Page 1 of Mountain Hero

CHAPTER 1

WINTER

How did I end up here?

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

I’m supposed to be in my cozy Cape on Maple Street, snuggled on the couch in my comfiest clothes and reading the newest release from my favorite romance author; the final one in a series I’ve been reading for years.

The weather is nice enough that I could open the windows to let in the cool night breeze. And if I got chilly, I could pull out the blanket my aunt made for me when I went away to college; a quilt she painstakingly created out of dozens of my parents’ old T-shirts.

If things worked out the way they were supposed to, I might even have a kitten cuddled against me, like the tiny calico I eyed at the shelter the week before everything went wrong.

Violet would probably be texting me, telling me funny stories about the kids she nannies for and asking when I’m going to come visit again.

Even if I could get her messages now, I bet she wouldn’t send them. Not after the terrible things Thomas said to her under the guise of being me. Awful insults he delighted in showing me—calling her fat and ugly and how she only worked as a nanny because she wasn't smart enough to find a real job.

It hurt when he did it, and it still hurts now.

She must have felt so betrayed. After years of friendship, to have all her insecurities thrown back at her…

Someday I’ll explain. I’ll beg her to believe it wasn’t really me.

But it did the trick. The last message I saw from Violet before my phone disappeared will stick with me forever.

I thought you were my friend. I trusted you. But I was so wrong. Don’t text or call me again.

How could I have imagined that happening? How could I have imagined any of it?

This move was something I dreamed of for years. I planned for it. Saved every spare cent. Picked up extra graphic design work wherever I could. Scoured the real estate listings until I finally found the perfect fixer-upper and wrote a heartfelt letter to the owners, begging them to sell it to me.

When I finally got to Bliss and I drove down Market Street past the quaint storefronts and the white clapboard library and the sweet town park with the adorable gazebo, I was so happy I almost burst into tears.

I’d had a brief rush of fear while I was packing up the moving van, just days away from my official move from New York to Vermont.

What if it wasn’t like I remembered when I used to visit with my parents? What if my dream was nothing like reality?

But then I got here, and I discovered it was even better than my hopeful fantasies.

At least, it was. Until I met Thomas.

Not Tom. Never Tom. That should have been my first clue. When I called him Tom after a couple of weeks of dating—I never considered he wouldn’t like it—he reprimanded me; his gaze narrowed and flinty and a scowl twisting his features.

He apologized a moment later, saying his estranged dad used to call him that and it brought back bad memories. And he was so sincere, and he didn’t actually yell or anything, and I definitely understood having bad memories, so I let it go.

I actually forgot all about it. Now, I can’t stop remembering and wishing I’d seen the red flag sooner. Wishing I could go back and end things right then, instead of letting them go on until I ended up here.

Here is unfortunately not my little house just a few miles away, but the dark, cramped bedroom I hide in whenever I can. I’d much rather stay in this depressing room than be out there, in the rest of Thomas’s house, being insulted and ordered around and hit whenever I don’t do something perfectly.

If dinner isn’t ready exactly when he demands it, or the food is overcooked—usually because he abruptly decides he’s not ready to eat, so the food sits in the oven, warming—or I somehow didn’t read his mind and prepare it exactly how his gram used to, Thomas takes great pleasure in punishing me.

It’s always painful, but nothing that requires a hospital visit. He’s careful like that.

I never could have pictured it when I met him. Thomas was just this friendly, slightly scruffy guy with a big smile and lots of compliments.

How dumb was I? How clueless? At thirty-two, I should have known better.

Now I’m stuck. Trapped. Terrified to leave.

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