In all the time I lived in the wild, I never saw myself as broken—someone who needed fixing. I lived moment to moment, taking care of whatever need was most immediate. Hunger, shelter, fire, water—safety. Always safety. In the two years I'd been back in the so called "civilized" world—all my needs met with an ease I had longed for and never imagined possible—I still felt distant and hollow more times than not, as if a piece of me was missing, left on the mountain, lost to a past I was trying to reclaim.
As for safety, my anchor had quickly become Justin, the nature photographer who'd found me. Savior, friend, lover—everything I'd dreamed of during my self-imposed years of isolation. Justin was all I thought I could want or need. Someone who made me feel loved, accepted...protected.
Why then, did I still feel alone and so often afraid? And why couldn't I shake this restlessness and uncertainty?
Maybe because I continued to have constant misunderstandings with people, I considered with regret. My communication skills lacked the nuances of humor, sarcasm, and references to popular culture—most of which I'd missed entirely while living in the High Country with limited human interaction. Even the simplest of tasks, like using a washer and dryer, a cell phone, or an ATM still felt foreign, as if I'd somehow dropped into a TV character's life and taken it over. Computers alone were enough to make me feel like a time traveler transported to the future. When would I ever feel as if I were truly home?
I sighed, frustrated with myself and determined to put distance between me and the pressure of unanswerable questions. I'd been warned by my counselor—running away from your problems is never a solution. But old habits and a lifetime of living in survival mode told me different.
"Finally, we're here." I glanced at Eliot, who could read me like he was sniffing out a suspect and who was currently eyeing me with grave concern from the seat next to me, his tongue dangling like a trout from the side of his mouth. "I have to start somewhere," I added, my stomach squeezing a tad tighter. The pulse in my temple batted at my brain. Why...why did I have to face any of it? Maybe I would have been better off if I'd never come down from the hills.
Deep inside, in the place that ached for connection, I knew that wasn't true.
I turned into the driveway as instructed by an Australian voice named Sheila on my GPS and breathed an extra-long sigh of relief. I hadn't been to Abby's house in some time, and without the gadget telling me where to turn, I'd have never found the place again. A shiver of remembrance crawled across my skin as I came to a stop and stared at the old farmhouse, its blue paint flaking off at the eves. "I know. I don't want to be here either," I said as my furry companion sat to attention and whined.
Less than two years before, Roy Stockman, my kidnapper and escaped serial killer, had stalked me, cornered me inside that house, and then chased me for miles into the hills. He'd shot me and nearly killed Justin—the man I'd grown to love. Thoughts of Justin and another deep breath quieted the awful memory, and a familiar mix of emotions stirred. Trust, love, loyalty, friendship...and yes, an unexpected passion.
Unfortunately, those feelings were constantly at war with doubt, unrelenting fear, and a heaviness in my chest I couldn't explain. The idea of putting safety over freedom always left me feeling boxed in, making me want to run that much faster in the opposite direction to avoid imminent capture. Not that Justin was trying to cage me. In fact, he was totally supportive of me in every way—at least on the surface. I knew him well enough to know he was having his own difficulties with me putting the brakes on our relationship and even more so with me risking my life at every turn.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek and parked behind Abby's VW Beetle, which she fondly referred to as a Punch Buggy, the meaning of which completely escaped me. I held onto the steering wheel for a long minute after turning off the engine, breathing through my nose and focusing on my hands...hands that had taken more than one life, I reminded myself, unable to keep my mind in the present.
The image of Stockman's cold dead eyes staring from inches away was never far from me, but today, it loomed larger. I kept insisting to myself he couldn't hurt me anymore, yet his image rose like a ghost telling me I would never truly be free of him. A second image crept in and the face of Matt Donnelly—a man I'd recently shot and watched fall to his death—flashed before me. I pushed it away, unable to fully face what I'd done. It had been a so called "good" shoot, but the only thing good about it was I'd done it to save Justin's brother, Steve.
Whether Stockman and Donnelly deserved to have their lives snuffed out for their crimes was up for debate, but I'd done the only thing I could in each circumstance—the consequences of which I would have to live with.
I growled, released the steering wheel, and gripped Eliot's scruff instead, giving him a heavy pat. "No sense in putting this off. I need to face the past if I'm going to have a future, right?" This month's mantra from my therapy group rolled off my tongue as if it were gospel. Therapy, as hard as it was, was helping. Maybe if I kept working at it, I might eventually put all those missing pieces back together, I thought, rubbing my temples and taking one more deep breath.
I stepped out of the vehicle, Eliot hopping down beside me and lifting his leg on the nearest shrub. Abby ran down the walkway, arms around me before I could close my door.
"Brinn! I thought you'd never get here!" An overpowering scent of jasmine hit my nose, and I pushed her back. "Oh, sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to overwhelm you. I remember how you didn't like people touching you." Realizing her error too late, her face fell. "Sorry," she said again, pink tinging her fair skin.
Abby hadn't changed. Well, she'd changed in that her blonde hair was cut boyishly short and she'd slimmed down considerably living in the city—the city in question being Charleston, South Carolina, where she attended college. But she said whatever came to mind before thinking of the consequences. I reminded myself her directness was one of the reasons I liked her.
"It's fine. I've gotten past that for the most part," I said. It was true. Despite the years I'd lived in fear of capture, whether it was from Stockman, social services, or the police, I'd found a way to exist in the world. To adapt just as I'd done so long ago, staying hidden in the hills for eight long summers and winters before I'd met Justin and decided to come out of hiding. He'd taught me to trust again. He reunited me with my family and made me feel as if I belonged. The thought of him brought a bittersweet tenderness to my heart.
"There's a smile," said Abby. Not completely oblivious to my inner turmoil, she wrapped an arm gently around my shoulder and steered me toward the house. "Now, tell me everything you've been up to."
Eliot followed along, his tail wagging and perfectly happy to be included in this reunion. I'd only seen Abby a few times over the past two years, either when she'd come to visit me in Atlanta, or when I made the drive to Charleston. But I told myself it was because I was busy...which in truth, I was.
First, there was daily therapy and months of reintegration after I'd emerged from seclusion in the North Georgia High Country, healthy and sane for the most part, if not slightly malnourished and completely unaccustomed to the bustle of daily life in the civilized world. I lived with my parents then but quickly decided their smothering me wasn't good for any of us. I moved in with Justin and tried a year of school after that but found it frustrating and futile, although I'd managed to pass a high school equivalency test. College was another matter. I'd missed too much formal education. Despite my excellent reading skills, my exposure to more than basic math, science, and history was as limited as my world experience.
I had nothing to draw from but the lonely existence I'd endured for nearly half my life, living alone in a dilapidated cabin, coming down from the mountains only to work on occasion for Mr. Hoffman, an old widowed storekeeper who traded food and books for my cleaning and shelf-stocking services. Or to see Abby, who would supply me with treasures like warm socks, coats and mittens in the winter, and fresh vegetables, cheeses and breads in the summer. We'd played together in the low meadow and she kept my secret, knowing if she told anyone, I would run away again and disappear forever. My heart gave a squeeze when I thought of my lost innocence and the harsh years I'd spent hiding from the world.
"I switched my major...again," said Abby, pulling me out of my gloomy recollections. "I'm going to fashion design school now." Her smile beamed with happiness, and her enthusiasm drew a genuine smile from my lips. She poured glasses of sweet tea from a pitcher as she settled us in the living room of her parents' house—the home she'd grown up in.
Worn from generations of McMurray family life, the old farmhouse was warm and inviting, despite its antique décor and my less-than-happy memory of the last time I'd been there. The mood was lifted when Abby set out a plate of delicious smelling cookies. "Just baked! I'm staying with Mama and Daddy for the summer. Then I'll move back to Charleston in the fall," she said.
"Where are your parents now?" I took a bite of warm, chewy chocolate chip cookie and groaned, eyes closed.
Abby laughed and helped herself to two cookies, one in each hand. "They left yesterday for an Alaskan cruise to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary." She sat down across from me on a wide cushy chair, curling her now bare feet up under her and waving a cookie under her nose.
"It's nice they still enjoy each other's company," I said awkwardly, wishing I could be so far away from my problems. "And I'm glad you've found something that makes you happy," I added with more enthusiasm. I'd had my doubts about my own choice of career, but when I thought about starting my new job as a police officer on the Atlanta P.D., warmth and excitement spread through me.
Despite my own experience, the police academy seemed the perfect fit. I wanted and needed something challenging to draw my focus, and I'd come to see I was meant to use my past to help others. Helping people gave me the sense of purpose I'd longed for. And now that I'd passed my firearms tests, there was nothing standing in my way.
"I'm psyched you came to see me, but what are you really doing here?" Her tone had changed from excited to serious and her deep brown eyes held my gaze.
"I have a couple of weeks before I start my job and I wanted to...needed to," I amended, "get away from my...situation." When she cocked an eyebrow, I sighed and went on. "I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed," I said, sipping the tea and watching Eliot fastidiously clean his front paws.
I went on to explain my dilemma about Justin and his friend, Cody, an uncomfortable conversation since Abby had briefly dated the former Marine turned FBI agent and was deeply disappointed when he broke things off with her, citing his work and travel schedule as an excuse to ditch the budding relationship. But that had been quite some time ago and Abby had clearly moved on, often texting me about the latest guy she was seeing and pointing out their strengths and weaknesses as if judging a pie contest. After her cheating fiancé Phillip broke her heart, and then Cody blew her off before the romance even took hold, she was wary of relationships. I couldn't blame her. Relationships seemed far more complicated than I ever imagined.
"So, Cody has...feelings for you." She said it as a statement rather than a question, and she didn't sound surprised. My ears turned warm. I sipped the cold tea, nodding. "And Justin knows?" She reached for another cookie and took a bite, contemplating all that went with this revelation. "Let me guess," she said, sucking melted chocolate from her thumb and arching a slim golden brow. "You aren't sure how you feel about either of them, right?" When I nodded again ruefully, she pursed her lips and gave me a knowing look. "You love them both, don't you?"
"I don't know what I feel anymore." The words came out in a rush, and I dropped a half-eaten cookie onto the napkin in my lap, my appetite for the gooey sweet treat gone. "I don't know if I even know what love is," I added, growing more miserable by the minute.
It wasn't like I'd had any example of love or healthy adult relationships growing up. Stockman was devoid of emotion, other than ruthless detachment and festering rage. And I'd never seen him interact with anyone beyond the postal carrier, the infrequent delivery people, and the meat buyers who stopped by the slaughterhouse every few weeks. I did have distant memories of my parents having a loving relationship, but that was before I was taken from a dog park as an eight-year-old, and those memories were merely a fairy tale in my mind, a foggy dream of the perfect family. A picture stained with old resentments toward a life that had gone on without me and two years of abuse at the hands of a monster. I swallowed the bitterness and tried to remember how lucky I was to have survived at all.
"Well, clearly, you can't have them both," said Abby, her tone matter of fact and not the least bit insincere. "Have you done a checklist?" Seeing my confusion, she went on. "You know—a pros and cons list." Noting I was still staring blankly, she explained. "Create a list of characteristics you find appealing in a man. Decide what is most important to you. Then check to see how each guy holds up to the requirements."
I had done a version of this in my head a million times.
Justin had been the first man I met who saw me and loved me for who I was. He stood by my side through the worst of the past two years. Intelligent, funny, handsome in a way that made my stomach quiver every time he entered a room, and patient with my recovery far beyond reasonable expectation, Justin was there for the night terrors and melt downs. He held my hand through the darkest of nights, calming my anxiety attacks by helping me focus on one breath at a time. With his tenderness, he had opened my heart, mind, and body to a new world of trust and intimacy. In the warm brown of his eyes, I'd found a sense of peace and a profound feeling of belonging. He'd saved me in more ways than I could count, and I would be eternally grateful for the gift of his friendship, love, and support.
How could that not be enough? Why did I still feel so...alone? Not for the first time, the question brought a deep ache to my chest along with distracting thoughts of Cody.
A habitual loner himself, Cody was rougher around the edges. He'd been a Marine, captured and tortured by insurgents in Afghanistan, and despite his ongoing recovery from PTSD, the FBI had recruited him. Aside from being a guy who liked playing outside the rules—a character defect I could relate to completely—he was one of the bravest souls I'd ever met. He'd laid his life on the line for me more than once and done it without hesitation. And he'd been instrumental in helping me take down Stockman.
Cody taught me how to fight, how to handle a gun, and how to stand up for myself. The time we'd spent together had brought us closer and stirred feelings in both of us that seemed to have taken on a life of their own. It was beyond just a physical attraction—although that was damned inconvenient enough. Cody accepted my wild side—the rule breaking, slightly reckless, and curious-to-a-fault side. He was the only one who didn't always try to protect me. We shared a warrior spirit and had a sense of loyalty to each other that surpassed simple friendship.
When we'd joined forces against a cartel leader in Colombia, our partnership had gotten us through it alive and we'd saved nine boys from being sold as child soldiers to the guerilla militia. Since then, our feelings had only deepened. We'd even kissed once...the memory of which flushed my face with warmth and drew me back to Abby's talking between bites of another cookie.
"If you ask me, neither of them deserves you," she said, her round cheeks full like a chipmunk's. "Wasn't Justin the one who leaked your reunion with your parents to that witch he works for at the magazine? Don't you remember how much pain that betrayal caused you?"
"That wasn't intentional," I said in Justin's defense. "And I forgave him," I added. Abby looked unconvinced despite my denial. She did have a point. He had betrayed my trust and caused no end of press and public scrutiny before I was truly ready to face anything beyond meeting my parents after ten long years apart. The shock of seeing them—after believing they were dead—and coming back to a life that was as foreign as if I'd come down from the moon, had only been exacerbated by the attention.
"And what about Cody?" Abby narrowed her gaze, her normally congenial demeanor becoming frosty. "I don't think he's the kind of guy who sticks around. And didn't you tell me he was dating your roommate?"
The cookie turned to cement in my stomach. Dani—Detective Daniella Hernandez—my roommate and a recently promoted detective with the Atlanta P.D., had been dating Cody on and off for the past several months. They'd even slept together once but were now on the outs—partly, I figured, because of his feelings for me. My heart sank, and my head spun with confusion.
"I know what you're saying, Abby. None of this makes any sense to me. That's why I'm here. I need to take some time to figure things out and get my head on straight, and I can't do that when both Justin and Cody are hovering around me like bees to a flower."
To his credit, Cody was trying to keep his distance, not wanting to put any more strain on me or his friendship with Justin. They were just getting back on solid footing, now that Justin's brother Steve had come back from the dead, and he couldn't blame his brother's MIA status on Cody any longer. But it was clear there were still issues between the two long-time friends...mainly me. I groaned in frustration.
"Maybe a few days of being alone in the hills and reconnecting with nature will help me gain some perspective. I need to get away from the noise of the city for a while," I added, hoping some peace and quiet would dim the chaos in my head. "Besides, I'm looking forward to visiting my cabin and seeing Kitty again."
Although I wasn't at all sure Eliot would feel the same way. I leaned down and patted his head. He sniffed the air, his eyes remaining glued to the cookie on my napkin. Kitty was a large black bear I'd befriended as a child. She was getting up in age but would likely be found wandering the high meadow at sundown, hungrily munching on early berries this time of year.
Abby finished her tea. "Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but I rode Callie out past the low meadow yesterday, and your old trail is totally washed out by spring rains. You'll either need to use the logging trail on the backside of the mountain or take the steep way up, across the falls and over the ridge."
Of course, I would. Because nothing in my life was ever simple.