She’d come down here for so many reasons, but mostly because she’d missed LJ, pure and pitiful. She wanted to be more to him than another person to save, but the ache of disappointment in her throat told her that part of her had still wanted to be rescued.

She wasn’t fixed.

Cuddled onto his lap in the backyard shed with that lovely after-sex lassitude, she’d thought she was done with panic attacks. And then she’d ended up on the floor all over again, frozen and helpless. Love hadn’t healed her, and neither had this trip. Time passing had done nothing but torment her. All her hope had died in Gavin’s dusty room. She might as well still be shackled to that same damned bed.

Andra closed her eyes, fighting tears, and then jerked them open again to track the bumper of the Chevy in front of her. She had to drive, goddamn it. Her family and her ranch were waiting. She didn’t have time to pull over for a pity party.

Within a couple of days, she’d be back in her house. Back to her lonely kitchen and days of wrangling horse after horse into obedience. The hills, the pine trees. The utter emptiness of her life, the way it’d been for five long years.

Her hands started to shake, panic lancing into her chest. She couldn’t go back there. Air turned to brick in her throat, and the muscles of her shoulders locked.

Shit. Not now. Not while she was driving.

She clamped her sluggish fingers harder against the wheel. As she slowed, a car passed her, a couple of kids fighting over a tablet in the back seat. She gritted her teeth, trying to move her hands just enough to steer her truck away from them. She couldn’t focus on the road with her heart hammering so hard in her ears that it felt like her eardrums would burst.

The edges of her vision started to blacken from lack of oxygen. Her tires crossed the yellow line, and a horn blared as a car swerved out of her way.

Thanks to Rose, she knew the panic attacks couldn’t really kill her. But right now, this wasn’t a psychological trick or an illusion of suffocation. This was paralysis and thousands of pounds of steel hurtling along a narrow highway with no one here to help her regain control of her body or the truck. She was going to crash, along with any other car in her path, and that would be it. Cold water swallowing cold metal.

The bridge curved, but her hands on the steering wheel stayed locked into place. Her truck sailed through the second lane and toward the concrete barrier on the far side.