The couch faces the living room window, so I peek over the back of it. He comes through the door, stomping his snow-covered boots on the mat, and then hangs his hat and takes off his gloves.

He sees me just as he unzips his jacket. “You’re awake. I wasn’t sure how long you’d sleep. I didn’t give you much, I swear.” I can see his muscles through his long-sleeved thermal shirt as he hangs up his coat and kicks off his boots. “I had to go out and do some things,” he explains. Like I’m his wife, wanting to know where he’s been.

I do want to know, but not because I think he’s out hooking up with some chick. We are in the middle of nowhere. And Merric Case doesn’t strike me as a guy who fucks around a lot. Either on the side, or otherwise.

He walks into the living room in his socks. There’s sweat on his brow from the warm clothes and the heat of the wood stoves. “I just didn’t know what to do. Sorry.” He looks down as he walks to the kitchen and starts pulling out some food.

I want to say something, anything to break the silence, or change his mood, because he seems worried. And I don’t want that worry to be because of me. I’d like him to save me, yes. But I don’t want him to pity me. I’d rather die.

But I’m not a social girl, having grown up in the wilderness. Cheyenne doesn’t really count as a city, even if I told him it did a few hours ago. It’s a small place filled with small-place people. So I don’t know how to start this. I tuck my feet underneath me and stare at them instead of trying.

“You feel better?” he asks, unwrapping some meat from white butcher paper and throwing it in a pan. “Hungry?” He throws in some potatoes and then drops in baby carrots too. He puts it all into the oven and closes the door. I guess we are having a roast. He opens the fridge back up and pulls out two beers, pops the tops off with a bottle opener, and walks out into the living room.

I take the one he offers me and he plops down on the couch. Close. Very close. Like we’re together and we always have beers on the couch in the evening. Not like he kidnapped me a few weeks ago and washed me down with a fire hose. That should piss me off, because it fucking hurt. But it doesn’t. I’m not mad about any of it and I wonder if there are more drugs in me. Calming drugs. Anti-anxiety drugs. Things to keep me on an even keel.

I hold the beer up and he looks at me. “Should I be drinking this? Will it interact with the drugs?”

He takes a swig of his own bottle, but for a second there, I think I see a wince of shame. “I think you’re OK, Syd. I gave them to you this morning. I think they’re out of your system by now.”

He seems genuine, so no. Drugs are not the reason why I don’t give a shit about all the stuff he did. And since we’re clear that this is not Stockholm shit, I have no other ideas about why this might be.

“You wanna tell me about the rabbit?”

I close my eyes tightly, to keep the images from popping into my head. That noise, though. That scream the rabbit gave when I picked it up. It’s burned into my memory.

Case puts a hand on my leg and gives it a squeeze. “You don’t have to,” he says. “I think I get it.”

I give my head a small shake. “No, I think you have the wrong idea about pretty much everything, Case. Be the rabbit.” I look up and he’s listening, but confused. “Be the rabbit is what I used to tell myself when things got bad. It gave me hope and calmed me down. I was supposed to kill a rabbit that Garrett caught. And I know how to kill a rabbit in a live trap, OK?” I search Case’s eyes. “I know how to do it right. But what Garrett wanted me to do was cruel. So I let it go.”

“It got away?” Case asks hopefully.

One more small shake from me. “No, the dogs got it. They ripped it to pieces.”

Have you ever heard a rabbit scream?

“I have seen many things in the woods. Nature.” I look up at Case. “You know? The rules of nature play out every moment of every day, and we hardly give it a thought. But I lived with that for a very long time.” I look down at my beer and realize I haven’t taken a drink yet, so I raise it to my lips and have a good long gulp. It goes down cool and soothing, so I take another. “Garrett treated the dogs better than me. At least they never got shocked with a collar.”

When I look back up to Case, he’s frowning. “Look,” he says, almost a whisper. “I am sorry I didn’t take you that night—”

“Stop,” I say. “Just don’t, OK? I saved myself, so forget about it. When things got bad, I just imagined I was living a different life. It got me through.” I gaze out the window, into the darkness hiding the beautiful view beyond. “It got me through. I’m still here.”

I can feel him nod, but I don’t see it. Because I can’t look him in the eye.

He guzzles his beer, gets up and walks into the kitchen, and then tosses it into the garbage with a clink that tells me he’s been drinking a lot while I’ve been drugged. The top comes off another and then he walks over to the stairs. “I’m gonna get a shower before dinner. Make yourself at home.”

I watch him walk up the stairs. He climbs slow, and maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems a little bit somber. But beer and bad news will do that to a person. He disappears and a few minutes later I can hear the shower running.

I finish my beer too and grab another from the fridge. It’s a local brewery out of Jackson. I stock it in the bar. God, the bar. What’s even happening to my bar?

And that’s when I spy his cell phone on the counter. I walk over and pick it up, glance up at the stairs to see if he’s watching, and then swipe my finger to see if I can unlock it.

It’s not even locked. I open up the keypad and punch in the number for the bar, but just as I’m about to hit send, I stop. “What the fuck will I tell them?”

I set the phone back down and go back to the couch. It’s not Stockholm. It’s not. I just have no good reason to want to go home. There is nothing good there for me. Nothing. I know this. I love that bar, I really do. I’d give anything to be able to wipe away all the things keeping me from it and go home. Because that place—filled with drunk cowboys, shitty country karaoke, and ninety-nine-cent microbrew nights—was the only place I felt real.

Cowgirl, Case calls me sometimes. I am a cowgirl. I like that girl. Maybe I can be that girl instead of this one?

But I can’t go back. Not until I know what’s happening to me. Not until I figure it out. And I know my only hope of figuring out what I’m feeling right now is to let Case in on things.

I want him. But I don’t trust him. And just as that thought consumes me until I feel like I will explode—I hear the music coming from the third floor.

“Moments are permanent. You can’t take them back or change them. You can only make new ones.”

– Case

The music has always saved me. But it reminds me so much of Sydney. That song—my fingers pluck it out, just from habit. I learned to play it years ago, back when it first came out and it was on the radio in Sydney’s car every single day. I know that not because I was in the car with her, but because I have been stalking this girl for eight years.

I was relentless the first two years. I had Garrett in my sights so many times. I could’ve killed him a thousand times over if I had acted then. But Sasha needed me. My friends needed me. I saw all that shit through with them, and Sydney was an afterthought while we pieced together the final mystery.

Only we never solved it. We got the money we stole. But that final piece of the puzzle never materialized. And now Syd is here, a place where I’ve imagined her a million times—but this is definitely not how I imagined it going down.