“I am not burning out. I am being targeted. There’s a difference.”
“But you don’t have to be a target right now.” Robert’s words gained speed. He was eager to fix, eager to heal, eager to make this right the way he’d made everything right when I was younger. “Remember the anniversary trip we were planning? We were talking about booking that cabin up north. The one near the stables where you learned to ride.”
Elias nodded slowly. “The reception is dead up there. No cell towers within twenty miles. No news. No social media. No way for anyone to find you. Just the trails. The mountains. The quiet.”
“Exactly!” Robert clapped his hands together, the sound sharp and too loud. “We pack the car tonight. We leave tomorrow morning, before dawn. Just the three of us. We go off the grid fortwo weeks, maybe three. We’ll ride the trails. We’ll just let this blow over. Let him find some other shiny object to chase.”
I stared at them.
So hopeful. So loving. Robert with his old apron and his gentle doctor’s hands. Elias with his steady, sheltering strength and his wisdom. They were offering me the only thing they knew how to give: comfort. Safety. Protection.
Or… were they?
Let it blow over.
Go off the grid.
Let him find some other shiny object to chase.
Not a strategy. Not a solution. A hiding place. A cabin in the woods where I could wait for the storm to pass, where I could pretend the problem had gone away simply because I couldn’t see it anymore.
“Run away? That’s your solution? Hide in the woods and hope he loses interest?”
“Not running away.” Robert’s correction came gently. “Regrouping. Taking time to heal. Being a family together, supporting each other through this crisis.”
“Sounds like hiding.”
“Sometimes the smartest thing a soldier can do is to retreat to higher ground, Andie,” Elias replied. “You know that. You’ve heard me say it a hundred times. You can’t calm a spooked horse by running alongside it. You have to stop. You have to remove the stimulus. You have to give it time and space to settle.”
The stimulus.
That’s what I was to them. A spooked horse. A patient. A veteran with PTSD who needed to be managed, medicated, and removed from the firing line. From a woman making choices, fighting for her autonomy, I’d become a frightened animal that needed to be calmed.
“I’m not a horse, Pop. And I’m not a child you can bundle into the backseat to keep safe from the lightning.”
“We’re not treating you like a child!” Robert protested, stepping forward. “We’re trying to protect you! That’s what parents do—we protect our children!”
“By locking me in a cabin in the woods?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was a sharp, brittle sound, like glass breaking. “That’s not protection, Dad. That’s a cage with a view. That’s you deciding what’s best for me without asking what I want.”
“We just want you to be safe,” Robert insisted.
Something inside me snapped, as if I’d finally reached my breaking point. “Safe? Safety is a lie!” The scream tore out of my throat, raw and jagged, releasing weeks of pent-up fury. “You think if you take me to the woods, he won’t find me? You think if I hide behind your legs, the storm won’t find us? Do you have any idea what he is?”
“Andie, breathe.” Elias moved to intercept me, his counselor instincts kicking in.
“He isobsessedwith me! He tore apart a yacht full of guests, looking for a scent. He’s stalked me through three weddings and two private events. And you two are standing here talking about trail rides like it’s a bad semester at boarding school! Like if we just ignore the Olympian at the door, he’ll go away!
“You don’t see a woman fighting for her life. You see a broken thing that needs to be glued back together. You see a victim who can’t make her own decisions. You see the teenage girl who showed up on your doorstep, not the woman standing in front of you now!”
“I see my daughter!” Robert cried, and there were tears standing in his eyes now, genuine anguish crossing his features. “I see the girl I raised, the one I taught to ride a bike, the one who used to make me breakfast in bed on Father’s Day. I see the woman I love, who’s in danger, and I can’t protect her, and it’s killing me, Andie. Killing me to watch this happen and know I’m powerless to stop it.”
The rawness in his tone almost broke me. Almost made me stay. Almost made me apologize and let them bundle me into the car and hide me away where the world couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Almost.
“Then maybe you should look harder. Because I’m not a little girl anymore. And I am certainly not going to let you drag me into a hole to wait for the world to stop turning.”
I grabbed my purse from the island. My fingers were steady now. The indecision was gone, burned away by the clarity of rage.