Reece (Stud Ranch)

I was diagnosed as being bipolar with schizoid episodes. And suicidal ideation, obviously.

I heaved for a breath that didn’t come and turned away from where Buchanan was pushing through the crowd, showing his phone around, no doubt with my picture on it.

He hasn’t got you yet. You can still get out of this. I stumbled through the crowd, clutching my ticket in my hand.

Away. I just had to get away.

I fought back the tears that threatened and bit the inside of my cheek as hard as I could. Fuck Buchanan, fuck Jeff.

I was here. I’d come this far.

Just get to the bus. Get to the bus.

I nodded to myself and then reminded myself to shuffle. I was a woman without a care in the world. I was just a normal millennial, barely out of college. Off to visit my sick aunt.

Even though it killed me, I slowed down instead of hurrying. I took my time and though every instinct in my body screamed for me to look over my shoulder to see how close the hunter that was stalking me was—

No.

That was the logic of a person who got themselves caught.

Not this time. Not this fucking time.

So I kept cruising forwards. It took me a panicked second, but I finally found the bus for Seattle. I didn’t look over my shoulder as I climbed on. I didn’t freeze up even though my feet felt like lead blocks. I kept myself fluid. Just like any other person. Visiting a sick aunt, visiting a sick aunt.

A couple peopled glanced up as I moved down the aisle and took a seat at the back, but only a couple. I wasn’t Penelope Chambers, turning heads. I didn’t sit by the window even though I preferred the window seat. Any barrier from Buchanan was good right now.

And I’d timed it well. It was only five minutes until we left.

Five horrifying, terrifying minutes where every muscle was rigid and me about sweat out my entire body weight, clutching my backpack like it was a life preserver, but then—

The blessed noise of the door closing.

I collapsed, boneless, back against the seat in thanks as the bus pulled out of the depot, taking me away from Penelope Chambers, Jeff Chambers, and the prison I prayed I’d never, ever see again.

3

I was exhausted after three days on the road.

From Seattle I’d headed across country to New York. I disappeared into the city for an afternoon, then got a cab down to New Jersey. At a gas station, I pulled out the electric clippers that were the last goody in my bag, slapped on an inch and a half guard, and cut off all my hair. Talk about liberating. I’d colored it a neutral brown and was happy to leave all the scratchy wigs behind forever.

Then I got back on the Greyhound and went down to Georgia.

Then to Missouri where I saw the big arch in St. Louis for the first time. I pressed my hand to the window glass as I passed, feeling like an alien passenger in my own body.

Every hour, every minute I was free felt…impossible.

I’d dreamed of this for so long, so single-mindedly. But now that I was finally doing it…well, it was beyond surreal.

I didn’t know how to feel.

How to be.

I’d defined myself for a decade in terms of that prison, and of nursing whatever pain he’d most recently inflicted on me, and to keeping up the façade and trying so hard not to wake the beast inside him.

But now I was free to be just…me again.

Except I didn’t remember how to be her. If I’d ever known her.

Who the hell was Not-Penelope-Chambers?

Over the endless hours as I watched the rolling scenery, I tried to remember the me I’d been before her. But when I tried to, it was a shock to think… maybe I’d never really known her—I mean, myself. I’d never really had the time to find myself, as it were.

But… not to know who you were, at your core… I mean, I knew crazy and that just felt plain crazy.

Before my marriage, I’d just gone from my mother’s house to college. There had been a brief flare of phoenix-like color when I got to college as I’d begun the process of discovering myself. I might have gotten there.

Except that within a month, I’d met Jeff and he swallowed me whole before I ever had the chance to even think of flying.

And now?

It didn’t feel like flying. More like I was one of those crippled birds with a sad, broken wing. How was I supposed to fly? I could barely crawl.

But—I sucked in a deep breath—I’d made it this far, right? I was here. And there. And everywhere. All at the same time. Living in the present and the past and still dreaming of a better future.