This was it. Her life coming to a tragic end. She could already see the headline in the local paper.
Twenty-four-year-old virgin killed by her own stupidity.
She never should have stayed with the Wagners. Should have left the first time John had grabbed her. Reported him. Had him charged with assault. Right. Nobody would have believed her. The Wagners were royalty in this part of Montana. Heck. Maybe in every part of Montana.
And now? Now she was about to become a Rorschach inkblot in her next life.
Her own fault.
Or fate.
Either way…this wasn’t how she wanted to go out. On a dark winter highway. Jesus nowhere near the wheel. Wait. Those weren’t the lyrics. Were they?
Her head hit the side window, further scrambling her thoughts as her front tire found purchase on the loose gravel. The rubber bit hard, wrenching the steering wheel from her hands, and she was propelled onto the shoulder of the road like she’d been swiped aside by the hand of God.
A second later, the semi passed her by, her car rocking violently in the truck’s draft.
Holy.Freaking.Crap.
The rocking slowed to a sway, then stopped altogether. She sat unmoving, the sound of the engine a low hum in her ears as she stared out the windshield at nothing. A minute passed. Maybe more. Her heart continued to hammer in an unsteady beat, an unsuccessful attempt to break free of her body.
The violence of the assault against her chest caused her ribs to ache.
She’d almost died.
Almost died with nothing to show for her life. No one to miss her. No one to mourn her. Not really. Her mother would wonder what happened to her on occasion. Nothing more than a fleeting thought when she needed to make her monthly offering to Oshram and found her bank account empty.
Shouldn’t living in a commune be free?
Summer jammed the transmission into park and took her foot off the brake. An obvious signal to her brain because the dam broke. Not a gentle, cathartic release of emotions culminating in a few tears streaking down her cheeks.
Nope. Her sobbing cries filled the car, great heaving painful breaths fogging the air around her head. She cried. Cried for herself and the unfair hand she’d been dealt. Cried for Duff and Penelope and the realization she’d never get to see them again. Cried for those who’d died in Boston and the people they’d left behind.
She wept until her lungs felt bruised and her soul hollow. Then she took a ragged breath. It hurt. So she took another, and another, until the hurt turned to resolve.
She pulled the cuff of her sweatshirt out from her coat sleeve and wiped her swollen eyes dry. A rummage in the glove box produced a crumpled paper napkin, and she blew her nose. Spine straightening, she tossed the evidence of her breakdown into the footwell on the passenger side.
Okay, she could do this. Alone since the age of sixteen, she’d survived worse.
First things first. Get her butt back onto the highway. Foot once again on the brake, she put the car in drive and did a shoulder check. Even though there was zero traffic in either direction, she signaled before pulling onto the road.
Slow and steady, she accelerated to sixty miles an hour, the fastest she was willing to go under the circumstances, and twenty minutes later, she entered the town limits. The warm glow from the streetlamps soothed her frazzled nerves, and she headed straight for Buffalo Dave’s Bar and Grill.
Bypassing the gas station, she turned into the front lot, found an open parking spot, and killed the engine. She’d made it. Still alive and in one piece. She opened her door, grabbed the strap of her shoulder bag, and dropping her feet to the pavement, she stood on quaking legs.
A laughing couple passed her by, their arms around each other as they huddled against the cold. When they reached the door, the man let her go, and to prove chivalry wasn’t dead, he reached for the handle and opened it wide.
The low boom of a bass guitar slid into the night, calling to her, and the short snatch of a familiar lyric set her feet in motion. It was one of her songs. One Mason Walker hadn’t fully compensated her for. Not yet. He would, though. He’d promised her.
She crossed the lot, careful about where she placed her feet to avoid any other close encounters of the icy kind, and entered the roadhouse without incident. The familiar sights and sounds greeted her, and the warm press of bodies chased her chills away as she made her way through the crowd to the back of the bar.
She found an open stool behind a gaggle of mini-skirted girls, and removing her winter jacket, she hung it and her purse on a hook under the countertop.
“What’ll you have?”
Summer didn’t recognize the bartender who tossed a coaster down in front of her. “Is Red here?” she asked, hoping her friend had been scheduled to work tonight.
“He know you?”
