Page 12 of Bad For Me (Rock Canyon, Idaho 5)

hat knife glinting at her threateningly. “Tristan, it’s me! Your fiancée! It’s Callie. Please, stop—”

“I’ll make you talk, creature!”

She’d been no match for Tristan’s strength, though, and the next sharp stab had struck her abdomen. She’d had no time to process how it was possible that the man she’d chosen to spend her life with was thrusting a knife into her, again and again. Callie had started to feel woozy, to watch the world fading away around her . . .

Before she’d blacked out, blue and red lights had flashed through the window, but she remembered nothing else.

Callie had woken up in the hospital days later, groggy from the painkillers they’d given her. The doctor had come by to see her, but she remembered only snippets of that conversation.

“Stabbed seven times . . . just missed the lung . . . had to repair your intestine . . . recovery will take time . . . you were very lucky . . . ”

Lucky. She would never forget that. People told her that often, afterward. She was lucky to have survived. She’d hardly been able to understand what lucky meant until the police came in.

The officer had been so matter-of-fact, like a robot: Tristan had suffered a psychotic break and had been shot by police. He was recovering, but he’d been charged with second-degree murder, animal cruelty, and attempted murder.

“Murder? Who else did he . . . ”

The looks on the officers’ faces had been grim. “Your mother was found by the back door . . . ”

She’d stopped listening after that. Her mother was dead. She had spent years trying to make up for her mistakes and in return, she’d been killed by her future son-in-law. A man she had loved and trusted.

A man Callie had loved and trusted.

Callie should have been more diligent. She should have made sure he was being treated, that he was safe to be around.

It was her fault—all of it.

When she’d gotten out of the hospital several weeks later, Tristan’s parents had offered to let her stay with them while she’d recovered, but she’d refused. It wasn’t their fault—she knew that—but she couldn’t be surrounded by pictures of him, not when she couldn’t get the image of his face, twisted with rage, out of her mind.

But she also couldn’t go back to the house she and Tristan had shared. So she’d hired a cleaning crew and movers with the money from her mother’s life insurance policy, and after burying her in the Carmichael cemetery, Callie had moved into a gated, one-bedroom apartment in El Dorado Hills. She’d changed her phone number and attended months of physical therapy for the damaged nerves in her shoulder. She tried to move on, tried to get better, but she couldn’t sleep. If she slept, the nightmares would come, and she didn’t want to see him there—or anywhere—ever again.

Even during Tristan’s trial, she couldn’t look at him. His lawyer had brought in character witnesses and mental health experts, all saying the same thing: Tristan was a good man, a wonderful son, but he had snapped because of untreated schizophrenia. He had no recollection of what he had done; therefore, how could he be responsible?

After a long recess—where the judge, the prosecutor, and Tristan’s lawyer had spoken behind closed doors—they’d pled Tristan down to manslaughter. Guilty, but with a mentally ill addendum that allowed him treatment in a prison mental health facility and five years of psychological monitoring and probation. He was required to see a therapist once a week and have regular doctor’s visits. It was a slap on the wrist, but the lawyer she’d hired to file a restraining order informed her that he could have been found not guilty; at least this way, he was paying for what he had done.

But being out of the hospital within two years didn’t seem like punishment to Callie. Which had made his stalking worse. She’d switched jobs and was working at a tiny station in Placerville when one day, Tristan was waiting by her car.

“Callie, please talk to me. It wasn’t me. I swear, I don’t even remember it!”

The minute she’d seen him, she’d started screaming, blocking out his words, his voice. Her lawyer had gotten an updated restraining order, and he’d tried to enlist Tristan’s parents’ help.

“He’s really better, Callie.”

Callie had hung up on them and changed her number once more, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t escape him. It was hopeless.

After that, everything in her life became tainted. Faster than she’d thought possible, Callie had fallen down a rabbit hole of pills and booze—anything to block out the pain, the nightmares, the fear. She’d hit rock bottom hard.

Her mother’s face flashed through Callie’s mind, and she jerked open the shower door in self-disgust. Even though they’d never had the healthiest relationship, it had gotten better once her mother had started working the program. Still, they weren’t lying when they said alcoholism ran in families.

Like mother, like daughter. Only it had taken Callie just two years of heartbreak—not twelve, like her mother—to realize that drinking only exacerbated the problem. Callie had never dealt with stress and loss in the healthiest of ways. Most of the time, she’d run from her problems or just buried them in whatever she could get her hands on. In many ways, Tristan had been her salvation from an unhappy childhood.

Well, at least that’s what she’d thought. In high school, she’d escape her mother’s drunken rages and sneak off to his house where they’d get stoned and screw. Afterward, he’d just held her, telling her that she was always safe with him.

Unfortunately, he had been dead wrong without even realizing it.

Once Callie was all ready for work, she grabbed her cell phone off the charger, and skimmed through her messages: Changed your mind yet?

Callie shook her head at Caroline’s persistence. Maybe it was about time to share the shadows of her past with Caroline, just so she would stop pestering her.

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