Chapter 33 - Beth
Beth
The adrenaline lasts exactly forty-seven miles.
I know this because I've been counting the highway markers, riding the high from that conference room. Forty-seven miles of replaying the look on Trent's face. Forty-seven miles of I did that. I actually did that.
Mile forty-eight is when the Toyota makes a noise.
Not a bang or a screech or any of the cinematic sounds a car is supposed to make before it dies. It's more of a... wheeze. A polite, mechanical cough, like the engine is clearing its throat.
Then, the dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree.
"No," I say out loud. "No, no, no—"
The steering goes heavy. The engine sputters once, twice, and then simply gives up, and I have just enough momentum to wrestle the Toyota onto the shoulder before it rolls to a dead stop in the gravel.
I sit there for a full ten seconds, both hands on the wheel, staring at the flat, empty expanse of highway stretching out in every direction. Fields. Sky. Nothing.
"Cool," I whisper. "This is fine."
It is not fine.
I turn the key. The engine clicks. Clicks again. Does absolutely nothing else.
I pull my phone out of the cup holder and the screen delivers its own little gut punch: 2%.
Two percent, and I'm sitting in a dead rental car on the shoulder of a barren highway miles from home with no charger.
I close my eyes. Open them. The battery icon is red and accusatory.
Okay. Triage.
I pull up the rental company's roadside assistance number first. It rings four times, then dumps me into a hold queue with a tinny jazz rendition of something that might be "Girl from Ipanema".
An automated voice cheerfully informs me that my estimated wait time is thirty-five to forty-five minutes.
Thirty-five to forty-five minutes.
I press the phone to my forehead and breathe.
Think, Beth. What matters most right now?
Harper. Harper's rehearsal. I promised.
I pull up our text thread and type fast, my thumbs clumsy and frantic:
Car broke down. Dropping my location pin now. Phone battery is dying but I WILL be there. Do not worry about me. I attach my GPS location, watch the little blue bar crawl across the screen, and hit send. It delivers. Barely.
Then I set the phone on the passenger seat, leave it on speaker for the hold music, and grip the steering wheel with both hands.
And that's when my hands start shaking.
A full-body, teeth-chattering, adrenaline-crash shake that starts in my fingers and works its way up my arms and into my shoulders.
You just rejected your chance at fresh start.
The thought lands like a brick.
And now you're sitting in a dead car on the side of a highway, and you are going to lose everything.
My breath comes in short, shallow bursts. The fields blur. I squeeze the wheel until my knuckles ache.
You are always going to be a secondary character in a life someone else wrote for you.
A semi blows past and the Toyota rocks in its wake, and I flinch so hard my elbow hits the horn. It lets out a sad, abbreviated bleat. Even the car sounds pathetic.
I laugh and press the heels of my hands into my eyes and just... sit with it. The terror. The free fall. The absolute, bone-deep certainty that I have made the worst decision of my life.
And then there's the Beaumont Patisserie deal.
It's been sitting in the back of my skull since Knox confessed to it. When I force myself to really look at it, a partnership like that could be a hell of an option. But my brain keeps circling back to the same nagging question:
Did anyone at Beaumont Patisserie actually see my work?
I'm grateful Knox tried to help, but I refuse to be a charity case.
I just rejected an investment firm; I am not about to accept a partnership just because my alpha asked his cousin for a favor.
If Dorian Beaumont's name is going on a contract, I need to know someone from that company actually looked at what I've built with my own two hands and decided it was worth something.
The hold music cuts out for a second and my heart lurches, but it's just a gap in the loop. The jazz comes back. My phone screen dims.
1%.
I stare at it, then pick up the phone, my hands still shaking.
I open my browser, find the Beaumont Patisserie corporate page, copy the email for their wedding division, and open a new draft. I type a frantic, direct message and hit send before my phone turns off.
The blue loading bar crawls. Inches forward. Stalls.
Come on.
It moves again. Pixel by pixel. The slowest, most agonizing loading bar in the history of technology.
Come on, come on, come on—
The progress bar barely has time to vanish before the screen turns black.