A/N: I'm happy to announce that my blog for this story is fully up and running! For those of you who have Tumblr, I will be posting musings, playlists, character studies, and so forth, but I will also put up prompts for little drabbles and one-shots, along with updates on the story. Feel free to follow the blog at inxanotherxworldx ! I post on there throughout the day.

'Cause when push comes to shove
You taste what you're made of
You might bend till you break
'Cause it's all you can take
On your knees, you look up
Decide you've had enough
You get mad, you get strong
Wipe your hands, shake it off
Then you stand

Rascal Flatts — Stand

Standing in a police station with the world's worst hangover wasn't how Rhiannon wanted to spend her morning. Hearing her niece burst into the room saying Dad and Uncle Max got arrested, we need your help was a close second. If anyone asked why she wore her sunglasses indoors, she'd promptly tell them to go fuck themselves. She'd barely gotten her makeup off last night and she knew she looked like hell.

If she was more put together in her work suit, she would look more intimidating. Instead, she looked tired, hungover, and pissed off. Her only saving grace was her father driving her and dropping her off in her Charger. The old truck only had one row of seats.

"That little fucking bitch," she growled under her breath. "I'm going to fucking kill him."

Of course Shane had pressed charges after getting thrown out of the funeral home yesterday. Rhiannon was ready to hit back with the surveillance footage proving her brothers' innocence. She was just on the right side of pissed off to bitch him out instead of panicking. It was meant to poke her. All he wanted to do was rile her up and then gaslight her. He wanted to make her look crazy in front of everyone in her hometown.

"Mind taking off your sunglasses, Rhiannon?" Hale requested.

Okay, maybe she couldn't tell a cop to fuck off. Not even Hale. He'd been human towards her over the past few days.

"If it's all the same to you, Hale, I'm hungover as all hell and I don't want to go blind from these really harsh lights," she responded. She held up the metal frames and squinted against the lights. The sound of the fax machine whirring and the sound of chatter pierced her brain like an ice pick and her head flopped on to her fist. "I'm lucky I had the motor skills to put pants on. I had to deal with my crazy ex and buried my uncle. Please just let me know what I need to do to bail my brothers out."

"Sign here. It's their first offense and the evidence doesn't hold up on the claims, so bail's about three hundred each. They can't leave town and they have to stay away from the complainant," Hale stated. While he was a prick on a good day, Rhiannon so very nearly hugged him.

"Do you accept Benjamins? It's all the ATM would give me instead of Jacksons." She held up the bills between two fingers. "Fresh off the Chinese press in Lodi so the ink might still be a little wet."

The look aimed in her direction while he ran the pen over the bills almost made her laugh. The pen jotted over the paper and she was only eighty percent sure she spelled her name correctly.

"I'll get you a cup of coffee to try and help you with the hangover." If she had the mental bandwidth, she'd make a joke about him so very nearly laughing at her plight.

"And a breath mint if you've got one." Rhiannon had nearly scarfed down her entire tin of Altoids in a bid to settle her angry stomach and cover up the fact she'd rolled out of bed and thrown on jeans. She was about eighty percent sure she wasn't wearing a bra, let alone remembered to brush her teeth. "I'm never getting that drunk again."

"What do you know about Tristen Oswald?" It was a nearly comical segue and about as subtle as a brick to a plate-glass window.

"Not much. We all helped Karen look for her. I didn't see her talking to anyone. If I did, I'd tell you." Seeing that broken, delicate body in the leaves had torn her heart into pieces. Every time she heard about child crimes, it made her just that little bit more relieved that she'd chosen the path of business and corporate law as opposed to criminal prosecution or defense. "My brothers were with us the entire time. They weren't involved. We all want that bastard found."

"The Sons might ask you what you know. If they do, you let me know." A bone-white card stamped with gold lettering was handed to her. Rhiannon folded it up and slid it into her back pocket. "Or if you think of anything or hear anything."

For a moment, it was on the tip of her tongue to say fuck off, I won't rat, but she held back. If anyone asked her anything about it, she knew better. "With all due respect, David, I've got bigger things on my plate than a pissing contest between a cop and a bunch of outlaws," she replied honestly. Charming and Charming PD was now clearly at war. "If I hear anything, I won't stay quiet."

"It's never been your strong suit." Shane. Rhiannon's eyes rolled back into her skull and for a moment, she wished he could see it. "Surprised to see me?"

"Well, I thought I heard the clip-clop of cloven hooves and I wondered why all the birds suddenly stopped singing and flowers started to die," she retorted. "But then I thought, no, it couldn't be Satan. Lo and behold, I got something even worse. What's the matter, Shane? Did they kick you out of the hospital when you tried feasting on the blood of newborns? Or are you coming to physically punch me in the stomach?"

Hangovers clearly removed her filter. It sure as hell beat her hysterics from yesterday.

"Actually, I'm in Charming on official business. I thought I'd stop by Emmett's memorial while I was in town. You were...very emotional yesterday." His tone was like velvet, almost as if they were discussing something like the weather.

The sound of her uncle's name on his tongue made her stomach churn and her fingers curled into fists at her side. "He'd be turning in his grave if he knew you stopped by."

If it hadn't been for Emmett, Rhiannon would have gone through with the wedding. One full meal and you don't look happy to get married, Rae and she'd packed her bags for Mexico with Phoebe. Shane knew Emmett had gotten to her. She'd heard the threatening voicemails left on the answering machine and the way her uncle had simply deleted each one with every yell.

"I'm so sorry you have to deal with this," she whispered, her small hands clasped in front of her face. The snarl in Shane's voice was unmistakable, but if Emmett was rattled, he never faltered.

"Funny, I was just going to say that to you." His tone was gentle, his blue eyes searching. "Tell me now, Roe, did he ever hit you? Lay a hand on you?"

Rhiannon's mind flashed to the too-tight squeeze of her bicep and the one time Shane had grabbed her chin to make her look at him. "Not in the actual sense of the word," she admitted. Shane Abernathy was a monster and she was aware that if she stayed, it would have escalated to full-on violence. "He squeezed my arm hard enough to leave marks and grabbed my jaw." Her fingers came up to trace the angular line of her jaw almost in memory and instead settled for scratching a phantom itch. "He also tried to throw out my birth control pills. I didn't tell him I went off the pill and on to the IUD in case he tried anything. He wanted a baby right after we got married, but I wasn't ready."

She had also seen the holes in the condoms and her body shuddered upon remembering the times he tried to blame 'getting caught up in the moment' as an excuse to not use one. All the times he had gotten angry for her telling him no. Every name hurled her way. Every time her past was thrown in her face, every sneer of 'biker whore' or the guilt for her abortion.

"You did the right thing by leaving him. You protected yourself and any future kid you would have had. It's hard to leave an abusive partner, let alone when there's kids involved," he told her. There were so few times she had ever seen her uncle angry and this was one. He struggled to rein it in, struggled to keep a civil tongue. It was the expression in her brothers' eyes, her father's eyes. Even her mother, a gentle soul, had hated Shane. "If you want to stay here until you're ready to go back to Stanford, you're more than welcome here. You've been through hell."

"Rhiannon, they're ready for you." Hale's voice broke her thoughts and she turned her baleful glare from her ex-fiance. Even with her quick tongue, her knees threatened to give out and her blood roared in her ears. It was a miracle that she hadn't stuttered when talking to him before.

"I hope you're satisfied, Shane. You finally got me back. Enjoy it while it lasts," she informed him as she pushed past him. She was interrupted by a shrill ringing of her phone and she answered it without looking. "Westmoreland."

"Rhiannon? This is Karen Oswald. I need your help with something."