer Whiten zeroed in on that. Call it a vibe, but he saw it—knew it. “Help me put this guy away. Tell me everything you can, as much of it as you can handle. I won’t interrupt. I won’t ask you any questions until you’re done talking. This isn’t a trial, and you’re not in trouble. If it helps, close your eyes.”

I flicked a worried glance at the door. He noticed and gave me a chuckle. “Don’t worry. I brought along an old friend by the name of Smith & Wesson. And your nurse? I don’t think even I would try crossing her.”

Relief washed over me. I didn’t have to tell him how unsettled I’d begun to feel. How jumpy my nerves felt just talking about Clint. In fact, I’d kept it all at bay until my full attention was drawn to it. Knowing Officer Whiten and my nurse were right there with me helped a little.

“Will it ever go away?” I asked, unsure of what my own question meant.

“That is entirely up to you. However, a good start to the healing process is getting your statement down. Talking about what happened, no matter if it’s important to the case or not. The more you talk about it, the less it has a chance to eat away at you. Some folks even take to writing a journal because it helps them. Healing is an individual process, one that has no set time limit.”

I squared my shoulders. “The first time he struck me was…”

Officer Whiten settled back in his seat, hands clasped loosely in his lap, nodding, but not interrupting, as I tried to keep to a steady timeline of events, little and big, that happened from the moment I met Clint.

It was hard on the officer; I could see it in his face no matter how he tried to hide it. And when I ran out of things to say, ran into the black wall of what had put me in the hospital, his shoulders pulled forward and he moved to brace his elbows on his knees. Staring at the floor for a moment, he seemed to gather his thoughts.

When he finally spoke, it sounded a bit strained. “Gracen, speaking as a man of the law, a husband and a father, I want to say that what you just did? That takes a lot of guts. It tells me that you will be all right. But I’ll go one step further by saying this—I will not rest until he’s caught.”

Guts, maybe, but it also brought on a whole new wave of paranoia. Not being able to remember what happened to put me in the hospital was battering at my aching head. Worse? Not knowing what he said. Did he say it wasn’t over? He’d always threatened that it wasn’t until he said it was. Slade was home… what would happen if Clint found out? My mind reeled with the possibilities and unanswered questions.

“You’re overthinking it,” Officer Whiten said, cutting into my thoughts. “Don’t try to play the what-if game or allow yourself to be intimidated by the future.”

“How did you…?”

He smiled. It was warm, friendly and full of understanding. “Trauma is a funny thing. Some people bounce right back after they open their eyes, only to find themselves falling into, for a lack of a better term, the rabbit hole months, sometimes years after it happens. Some people spend the rest of their lives finding a way to heal, never moving forward. The lucky ones put their foot down and wade through the thickest parts of it with their head held high, and a damn good support system that keeps them from becoming either of the first two. You’ll do just fine, Gracen, especially with those Owens’ boys beside you.”

I returned his smile. “They’re the only family I have left.”

“Family of our choosing is sometimes even better than the ones we’re stuck with by blood. Give my eyeteeth to trade off a few of mine,” he said with a quick laugh.

The door to my room opened and the doctor bustled in. “I must insist that Gracen get a little rest now.”

Officer Whiten stood up, reaching out to save his phone from tumbling off the bed when the doctor moved the pillow.

With a series of quick, no-nonsense pats on the bed, the doctor said, “Up you go. And while you rest, I’ll be getting your release papers in order.”

My eyes flew open. “I’ll be able to go home today?”

The word home stuck in my throat a little. Did I want to go back to that place? To step into the same space that held the echo of my pain?

“The big house,” Slade said, stepping around Officer Whiten and putting his hand out to help me up. “Figured it’d be best to keep us all under one roof for the time being.”

I practically floated over to the bed on a wave of relief. Once I was settled, Officer Whiten said his goodbyes, giving Slade a card with the instructions to call if I remembered anything or if we needed him at the ranch. Before he left, he gave my hand a gentle squeeze, dipped his head, and then turned toward the door with a quick wave over his shoulder.

I closed my eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to curl up and sleep. It had come on suddenly and weighed me down like a lead blanket filled with down on a cold night. Slade’s voice mingled with the nurses a moment or two later. The words penetrated the fog that had rolled over me.

“…either of you, but someone needs to be listed with her having no immediate family to speak to the doctor. We didn’t push it this time due to the circumstances, added to the fact of where it happened. But if something was to ever come up again—”

“I understand. We’ll talk about it with Gracen once I get her settled in at home,” Slade said, cutting off whatever it was the nurse was about to say.

“She’ll need lots of rest and lots of TLC. Space, too. Don’t hover, but be there if she needs you,” the nurse said over the sounds of things being moved around the room.

“Gray?” Slade said as he touched my hand.

My eyes flickered open, bringing Slade’s blurry form to sight after a few blinks.

“I’ll go get her a wheelchair for when the papers are ready. Be right back,” the nurse said from somewhere behind him.

“Ready to go home?” he asked, searching my face. For what, I wasn’t sure.

“Yes. Is Lucy there?” I asked, triggering a small bout of separation panic.

“She is, and she’s been pacing the floor from what Marley told me. It’s like she knows you’re coming home,” Slade answered.

It felt like forever, but it was only about an hour of me drowsing in and out, before the rubber squeak of quick footsteps made their way into my room, wheelchair first. The nurse stood back and let Slade help me, watching with hawk-like eyes to make sure I was situated just so. I had a feeling that if there had been a seatbelt, she’d have buckled me in that too. Once I was firmly in place, she handed me a clipboard.

“Just a few things before you go. Need your signature here, here, and here,” she said, tapping her finger on the lines. “The doctor asked for your prescriptions to be called into the pharmacy. They’ll be ready by this evening. I went over them with Mr. Owens already while you were sleeping, but I need to go over them with you as well.”

I nodded, listening as she repeated her instruction on the handful of prescriptions for everything from swelling to nausea, and then the referral to the specialist who would have to put my arm in a hard cast if the arm ended up being fractured worse than they thought. With all the swelling, they’d soft casted it and kept me on heavy anti-inflammatories, along with pain medication. It hurt, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, considering there wasn’t much on my body that didn’t hurt.

The pen shook in my hand, giving my signature an odd-looking waver as I fought for control over not only the pen, but also my hand as well.

Once I was finished, the nurse collected the forms and tucked the pen in the pocket of her shirt, but not before giving it a couple clicks like I always found myself doing with those types of pens.

“Mr. Owens, if you’d be so kind as to hold Miss Lowell’s stuff, I’ll wheel her out,” the nurse said, moving in behind me and clamping her hands on the handles. We were moving before he could protest.

In fact, he didn’t say much at all until we’d made it outside. I shielded my eyes against the brightness of the sun.

“Be back in a minute, Gray,” Slade said, setting out at a quick jog across the parking lot to his truck.

I couldn’t help but feel like there was something I missed while Slade and the nurse talked. I’d taken what could only be called a catnap. And worse, I had no idea what could be wrong. Was he upset that I was being released? Mad that he’d been asked to leave while I talked to Officer Whiten? Or maybe he was a little bent out of shape because the nurse had wheeled me out of the hospital. I had no clue. What I did know was with each passing second, my head throbbed a little harder inside my skull. I wasn’t about to let on, though, scared she might wheel me around and put me right back into a room.

The low rumble of Slade’s truck starting was oddly soothing. To some, sounds brought a sense of comfort. Like the soft chime of sleigh bells, or the sound of a favorite song playing low in the background. Mine wasn’t any of those things. It was the sound of a shovel scraping along the ground as it turned over old hay, making room for the new. The swish of horse’s tails and the chuffing noises they made. The creak of a saddle as I rode alongside lowing cattle. The clicking of Lucy’s nails against the floor when she was all but dancing. All those sounds. Every one of them revert to Slade, because he had always been my happy place. My comfort zone.

When his truck pulled up to the curb, I was forced to wait impatiently while the nurse locked the wheels of the wheelchair and then moved around in front of me to help me up.

Slade came around the front of his truck and opened the passenger door. With a sweeping arm, hat in hand, he said, “Your chariot awaits.”

The nurse chuckled. “Got you a fine young man, Miss Lowell.”

I forced myself not to cringe. Forced myself to let go of the panic that tried to attach itself to my last name like some sort of disease. So what if he used to call me that all the time as if it gave me less meaning, as if he associated my first name with those he would have loved to separate me from. It hadn’t worked then. It damn sure wasn’t going to haunt me now.

While I was steady on my feet, climbing into Slade’s truck was more than I was up for. Slade cussed low under his breath before saying, “Put your arm around my neck.”

I did as he asked, and he lifted me up and set me down on the seat. The seatbelt clicked into place before the door was gently closed. I took my first real breath and released it.

We no sooner cleared the parking lot of the hospital when I released the seatbelt, moved a few inches closer to Slade, and lowered myself until my head rested on his thigh.

His hand came off the steering wheel, hovering somewhere over my head, and then rested lightly on my hip as he asked, “You okay?”

I closed my eyes and soaked up the heat coming from his hand. “I haven’t been this okay in a long time.”

I heard the catch in his breath. Felt the way his hand tensed briefly on my hip. But then his whole body relaxed, contented sigh matching mine.