The woman who isn’t getting away from me again, no matter what she thinks. She can go to rehab, but I’ll be waiting for her on the other side.

* * *

Three days later, and I enter the now familiar front doors of the hospital. I’m carrying chocolates and a bottle of alcohol-free wine for Carolina. She’s being released today and has to face rehab of a very different nature to the one we were discussing mere days ago.

It’s insane how life can spin on a dime. Everything can change within a second. Carolina wasn’t okay during her evaluation in the emergency room. She was confused, slurring her words, forgetting chunks of time, including the entirety of the day leading up to the attack.

The diagnosis is traumatic brain injury.

She’s lucky, the doctors say. It could have been much worse. The cut is healing, and the head of plastic surgery says she won’t need any further treatment from his team. The hospital stitched it up brilliantly in the first place. Her hair should grow back over the wound eventually, and you won’t be able to see anything.

So far as the brain injury goes, they’ve said it is moderate. She has some patches of memory loss over the month or so leading up to the attack, and the entirety of the twenty-four hours before it. She was sleepy, and at times slipped in and out of consciousness during the hours in the emergency room.

It was the most horrendous few hours of my life. They sent her for X-rays, bloods, scans. And until they had all the results, no one was willing to tell me what was going on.

There were moments I thought I could lose her.

I went to the chapel and prayed. I confessed my sins and begged forgiveness for the lives I’d taken. Maybe they were righteous kills, as I’ve always believed, but who was I to say? Only God can decide who lives and dies. I prayed there and then for him to make Carolina live.

He did.

She pulled through and started to rouse more easily, and by the time they had all the results she was wide awake, if groggy and a little confused.

Now, she seems almost back to normal.

She’s been told to take it easy for the next couple of months, though. No work, no drinking, reduced stress.

I know the perfect place for her to do all these things, but I don’t want to push her. If she still wants to check into rehab, fine. I can wait. I’m patient when I really want something. I think Montana will do her more good than a clinic in Surrey, though.

I’ve come armed with weapons.

Photographs. Stunning photography of the land I own. The horses. The house. All of it designed to make her love it the way I do.