Page 1 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

Chapter 1

Headlights blinded me as I stood adamantly in the middle of the road, the screeching of the truck’s tires filled the air. It was coming in hot, but I didn’t care. The truck had to stop. But maybe the brakes weren’t enough. They shrieked in protest as the metal box hurled towards me.

I held my ground; daring him to run over me. It didn’t worry me. One more set of tread marks wasn’t going to kill me. I’d already been emotionally run over multiple times by my husband who had announced a few months earlier he was gay and had been the length of our twenty-year marriage. Yeah. I’d been run over.

A lot.

Wiser and braver now. I might need to get my life in order, I might doubt my judgment, but I wasn't afraid.

I stared down the oncoming truck. “Bring it,” I muttered under my breath. I was alone, unprotected, and out in the cold world. Like literally I was freezing. The temperature from Los Angeles to Southern Oregon was a huge change. I needed some shelter and some help.

I held up my hands as if I could hold the truck back with sheer willpower, silently chucking a prayer his brakes worked. Driving around the backroads of Oregon trying to find Cougar Creek without GPS was a nightmare. I must have driven in twenty circles and still couldn’t figure out where I was. At forty-nine I was hardly going senile but I sure as hell couldn’t remember how we functioned before the advent of cell phones.

I sucked in my breath as the truck lurched, but the brakes held, and the hunk of metal stopped inches from my ample curves. My shoulder-length brown hair swayed in the headlights.

I stepped to the side and saw the truck window was rolled down. Maybe I should retreat, you never know who you meet out here. But this was Southern Oregon, people here were nice, right? They wouldn’t question a woman stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night. They would stop and help. That’s what country people did.

I hoped.

It’s not like I would do this back home in L.A. No idiot in their right mind would step out into traffic. No car in L.A. would have braked, much less stopped. Hell, they would probably speed up to scare you out of the way.

“Are you crazy woman?” A deep male voice called. He had a country twang. “Standing out here in the middle of the road in the dark?”

“I’m not crazy. I’m just lost.” I hated how accurate those words were for my life. I moved back from the headlights and into the shadows.

I had been in love with Tim from the moment we met in university. We married a couple of years later and the whole time we were married, both becoming professors at UCLA, he had seemed the perfect husband. He did the dishes, changed diapers, did our daughters’ hair, he could cook up a storm, and he picked out the absolute best clothes for me to wear at our plethora of parties. He never even pestered me much for sex, but when we did…

OH.

EM.

GEE.

He was creative, considerate, and passionate.

I should’ve known he was gay.

“Where are you headed?” The man drawled.

I had no idea.

“I’m trying to find Cougar Creek. Can you give me a hand?” My tone was terse, but I was tired and cranky. It was a thirteen-hour drive from Los Angeles, but it had taken me fifteen to get this lost.

Besides, I didn’t want to appear too friendly.

My shoulders hunched forward, hiding the broken heart in my chest.

The man in the truck looked me up and down. He wore an old dirty baseball cap probably from the 80s and his face had a mishmash of scruffy hair as if he just didn’t have enough testosterone to grow a full beard. He was disheveled, overweight, and I sure as hell didn’t like the way he was looking at me.

“All I need is directions.” I kept my stance strong, hands on my hips, and stared him in the eye.

“Looks to me like you might be needing something a little more than just that,” the man’s jowls wobbled as he chuckled under his breath.

My stomach roiled. Is this what I had to look forward to up here? Creepy back wood’s dwellers try to pick me up on a two-lane forest back alley?

I might be past my prime, but I wasn’t desperate. I had spent all my youthful vitality and charm on a man who, as it turned out, didn’t even like women. There was a lot to unpack in that and I was still in shock. There was a gaping wound in my chest where I was completely robbed of the romance fairytale of marrying my college sweetheart and living happily ever after.

That dream was over.

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