With the last of her strength, she lashed her foot out and connected with his bad knee. At the same time, she saw a flash of blonde, and Glenn was dropping her to the ground. She landed in a crumpled heap. The gravel bit into her legs, her side, but she was too busy sucking in broken breaths to notice.

There was a commotion behind her—shouts and curses—but it sounded so far away. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the spring sunset coating the sky in pinks and oranges.

Never again.

2

The stiff paper covering the exam table crinkled under her legs. She was cold in the anonymous gown designed to make examining bodies easy, impersonal. The curtain dividing bed from door was made out of the same threadbare, blue material. There was a poster of a basket of golden retriever puppies on the wall. Innocent and happy. Tongues lolling.

In that moment, Gloria felt as though she were a stranger to innocence and happiness.

She thought about her alter ego, The Gloria Who Left Glenn After the First Time. At this very minute, that girl would be meeting friends for beers—no, martinis—in some swank bar that no one had ever heard of in a city that everyone wanted to live in. She’d proudly walk inside in shoes that would make other women whisper, “I don’t know how she does it.” Pay for a round of drinks with her own money. Spend the rest of the night laughing and dancing.

But this Gloria? Was someplace else entirely.

Her body ached, but the pain felt dull, far away. As if it belonged to someone else. She was empty, cold. There was no sense of the victory, the pride she’d expected to feel. She’d done it. Almost died in the process. But she’d left Glenn Diller. And others had paid the price. The blonde woman from the parking lot had been knocked unconscious. Luke Garrison had stepped into the fight. And now the town doctor had kindly canceled her evening plans to examine Gloria’s bruised and battered body, saving her an expensive trip to the emergency room. She wondered if her freedom was already a bigger inconvenience than her abuse had ever been.

Why couldn’t she feel anything?

The door to the little room opened, and Dr. Dunnigan poked her head around the curtain, her frizzy, strawberry-blonde curls rioting above her ivory skin.

“I hope this means you finally left the bastard.”

Sturdy and brisk, Trish Dunnigan suffered no fools except for the perennially foolish Gloria Parker. The woman had given Gloria her booster shots in elementary school. And for the past few years had met her in the grocery store parking lot—one of the only places Gloria was allowed to go—to examine and treat her injuries.