Page 39 of The Mountain Echoes
aria
My head is splitting clean down the middle.
I manage to kick off my boots and stumble into my room. Once the door shuts behind me, I crumble.
It took every ounce of strength not to completely fall apart earlier. But I know men like Maverick, they thrive on exploiting weaknesses.
If he was going to go on the attack like he did, why did he give me painkillers?
It was three pills of Tylenol. Don’t make a big fuckin’ deal out of it, yeah?
The migraines began shortly after I left Colorado. At first, I thought they were just bad headaches from stress or lack of sleep, school, long shifts in the vineyard, and the pressure to prove I could make it without Papa and Longhorn.
Years later, the migraines haven’t disappeared—they’ve just become rarer.
But now, when they strike, they’re more violent than ever.
The pain doesn’t creep in anymore; it slams through me. Auras spark like static behind my eyes, nausea hits without warning, and the headache itself is so sharp, so blinding, it feels like something’s ruptured inside my skull.
The migraine leaves me useless, flattened.
Doctors have decided they are stress-induced.
I agree.
I have learned to live around them.
I do what I have to—keep meds on hand, wear sunglasses, even indoors sometimes, and excuse myself from meetings and work when my vision goes sideways.
I barely manage to get some prescription medication inside me and get all my clothes off before my body folds onto the bed like the strings holding me up have been cut.
I bury my face into the pillow and exhale through the pain, both in my skull and my chest.
The pressure behind my eyes is a dull, relentless throb, but it’s not just the migraine.
It’shiswords.
I like my women soft. Classy.
Not angry little girls….
Same tone. Same judgment. Different man.
Hudson had said it with a different kind of venom, like he was explaining a math equation. As if it were obvious that I was too much, too hard, too loud. Not enough.
Hudson hadn’t even looked guilty when he told mehe made a mistake asking me to marry him. That I was better at working like a day laborer than being someone’s wife.
Then he packed up his bag and walked straight into Celine’s bedroom—and stayed.
I’d been twenty.
Madly in love for the first time in my life.
I brought my fiancé home to show him off.
He fell in love with my sister. Knocked her up.
Papa told me to face the facts and stop whining. “You couldn’t keep the man, take it on the chin like a big girl and move on.”
