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With the sly calculation of a fox, Lillian watched his expression slide into one of feigned concern. “Baby, I’m so sorry about Liana. As soon as I got word, I cancelled the rest of my surgeries and rushed home to be here for you.” He stepped forward as she reached the bottom of the stairs, not fooled in the least by his conciliatory tone or compassionate gaze. There was no way he’d come in through the front without noticing her packed car. “Taking those somewhere?” he asked, nodding toward the paintings tucked under her arms.
“Yes, out of here.” She took a step sideways to go around him, but he followed, blocking her path. “Get out of my way, Brad. I’m leaving. Your threat to hurt Liana can no longer keep me here, as you damn well know.”
In the blink of an eye, Brad reached for her upper arm, his demeanor changing back to frigidly furious. With her heart jumping into her throat, she leapt back, evaded his grip and sprinted toward the door only to have him halt her flight by grabbing a fistful of her hair. Painful pricks stabbed at her skull as several strands came ripping out as he flung her onto the floor, her hip exploding in agony when she landed on the unforgiving marble. Shock robbed her of breath as he lifted his foot and kicked her in the ribs, his assault coming so fast, and with first-time brutality, all she could do was lie there struggling to breathe through the waves of red-hot torment.
Squatting in front of her, it took every ounce of Lillian’s battered control to keep from shrinking back as Brad brushed her hair aside with gentle fingers and said in a voice gone deceptively soft, “Baby, I thought we’d gotten past this penchant you have for thinking you can walk out on me. Don’t you remember our first date, when I told you how much I was looking forward to a long relationship?”
Brad’s eyes held the same cold, calculating gleam as when he’d whispered the numerous ways he could harm Liana while she lay helpless, ways no one would ever detect. He’d delivered that warning right in front of his medical colleagues in Liana’s room, the look of caring concern reflected on his face never wavering. Only she had seen his eyes change and heard the menace in his voice.
But that was then, when Liana’s fragile condition had left her no choice but to return to him, and stay in this house, under his thumb for the last four weeks. She had nothing left to lose by defying him except more pain, and she was in so much now, emotional and physical, Lillian was willing to risk more physical harm to get away from him once and for all.
“I remember,” she whispered, allowing a small smile to curve her trembling lips as she lifted her face closer to his. “I also remember how your conceited, overbearing, possessive machinations drove me away.” With a quick head butt, she sent him jerking backward enough for her to scramble to her feet. But it wasn’t enough to get her to the door before he sent one picture flying out from under her arm with another grab.
How Lillian managed to retain her hold on the other when he backhanded her hard enough to slam her against the wall, splitting her lip and sending pain blossoming across the entire left side of her face, she didn’t know. Gasping for breath, her head reeling as the jarring impact ricocheted in a burning agony across her ribcage, she let loose the building, consuming rage filling her.
“You bastard.” Swinging the painting, one of her favorites, at his head with every ounce of strength she could muster, Lillian only had time for one deep, excruciating inhale as Brad stumbled against the entry table. Blood gushed from his temple where the corner of the frame had struck, his eyes widening in surprise as he crumpled to the floor.
With one arm cradling her ribs, she shuffled toward the door, the amount of blood pouring from his head adding nausea to her other afflictions. “Stay away from me, Doctor, or I’ll file charges.”
Brad greeted her threat with a pain-filled, scornful laugh. “You wouldn’t dare. Who the fuck would believe you over me? In fact,” he tried to get to his feet, failed and leaned against the wall, his face going from pale to chalk-white, “after I spin my side of this to Bryan, you’ll be the one facing charges.”
Even his over-protective cop brother wouldn’t be able to deny the proof her pictures documented, so his threat didn’t faze Lillian. She looked down at him with disdain, no longer fearing him as a strange calming numbness took over her body. “Did you honestly believe I would tolerate your abuse and threats without documenting every bruise? I took pictures of every mark you left on me and I won’t hesitate to use them if you ever come near me again. Think your sterling reputation will hold up under such scrutiny? Goodbye, Brad.”
Chalky with shock, dazed with grief and pain, Lillian couldn’t think beyond the need to escape her anguish. She’d sublet her apartment when Brad had blackmailed her into moving in with him, putting everything she hadn’t brought to his house and was now loaded in her car in storage. With no place to go, she ignored the warnings of her muddled reasoning that made the drastic decision to drive to the bank and clear out her checking and savings accounts ill-advised. With nothing left for her in the city she grew up in, she was determined to keep driving. Liana’s body was already at the crematorium where her ashes would be stored in the mausoleum along with their parents, and she needed to find a way to come to peace with never getting the chance to tell her goodbye.
Tamping down on those crippling emotions, she refused to let them bubble to the surface as she veered onto the highway out of Salt Lake City with no destination in mind. Her whole body shook as the road stretched out before her. Wondering where she should go, she glanced at the bank bag bulging with cash. More tears cascaded down her face as she realized she would now inherit her sister’s portion of their inheritance. Money wasn’t a problem, but that offered no comfort for the heartache encompassing her.
At least Lillian was free of Brad, and this time for good. Not even his brother, whom she’d met once, could bail him out of this scrape if she chose to file charges. Ten years older than Brad, his brother bore part of the blame for Brad’s behavior by always covering for him from as far back as when Brad had been a wild teenager. Between his colleagues and patients c
onstant praise and admiration pumping up his God complex and Bryan still around to spoil him, she couldn’t believe she’d ever fallen for his fake charm.
Nausea, blurred vision and excruciating discomfort forced Lillian to stop as she crossed into Wyoming almost two hours later. She had no idea what town she was in when she pulled into a Walgreens and didn’t care. After purchasing first aid supplies and dodging the solicitous inquiries from the salesclerk, she checked into the motel across the street for some much-needed rest.
Tossing her purchases onto a chair, she lay down on the bed intending to gather her thoughts before checking her injuries but couldn’t stave off the stress induced exhaustion that pulled her under. She fell asleep with her sister’s laughing face merging with Brad’s furious image.
Lillian awoke to a pitch-black, strange room and a myriad of aches and pains. Rolling over, she winced, the pain radiating around her ribcage bringing clarification to her groggy, jumbled senses. Liana. A sob caught in her throat as she sat up and flicked on the bedside light. Blinking, she realized one eye wouldn’t open fully. Brad. A surge of anger tightened her muscles as she stood on wobbly legs. Vacillating between gut-clenching grief and a slow-burning fury, she padded into the miniscule bathroom, turned on the light and groaned out loud at her image in the mirror. Her topsy-turvy emotional imbalance took second place to the distress of seeing just how hard Brad had struck her.
Turning away from the view of her swollen black eye, cut puffy lip and bruised cheek, she retrieved the first aid supplies and did her best to doctor her injuries. It was too late for an icepack on her face to do much good, but the medicated salve eased the sting in her lip and from the small nick near her eye. Lifting her sweatshirt, she winced at the purple splotches forming under her breasts. The smart thing would be to find an emergency room and get x-rays, but her breathing wasn’t compromised, indicating no punctured lung, and she figured she could wrap her ribs as well as a professional.
The urge to get going, to put as much distance between her and the place she could never call home again, pounded at her temples. Lillian wrapped bandages around her ribcage and used medical tape to hold them snug, surprised by the relief the slight pressure gave her. It wasn’t much, but along with downing three extra-strength aspirin, the pain was now manageable. She ran a brush through her tangled, auburn hair and brushed her teeth before stepping out into the frigid early morning air. After checking out of the motel carrying a to-go cup of steaming coffee offered by the worried looking receptionist, she got on the road again, figuring she would stop when her body insisted, or she needed gas.
The desolate winter prairieland matched her bleak mood as she traveled north through Wyoming while replaying happy memories of her and Liana’s childhood; their first day of school when Lillian had shoved the boy who’d pulled Liana’s braid and made her cry; the time they’d gone bike riding and ventured too far from home, getting themselves lost until well after dark and the police found them; their double date to their Junior prom where they’d indulged in alcohol for the first time and ended up grounded for a month; the fun they’d had on their college spring break trip to Padre Island.
Heavy, grief-laden despair pressed down on her chest as she passed a herd of snow-encrusted, slow-lumbering bison traversing across a snow packed plateau. She shivered and nudged the heat up a notch as the thick gray clouds spit small flakes on her windshield. Liana used to love snow and catching Lillian unaware with a snowball to the back of the head. God, she would get pissed whenever her sister’s aim was spot on. As she reached the Montana border, her low gas gauge pinged, forcing her to find a gas station and take a break.
Despite her aches and pains making themselves known with throbbing intensity and the dark clouds swirling ahead, threatening more snow, Lillian got back in her car after filling up and drove on. Not yet, she thought, the memories are still too close. Her trek made no sense, but neither did her sister’s death at the age of thirty-four. Weren’t they just laughing about growing old together as two, eccentric spinsters a few weeks ago? With Liana’s nose always buried in a book she was editing and Lillian’s focus glued to her current painting, it was a wonder either of them had ever set aside their absorption with their work long enough to accept a date.
Lillian’s mouth curled in a derisive sneer as she recalled what the last date she’d accepted had led to. No fancy dinner or the mediocre pleasure of an orgasm was worth wasting her time. Give her a glass of wine and her pretty pink vibrator and she was content. There was no way she would relinquish control over her life again, especially not now, when there was no one left she cared enough about to sacrifice for. A pang gripped her abdomen at the reminder of how alone she was now, her gaze turning watery again.
Eight hours, two pit stops, three cups of coffee, one candy bar and a steady amount of snowfall later, Lillian passed a sign showing ten miles to the Billings, Montana exit. Figuring that was as good a place as any to spend the night, she slowed to a crawl, the winter storm that was closer than she’d guessed turning into a white sheet of windblown swirls. She was no novice to traveling alone having flown around the country and elsewhere for art shows by herself for the last eight years, nor was this the first time she’d driven with snow falling hard enough to warrant caution.
But it didn’t take long for Lillian’s first experience in leaving behind everything that was familiar to her, along with driving through a slow-building snowstorm sweeping across a wide-open, barren expanse of nothingness to turn treacherous. Controlling the car against the buffeting wind and slick roads zapped what little strength she had left after traveling all day and shunning food due to lingering nausea. The ten miles to the turnoff she kept an eye out for seemed to go on forever, the traffic on the now snow-hidden highway dwindling from sparse to almost nonexistent over the next thirty minutes. With no sign of another advertised turnoff, she took a wild guess born of worry and fatigue and opted for the next exit.
Gripping the wheel with sweaty palms, Lillian turned onto a much narrower road, hoping it would take her into Billings, figuring it couldn’t be that far. Right now, she would welcome the sight of any building, or heck, even another vehicle. At least her snow tires were holding out, helping her through the slow build-up. Her heater worked well and she was sure the spare blanket was still stowed in the trunk, if she needed it. That didn’t keep the tremors of unease from invading her sore, depleted body as her head grew fuzzy with disorientation from the blinding white terrain filling her vision no matter which direction she looked.
Staying along the wooded tree line helped guide her, but with darkness fast approaching and the constant struggle to stay focused, Lillian had just decided to stop and hope for a signal on her phone when a large, leggy elk darted out from the trees. Talk about startled like a deer caught in the headlights. She didn’t have time to giggle about that thought as her attempted swerve to miss the animal sent the car into a spin as slow and sluggish as her brain, the uncontrollable, rotating glide ending with the front end buried up to the windshield in a ten-foot snow bank.
With a frustrated swing and exasperated huff, Mitchell buried his ax in the wood stump and shook his head in disbelief. What the hell was someone doing driving a sporty Mazda Miata on a Montana back road during a raging snowstorm? They were lucky their inevitable stranded predicament occurred near his cabin, that he happened to be here and outside getting wood to witness their loss of control through the trees separating his place from the road. Yanking his sheepskin lined coat closed and his Stetson down to shield his eyes from the blowing snow, it was too bad he didn’t get to share in the occupant’s luck.
