Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
EVERLY
M y hands won’t stop trembling.
It's kind of impressive given how white my knuckles are as I clutch the steering wheel of the old Grand Cherokee. It's as if it is my lifeline. If I let go, I’ll be yanked back into the world I’m desperately trying to escape from.
My gaze flickers to the rearview mirror. Part of me expects to see a police car pulling up behind me with its lights flashing and siren blaring. There’s not though. Despite the terror gripping my heart, I’ve done nothing wrong.
Well, in the eyes of the law I’ve done nothing wrong. Father would think otherwise.
If Father knew where I was headed now, I wouldn’t put it past him to send his police friends after me to drag me home.
I’m not supposed to know about this private, winding road or the facility waiting at the end of it.
Just the thought of getting caught has been enough to keep me up at night for the past few months while I planned the trek here.
I can’t breathe.
Each inhale I take is too sharp, too shallow—leaving me unsatisfied and breathless.
“Come on, we got this!”
With rapid, yet gentle pats on top of the steering wheel, I urge the old Jeep on.
She’s a good car. Reliable. I know it will be perfect for its new owner, but right now, I’m beyond terrified that I’ve made a mistake in purchasing her.
What was I thinking, buying an old car? It’s not fast and certainly not great on gas.
When I picked it, I was certain having a car without any fancy technology and a low profile would be ideal—making it untraceable and less noticeable—but now I’m second guessing it.
What I’m not second guessing is the decision to buy a car in the first place. We’re going to need it.
I check the rearview mirror again. There’s no one behind me.
I can’t believe I did it. How did I manage to pull this off?
I planned every single step leading up to what transpired twenty-four hours ago and getting away is a good thing.
Yet I was positive Father was on to me. I could’ve sworn that, as I slipped out of my dressing room, scurried barefoot down the hallway with the train of my wedding dress trailing behind me as I headed for the back entrance of the building, he would be waiting to stop me.
If not him, a few of his security guys. When that didn’t happen, I half expected the taxi driver to be one of Father’s employees.
I’d climbed in and held my breath, wondering if the young guy was going to drive around to the front of the building and drop me right back off to where Father would be waiting.
But that hadn’t happened either.
Each step of the process—from getting to the airport, changing in one of the public bathrooms into something more casual, and then slipping back out through the departure doors, to flagging down another car to have them take me to a bus station—I was sure Father was going to be there to stop me. He never was, though.
Now, here I am, driving in the pouring rain up a private, narrow, and winding road nestled within the foothills of Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Park, just west of Seattle, doing something even more insane than running out on my arranged marriage.
My heart hammers painfully against my ribs.
I don’t have access to a phone anymore, having purposely left mine behind, but I have no doubt skipping out on Arthur has made it to the headlines by now.
Father is probably furious and undoubtedly embarrassed by the public humiliation.
This wedding was going to be live on national television.
Father’s friends from high places—politicians, business owners, and celebrities—were all in attendance Friday afternoon, waiting to watch me walk down the aisle and to hear me speak my vows of fidelity to a man nearly thirty years older than me who I’d only met a handful of times this past year.
I shudder just thinking about all those eyes on me.
All my life, I’ve deliberately kept myself invisible.
I might be the daughter of one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country, but I kept my head down and out of the way.
That was the only way to survive, both in my household and the rest of the world.
Growing up, Father’s penchant for violence made me a constant target.
As a product of a secret affair, I was a never-ending reminder of Mother’s failure to be the perfect wife.
Father always took great joy in inflicting pain on me in front of her.
Outside the house, throughout high school and college, my peers were hungry for a connection to a family like mine.
I was manipulated and tricked too many times to count.
It was always in my best interest to simply keep to myself.
Eventually, people stopped noticing me altogether.
Well, except for Peter and Maverick. They always noticed me. My brother and his best friend, who were only two years older than me, were my favorite people growing up. There was nowhere they went that I didn’t go. But other than with them, I made a point to remain unseen.
Being invisible was the only thing that kept me safe.
Then Father had to go and ruin it a year ago.
His mandatory family dinner had turned into a very public announcement of my engagement to a future business partner.
Since then, I’ve become one of the most interesting women in the country.
I went from a quiet life, working in an art gallery fresh out of college, to hiding from paparazzi and dodging men who claimed they’d be a better option—all hoping to acquire the deal my father offered to Arthur Futtersome.
Avoiding the spotlight that Father’s announcement caused has been a nightmare. Now I’ve only made myself more interesting by running out on that wedding.
This time when my eyes dart to the rearview mirror, it’s not to look out the back. They land on the shredded pieces of the white dress I was stuffed into yesterday and slept on last night to make the backseat more comfortable.
“Finally, you have a purpose,” Mother had drawled from the chaise lounge as the makeup artist worked on my face. I didn’t know if either of them could tell I’d been on the verge of puking. If so, neither commented on it. “It must feel good knowing you’ll be of some use to this family now.”
A hard shudder rushes down my back.
“All that’s behind me,” I remind myself, saying the words aloud to make them feel more real.
It doesn’t help. I’ve escaped an arranged marriage and am now barreling toward the entrance of a private psychiatric institution in the hopes of finding and saving the love of my life by breaking him out. Nothing in the past twenty-four hours feels very real.
“Get it together,” I warn my reflection in the rearview mirror. “Maverick needs you.”
God, I still can’t believe he’s alive.
Peter’s suicide letter, tucked away in my purse on the passenger seat, radiates the guilt he’d been carrying around for the past five years.
Its negative charge crackles in the air around me, specifically on the right side of my face.
I constantly find myself lifting my shoulder and wiping at my cheek as if to rid myself of the static running over it.
Resentment momentarily overshadows the panic fluttering in my chest.
It is Peter’s fault I’m here, driving up this private road on a Saturday afternoon, and not already in the wind, living life under a new name, in a new country.
I could be out in the world, happy and free from the chains that come with being a Woodrow.
Since I left for college at eighteen, I've been trying to cut ties with my family. I’d gotten a job right away and began paying for my own things and was careful not to use the family name.
I thought without Father pulling my purse strings, I was free.
I was wrong.
The night Father announced my engagement to Arthur, I realized the only way to be completely rid of him, Mother, and Peter was to not be me.
For six months I’d carefully planned how to leave the only life I knew to start fresh somewhere else, as someone else.
Just as I was ready to put my plan into action and take to the wind, Peter had to go and kill himself.
“Asshole,” I mutter as my grip around the steering wheel tightens.
Ever since I got Peter’s letter in the mail three days after his death, a part of me has wondered if he knew what I’d been planning.
I’m not sure how he could have, though. We stopped talking not long after the death of his best friend, my soulmate, five years ago.
I can still remember him walking through the front door in the early hours after slipping out with Maverick on one of the rare adventures I hadn’t been invited to, trapped in a state of shock.
Police lights flooded into the foyer, coming from the driveway behind him.
His body trembled, his eyes filled with tears.
“ He drowned, Evie. I couldn’t save him. They’re looking for his body, b-but I think he was washed out to sea… Maverick’s dead.”
After that, everything changed.
The sudden radio silence on Peter’s end, his cold attitude when he was forced to engage with me, and the lengthy periods of time we’d go without seeing each other while we were away at college—all of it killed the relationship we once had.
Life went from being me, Peter, and Maverick against the world to being just me.
Yet despite the wedge Peter shoved between us, my brother sent me his suicide note. Not the police, not one of his friends, not even the press… just me.