Chapter 2
AND THIS IS WHY I NEVER GO BACK TO THE CITY
Daphne Louise Merriweather-Brown, aka a woman who should’ve made an appointment to talk to Oliver instead
I’ve known Oliver Cumberland my entire life. He and Margot didn’t start dating until they were both out of college, but our families have operated in the same sphere since before I was born.
I always thought he was a stuffy pain in the ass. Slightly dorky. Definitely boring.
So boring.
Like the he would bore white toast kind of boring.
Never murderous.
Until now.
Oliver’s getting out of the car.
Right here. On the side of the interstate. In the middle of the night.
And he has murder in his eyes.
He wrenches my door open and holds his hand out, palm up. “Give me your phone.”
On a scale of one to I’m in deep shit and need to figure this out quickly, I’d say this situation is a very firm it’s actually quicksand shit and there’s no one here to toss me a rope. “My phone? I don’t have it.”
His dark hair falls across his forehead, and the glow of the interior car lights is enough to illuminate the stress lines on his forehead and the deep purple circles beneath his eyes.
He’s the same age as Margot.
Thirty-one.
In this light, he looks fifty.
At least.
“Why not?” he demands. “Where is it?”
I wave my empty fingers at him, knowing it’ll aggravate him, and tell him the truth. “It fell while we were pretending the SUV was a roller coaster.”
He growls low in his throat, then leans into the car.
I pull my feet up onto the seat, and he uses his own phone as a flashlight while he searches the footwells.
Not murdering me.
Yet.
My brain is in hyperdrive.
I don’t know where we’re going beyond away from New York.
I don’t know why we’re here.
I mean, I know why I’m here. I’m here because I wanted five minutes to talk to him about something important, and I made a terrible plan for the best way to see him after a few weeks of the worst insomnia of my life, and then I fell asleep in the back seat of his SUV while I was waiting for him and his driver to get in to take him home, where, I’m rapidly figuring out, he was not going.
And I don’t know why.
I don’t know why he’s so far from his Manhattan penthouse.
Alone.
No security. No driver.
Only him.
Either he has a dark side, or there’s something very, very wrong.
And considering he looks decades older than he should—“Are you ill?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer.
Craaaap.
Do I like Oliver?
Not really. Like I said, stuffy, uptight, boring, hurt my sister even if it was several years ago, blah blah, etc. etc.
But nothing about this situation is normal. He should have security with him at the very least.
And right after I woke up, as we passed the sign for Pennsylvania, he giggled.
Giggled.
The Oliver Cumberland that I’ve known my entire life does not giggle.
He’s either running away to meet a woman, in which case I am absolutely justified in my mission here, given that I overheard him telling his father he’ll be asking Margot out again next week, or he’s having some kind of crisis, in which case I have to make a decision.
Do I help the twat-nugget who doesn’t deserve another chance with my sister, or do I mind my own business?
That decision won’t make itself, so I need more information. “Going to see a mistress?”
He lifts his head and glares at me—understandable, since I think you technically have to be married to have a mistress, and he’s definitely not married, so he knows I’m baiting him—then he leans over again, peering under his driver’s seat and patting around beneath it.
I scooch my butt back another inch and pull my legs tighter against my chest, trying to be smaller.
The sooner he finds my phone, the sooner I can pull up a map, figure out precisely where we are in relation to the closest city with public transportation, and make a plan to get home.
My real home.
The home where my friends are my family and I finally have a job I love and where I’ve been thinking my heart is healed enough now that maybe—maybe—I could get another dog.
That’s exactly where I’m going, provided he’s okay and not in need of some kind of crisis management help.
While I don’t like the man, I do have a conscience.
And goddess knows there have been good people who’ve helped me during my own crises the past few years.
“It’s pretty fair for me to ask about a mistress, given your plans with Margot,” I point out.
He breathes loudly through his nose. “What?”
“I know you want Margot back.”
“What the actual fuck are you talking about?”
“Margot. My sister. Your former fiancée. About five eight. Light brown hair. Blue eyes. Always wearing power suits. Likes tea. Eats cherry jam straight out of the jar when she thinks no one’s looking.
The woman you told your father tonight that you were going to propose to again now that he’s out of prison. ”
He straightens and tries to glare at me.
He tries to speak too, but all that comes out of his mouth are unintelligible words.
Like he’s trying to deny that he went to see Margot last week. For the first time in a couple years, I might add.
He said the magic words—I wish things could’ve been different—and got in her head.
Bad enough my shithead of a father had already planted the idea in Margot’s head that they should get back together once Oliver’s father was out of prison. As if I didn’t have enough I’ll never forgive that man for.
But after Oliver went to see her?
She’s been texting me all week.
He was under so much stress when we broke up. Do you think I should’ve fought harder for him?
There was something in his eyes when he came to see me. I feel like he was trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what. Do you think he wants to get back together? Like as a real thing again, not as a business arrangement thing?
Would I be an idiot to take him back? I mean, assuming that’s what he’s ultimately after.
He didn’t cheat. We had a nice time together and never argued until he broke up with me.
We understood each other. Do you know how hard it is to find someone compatible when you’re at the level I’m at in business?
And it’s not like I’ll ever give my all to a relationship, so why not marry someone I can tolerate for professional reasons?
My response to every text was the same in spirit: You deserve more than “he didn’t cheat and we had a nice time together so let’s get married and merge the businesses.”
That’s the whole reason I went to his father’s welcome-home party. To find him and tell him to leave her the hell alone.
He hurt her once. He doesn’t get to do it again.
The rest of my family can go to hell, but Margot—she deserves happiness.
Real happiness. The kind that comes from being involved with someone who knows there’s no sacrifice too big, no gesture too small, to show her every day that she is the reason he breathes and that their love will last beyond the existence of time.
She believed in me when the rest of our family didn’t.
I believe in her too, and I want nothing but the very, very best for her heart.
Oliver finally grunts, steps back, and slams the door.
Shit, he has my phone.
My stomach catches up to the possibility that this is a step above the normal trouble I used to get myself into, and it’s knotting as he shoves my phone in his back pocket, then climbs into the driver’s seat.
“May I please have my phone back?” I ask.
“No.”
Inconvenient, but given everything else about this situation, not too surprising. “Why not?”
He ignores me as he buckles in, then turns up the radio right as the symphony is getting to the bridge on my favorite Half-Cocked Heroes song. I lean up and watch as he fiddles with the lever on the steering wheel.
And then I’m flung back into my seat as the SUV lurches unevenly.
Like he doesn’t know how to drive.
Though, honestly—most of the people I grew up with learned to drive so that we could have freedom when we went on vacation, but none of us drove ourselves in the city.
In retrospect, I know it was a great situation for our parents—they always knew where we were and had total control.
Ultimately bad for me for the same reasons.
But in Oliver’s case—he didn’t drive himself at all.
Anywhere.
Margot said it had to do with being in a bad accident when he was in college, and since he didn’t have to drive anywhere, he didn’t.
I don’t remember every detail she ever told me about him—see again, he’s very boring—but I remember that one.
Possibly it’s the least boring thing about him. The perfect Oliver Cumberlands of the world don’t find themselves in car accidents.
Even when it’s not his fault.
Which it apparently wasn’t.
He was in the passenger seat.
Naturally.
He gets the SUV under control and manages to turn us back the right way before another car comes up the ramp.
I buckle myself in.
He can’t hold my phone—or me—forever, and I’m curious where this is going.
I’m also mildly worried about Oliver, even if I don’t want to be.
I spend a few minutes debating with myself about if I’m up for the challenge of talking some details out of him while he drives us past a Miles2Go gas station, a Cod Pieces fast food fish restaurant, and an Aurora Clover hotel, one of the lower-tier hotels in my family’s brand of chains.
He could easily drop me there—especially if he had any idea how much I’d hate staying anywhere associated with my parents—but doesn’t.
We leave the last bits of populated areas and drive deeper and deeper into the darkness on a gently winding country road.
This situation is so far past normal that I have my doubts he’ll tell me anything, but I have to try. “For my own peace of mind, can you assure me that you’re not running away from committing some kind of felony too?”
It’s too dark to tell for sure, but I think his shoulders hitch at running away.
Not. Good.
Neither is the feeling in the pit of my gut telling me I know what’s going on.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
He’s definitely not committing a felony.