She’d climbed out of the shower, opened the baggie, and flushed the pills.

Then she sat on her toilet, naked and shaken by her thoughts. Sifting through all the therapy speak she’d heard over her life, she’d landed upon the fact that she’d found something that in the past would have chained her to her old life, and she’d broken that chain. She had flushed the Xanax and thus flushed any remnants of her old life away.

Taking her phone, she started deleting her contacts. She no longer needed her dealers—time to backspace over all the so-called friends who had merrily led her down the path of temptation and heartbreak, and then she got to Kittridge.

Zeke.

He’d been one of the best things in her life. They’d talked extensively about everything, and he’d been like a North Star, pulling her in the right direction. So why had she let him push her away? Why had she let go so easily if he gave her so much?

North Star.

North.

Cotter’s Creek. The cabin. Beast. Neve. The way the leaves crunched under her boots. S’mores, candy apples, old people who loved her for her and not because she’d won a Golden Globe. All those things twisted around themselves to deliver something she desperately wanted to call her own but was afraid to change her world for.

But what if she wasn’t afraid to change her world?

She’d already started the process when she let those lines slip from her fingers and flutter to the floor. Why not do it all the way?

So she’d climbed back in the shower, washed the soap from her hair, and let the hot water wash away the last of her junkie thoughts. Then she braided her wet hair, dressed, packed a bag, and pulled on a ball cap and sunglasses. She’d gone down to the workout area where there was a second entry to the building and called for an Uber, turning off her location services so Lorna couldn’t track her. She would deal with her mother eventually, but she wanted to make a plan first. If she figured out her life without any interference from Lorna, Olivia, Conrad, or anyone, Chase could stand firm on her choices. She controlled her life, and she alone would decide what her tomorrow would look like.

She got dropped off at a bus station and bought a ticket for Redmond, which was as close as she could get to Cotter’s Creek and still get an Uber. Then she’d turned her phone off, climbed onto the bus, and headed back where her life had been much clearer. She wasn’t going to rely on other people to rescue her. She was an adult, and she was in charge of her decisions and those repercussions.