Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains #4)(57)

Ryder frowned and shoved off the truck. “How did you know I brought it with me?”

“One, you’re a sentimental idiot, and two, I had a vision.”

His ruddy brows arched high. “I sure as hell hope it was a good vision.”

“Uuuh.” The memory of Avery chanting and crying shot across his mind, bringing on a sharp headache with it. “It wasn’t, actually. But it has to happen.”

“Well, I know you have a plan,” Harper murmured. “Are you going to let us in on it?”

“Yeah. Let’s load up, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

“On the way where?” Lexi asked softly.

“To Asheville. We’re gonna have to break into a psych ward.”

****

Avery couldn’t breathe. The walls were creeping slowly toward her, sucking the oxygen out of the room as they approached. Soon, she would be crushed.

“Avery, we can give you medicine to calm you down,” the nurse, Patty her nametag read, murmured from her chair in the corner.

Avery paced the length of the wall again, clutching her gown right over her heart. “I’m gonna Change.”

“You can’t do that in here. We already explained the rules. How did you like talking to Dr. Lancaster?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t like it because I don’t want to talk about this stuff. I want to forget it. Talking doesn’t help, and you’re making me do things I don’t want to do. What have I done wrong? Why am I here? No one will explain to me. When can I leave?”

Patty was scribbling notes onto a clipboard, and Avery had to try really hard not to Change and claw her eyes out in defense of whatever damning words Patty was writing about her. It wasn’t Patty’s fault she was here. It was Caden’s. It was Dad and Benjamin’s.

She hated them.

“Because of your erratic behavior and because of how you were acting during the interview—”

“Interrogation,” she gritted out. “Those police officers grilled me like I’m some criminal.”

“No, they needed to get down to the bottom of what’s happened to you and what that trauma has done. My job is to make sure you don’t hurt yourself and to give you a safe place while we figure out who to send you home with.”

“I’m a grown woman!” Avery yelled. “I need color. Can you take me down the hall by the landscape paintings again? Or do you have a room with painted walls where we can leave the door open. Purple or blue or green or yellow. Please,” she begged. “I swear I’ll be good, but this room is too little, and the walls are white, and why do we have to close the door?”

“For the other patients’ safety and yours. Breathe Avery, or I’ll have to bring someone in to administer something to keep you calm.”

“Whoo,” she breathed out in a shaking voice, trying to steady herself as she paced down the wall again. The letter was clear in her imagination, ready for her to read, so she said a few lines just to feel like she could do this with Weston here. “My Da builds treehouses. He can do anything with wood. I want to be like him someday.”

“What?” Patty asked, a slight frown marring her blond eyebrows. Her pen was poised right above the clipboard.

“Nothing, nothing.” They would keep her here longer if she kept that up.

“Your mother is here to see you. She just arrived with your dad and your fiancé, and she wants to reassure you that everything is okay. I can’t allow you to see her until you have calmed down, though.”

“That’s a terrible bribe. I don’t want to see them. Don’t want to. Tell her to go f*ck herself.”

Patty reared back like she’d been slapped across the cheek. “Honey, what you’re going through is normal.”

“I assure you it’s not.” More hand-wringing, and Avery paced back down the wall, careful not to touch the white paint with her elbow when she pivoted. She tried not to look at it, but the long, white wall was right there at the edge of her vision, haunting her, taunting her. “He’s the best man I know. People are scared of my da, but they don’t see him like I do.”

“Why do you keep repeating lyrics? Is it a song?” Patty asked.

Avery swallowed the comforting words, recited them silently, moving her lips just enough to connect with Weston’s letter. Weston’s eleven-year-old self was saving her now.

She closed her eyes and imagined his face. The way his lips looked when he smiled, and how his eyes had sparked that striking green color over the bottle of his beer when she’d first seen him at Big Flight. The feel of his skin under her hands. His tattoos, a mash-up of flowing organic shapes and mechanical renderings etched into his skin, covering his chest and both arms. She had those memorized now, could recall them in perfect detail. The way his muscles moved when he reached for her, how hard and strong his body felt when he held her. The way he smelled, and the way his facial scruff scratched against her soft cheek. She remembered the sting of his claiming mark. She was his, and he was hers. She just needed to get back to him.

“When can I go home?” she asked again.

“You’ve been ordered here for a twenty-four-hour hold.”

A whole day? She wanted to leave now! “H-how long have I been here?”