Chapter 21 Connor
Chapter twenty-one
Connor
TICK, TICK, BOOM
“Are we all set for tonight?” Dean asks at dinner.
“The heaters are on, and Skye is keeping watch to make sure no wayward llama or goats decide to knock one over and set the whole ranch on fire,” Atlas replies.
“Good. I can take over when we’re done here,” Nial offers. “Seeing as Connor has his date to prepare for.”
How the hell does he know about that already?
“What date?” Atlas and Dean both ask.
Nial answers before I can say anything.
“He’s going to the movies with the guy from cabin twelve.”
“Dean and I fell in love at the movies,” Preston says, picking up Dean’s hand and kissing the back of it. His daughter, Poppy, scrunches up her face and mouths, “gross” before biting down on her corn cob.
“How do you know I have a date?” I ask, and he taps his nose.
“Got a sick sense for these things.”
Atlas laughs.
“It’s sixth sense.” He chuckles, and Nial looks genuinely confused.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“I’m looking it up. I’m sure it’s a sick sense, like you get this churn in your belly like you’re going to be sick, and you just know stuff,” Nial goes on to try to explain his reasoning, but then his confident smile falls.
“Okay, so it’s sixth, but mine makes more sense.”
My phone chimes. It’s the alert I set to go off whenever there’s a mention of the search for the missing millionaire. I cough a couple of times and get up from the table.
“I’ll just be a sec,” I say through a forced, strained voice.
“Everything okay?” Sally-May asks.
“Yeah, just grabbing some water,” I lie and head into the kitchen.
The second I have my phone open, my heart sinks.
It’s another story about the search for me, alright, only this time, instead of a photo of me partying in some club, it’s a photo taken of me and my grandfather when visiting one of the beef ranches he took over.
I remember that day. It was before I knew about his plans to have me marry, when I was still na?ve enough to think I had some control over my own life.
I wanted to impress him so badly, prove that I was ready to take on the company.
He spent the whole flight telling me how important it was that the farmers believed we wanted to help them, that we would keep their farms running the way they ran them with the people they had doing the work.
Truth was, the second the papers were all filed, he’d send one of his teams out to evaluate the staff, and they almost always ended up laying off every fucking one of the original workers.
He had them all believing he didn’t have a choice, too.
And there I am in this fucking photo standing beside him as he shakes the hand of another poor farmer swindled out of his heritage for pennies on the dollar.
I might be a good fifteen years younger than I am now in this image, but I’m wearing jeans, a flannel, and a cowboy hat, and there is no fucking way I won’t be recognized if anyone from around here sees it.
My heart is beating so loud that I’m sure any second someone will be coming out here to see what’s making the racket.
Atlas laughs in the other room, and my neck muscles tense.
This is what I was dreading. I peek through the doorway at them all, laughing and talking about their day, and a lump rises in the back of my throat that I can’t swallow down.
They’re good people, the best, but they’d never forgive me for lying to them this whole time. I can’t bear to see it all blow up.
Slowly walking backwards, my gaze lingers on them for as long as I can, memorizing the way they smile and laugh, and then I slip out the kitchen door and creep around the side of the house and up the driveway.
I have to get out of here now.
My truck is parked up by the guest cars just off the property. I started leaving it up here a few days ago. About the same time, I packed a go bag and stashed it under the passenger seat. Not that I have much to take with me. Maybe I always knew I’d be running again.
Cracking open the door, I’m thankful the internal light is busted and doesn’t give me away.
I take one final look at the place that was almost home, where for at least a little while, I felt like I belonged, and then I shove the truck into gear and push it fifty meters down the road before I climb in and kick the ignition on.
“I couldn’t tell them. How would I even begin to explain who I used to be, or why I lied to them for a decade about it?
” I ask myself as I head toward Bellerelle.
Snowflakes fall, the windshield wipers brushing them away as fast as they land, but I don’t slow down.
I can’t slow down. It doesn’t matter that the only place I ever felt like myself is on that ranch.
I lied to them, and when they know who I was, the family I used to belong to…
I remember the looks on their faces when Perry was telling them about how my grandfather low-balled an offer on the ranch years before.
I couldn’t bear to see them look at me like that.
I hit town, but the snow is falling heavier now, the road covered in a fresh blanket of white.
The string lights they’ve put up between light posts for Christmas illuminate the buildings in their rainbows of color, and a pang hits my chest as I drive past all the places that have filled my memories over the last decade.
My eyes sting, and I lose the fight to hold back the tears.
I let them fall, my chest heaving. I push my foot down harder, and the engine roars, the snow whipping past now, but I don’t slow.
Not until the lights of town disappear from the rearview and only the soft glow of their presence lingers.
The radio crackles, losing its connection to the local station, and I switch it off.
The sound of the car and wipers flicking back and forth is my only company.
I think of Lulu, and how any other day she’d be snuggled up in a carrier on the passenger seat. I think of Hayden. I don’t know if what we had could have been the kind of love people write songs about, but it felt like it could be to me. Like it was the love you see in old movies, the forever kind.
The snow falls heavier, and I kick the windshield wipers up to full speed. The forecast said light snow, so it should pass soon, I think as I take the next corner tight and the tires swing out a little, but I regain control quickly.
“Well, that was close,” I say, and then the front tire hits a pothole I couldn’t see under the snow, and the back of the truck lifts up off the road as the front swerves to the side. I turn the wheel, but the back tires land and spin the truck, the world passes in a blur, and then darkness.
***
I hear the skidding of my tires first, and lifting my throbbing head, I realize my foot is still on the accelerator.
The branches of a tree jam the wipers that are still trying to clear the snow that is coming down thick around me.
Fuck. Okay. Focus. I turn off the ignition, the wipers stop fighting to keep going, and I start checking myself for injuries.
Head first. There’s a lump on the right of my head, but it’s not bleeding.
My arms feel good, a little tight as I stretch each one out to test it, but nothing broken.
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the cool night air that is now freely flowing into the car from the smashed passenger side window.
I feel down my legs, they’re okay too, and I lean back against the seat and let out a sigh of relief.
“Fuck, that could have been bad.”
The tree rustles, and a chunk of snow falls from an upper branch onto the hood.
“Okay, so I’m still pretty screwed here, but I’m alive.
” I grab my phone that’s fallen to the floor.
The screen is cracked, but it still works.
Only when I check for a signal, it doesn’t even have a single bar.
Okay, well, at least the flashlight still works, I think, and I flick it on and reach under the passenger seat.
I grab my go bag and climb out. Shining the flashlight of my phone around, I spot the tracks of the wheels partly covered by fresh snow already.
I have no idea how long I’ve been driving, but it’s going to be a cold walk, regardless.
I prop my phone up on the seat and rummage through my bag, strip off my jeans to quickly layer on a second pair of long johns before pulling them back on, and layer three shirts, before squeezing into my jacket.
My hat is still hanging on the hook by the Beakers’ front door.
There was no way I could have grabbed it without them seeing, so, I pull out another flannel and wrap it around my head like a beanie, and then add a second layer of socks, too.
By the time I’m ready to try to walk to civilization, I am struggling to even move under all the layers, but being uncomfortable sure beats freezing to death out here.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and make my way to the road.
The skid marks from my truck are deeper set in the road, and the pothole that sent me spinning out of control is easy to see now, but if this snow keeps up, it will be like an invisible trap for any other driver making his way down this road who might not be as lucky as I was.
Teeth chattering, I drop my bag on the side of the road, prop my phone against it to illuminate the immediate area, and collect branches, stomping them into the hole until it’s filled and my fingers are numb. Okay, time to get moving.
Levingston is probably half an hour’s walk from here. So I put my phone flashlight facing out into the breast pocket of my jacket, shove my hands into my armpits, and start walking.
The road between Bellerelle and Levingston is winding and really fucking creepy.
Hayden would totally call me a serial killer’s dream right now.
No one knew where I was going, car crashed off the road in the snow where no one can see, walking half frozen, probably concussed in a really fucking big snowstorm, thank you, Channel Four, for downplaying the weather forecast. Not that it would have made a difference.
I was leaving the second I saw that photo.
I wonder if they’ve seen the image yet. If they know.
If I die out here, at least I never have to worry about running again, I think, and an owl hoots nearby, scaring the fuck out of me.
“I’m not dying out here,” I tell it, like his hoot was somehow a confirmation of my fate.
Then, because things couldn’t possibly get any worse, the flashlight on my phone flickers, once, then twice, then it goes out completely, plunging me into almost complete darkness except for the soft glow of a distant moon.
“Well, fuck.”