Page 14 of Montana Memory

Just an empty void where my past should be.

I sucked in a breath, but it came too fast, too sharp. My chest squeezed tight, and I pressed my back against the seat, forcing myself to breathe slower. In. Out. I gripped the fabric of the scrub pants, focusing on the pressure, trying to stop the trembling in my hands.

I didn’t even know Kenzie Hurst. At least, not in any way I could recall. But according to Hunter, I’d not only known her—I’d taken her. I’d stolen another human being from her life, from her family, and I couldn’t even remember why.

My stomach churned. God. What kind of person did that?

I turned my head just enough to glance at Hunter. He kept his eyes on the road, his jaw set tight, his knuckles white where they gripped the wheel.

“I don’t remember,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Not a single thing about what you’re saying.”

His gaze flicked toward me, unreadable in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “I know.”

I swallowed hard. “Then how the hell am I supposed to live with myself?”

The silence grew thick between us, heavier than the truth I’d been running from. I needed him to say something, anything, to fill the space with more than just the sound of my own doubts.

The words came out before I could stop them, bitter and raw. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?”

Hunter didn’t answer—why would he? He didn’t know me. He adjusted the rearview mirror, his jaw set, as if he was weighing how much of the truth I could handle. I waited, the ache of it swelling in my chest.

I thought of the Alan and Kenzie he’d talked about, their faces as blank as the memories I couldn’t find. If I could kidnap someone, what else was I capable of? Suddenly, everything was up for grabs, everything dark and ugly that I’d never thought to question while sitting in the motel for the last couple days.

Who was I, really? A criminal? A sociopath? My mind spiraled, twisting around questions that had no answers.

“You did some messed-up things,” Hunter said at last, his voice level. I flinched, the confirmation slicing through me.“But you also stopped Alan from killing Kenzie. That counts for something.”

I stared at him. His profile was unyielding, a stone wall I couldn’t climb. But his words were like a life raft. I’d stopped Alan from killing Kenzie.

Did that mean I wasn’t a monster? Or just that I was a monster with a conscience?

The truck roared down a highway, and I stared out the window, feeling a mix of emotions I didn’t know how to hold. Maybe I wasn’t completely awful. Maybe I was. I tried to breathe through it, to make sense of the mess inside my head.

“What kind of person does that make me?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. “I don’t even know what I was trying to do.”

Hunter shrugged.

If I’d gone so far off the rails that I couldn’t even remember doing something so terrible, what did that say about me? That I was reckless? Dangerous? Just plain stupid?

The questions gnawed at me, relentless and sharp. I pressed my hands together to stop them from shaking, but it didn’t help.

“How do you know me?” I asked, my voice barely rising above the hum of the engine. I braced myself for an answer that might change everything again.

Hunter didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on the road. “I don’t, really,” he said. “The Resting Warrior Ranch guys came in to help with the Kenzie kidnap situation, and I jumped in as added help. That’s it.”

Resting Warrior Ranch. That didn’t sound familiar beyond Hunter mentioning it at the cabin that night.

“Resting Warrior Ranch. What are they again?”

“Former SEALs. They run a ranch in Montana that helps people with PTSD. And since Kenzie is the girlfriend of my cousin Lucas’s friend, they volunteered to help. They’ve got thetraining and step in when family’s involved.” He said it like it was the most normal thing in the world, a bunch of ex-military guys playing cowboy and vigilante all at once.“Lucas runs the ranch with six other guys.”

“So you don’t know me at all?” I asked, needing to hear it again.

He shook his head. “Not beyond the other night,” he said. “And before you ask, I don’t know what you were doing with a guy like Alan. But I know Kenzie’s fine now, and Alan’s back in prison. He’ll go to trial for attempted murder, probably more than that.”

Kenzie was fine. The words settled over me like a cautious balm, soothing and disconcerting at once. Hunter spoke them without fanfare, without the kind of weight they seemed to carry for me. I wondered if he thought I didn’t deserve the relief they brought.

Alan back in prison. I tried to imagine him, this man I’d apparently tangled my life with, but couldn’t. Evidently, it hadn’t been a match made in heaven if all my bruises and my memory loss were because of him.

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