Chapter 4 #2
I’m willing to accept that the funding for Beeslieve comes from Oliver and his company because he doesn’t know he was helping me. He definitely didn’t give me a job on purpose. I came to Beeslieve after he’d arranged funding for it.
“Afraid Margot won’t want you back if she finds out you kidnapped her sister?” I ask him.
“I’m not—I’m not kidnapping you. You stowed away in my car.”
“To talk to you for five minutes. I climbed into your car to talk to you for five minutes. How was I supposed to know you’d be running away right after the big welcome-home party?”
“I’m not running away.” He swerves the car as he looks at me again, and an oncoming semi honks at us.
He overcorrects, veering across our lane, and dirt and gravel spew beneath the car while his knuckles go white and his breathing gets shallower.
“I’m a good driver,” I mutter.
The car straightens out on the two-lane country highway, but I can still feel how tight he’s gripping the wheel in the way the car rides over the asphalt. “I can’t get good if I don’t practice.”
I shift in my seat—seat belt on today, seat belt very much on—and stare at his profile.
“I leveled with you. I wanted to talk to you for five minutes about how it would be terrible for Margot for you to try to weasel—excuse me, for you to try to win her back. I wasn’t trying to crash your road trip. ”
“You sure took your damn time letting me know you were in the back seat.”
“Dude, I was asleep. Hard. Been a rough—not the point. Point is, I’m here. You won’t give me my phone back. You won’t tell me where you’re going. You won’t tell me why. Which means this has gone from an honest misunderstanding to an intentional kidnapping.”
“You said you wanted to go wherever I was going.”
“Hindenburg principle.”
“Hindenburg—what the actual—Stockholm syndrome?”
“Airship disaster. Falling for your kidnapper. Same thing. It’s all bad.”
“There is no Hindenburg principle.”
“Okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants Know-It-All.” Yes, yes, I could’ve been a better student of history. But why stay in the past when I can see where the future’s going if we don’t save the animals? The cascade effect will be real, and humanity won’t survive. “My point is still very valid. I’m at your mercy.”
“You could’ve hiked out while I was sleeping and lived on bugs and leaves and poisonous berries while looking for an interstate and strangers. You threatened to do exactly that if I didn’t let you in the car. Who’s holding who hostage here?”
Dammit.
Me and my big mouth.
And me and my arrest record too.
When it comes to the CEO of a billion-dollar convenience store conglomerate and the disinherited criminal-record-holding fuckup daughter of another bajillionaire, we both know who the cops will believe.
I switch tactics. “Why are you running away?”
“No talking in my car.” He hits blindly at the radio on the dashboard while swerving into the oncoming lane again.
“I love road trips, but I love road trips with safe drivers more.”
The tires squeal as he slams on the brakes.
I’m flung sideways, since I’m the dummy who’s turned in my seat to face him. I flail my arms, looking for something to brace against to keep myself from going into the windshield while the seat belt cuts into my neck.
“I’m done,” he says.
“Can you be done on the side of the road?” I gesture in front of us and behind us. The car’s stopped over the center line with a curve in the road right in front of us. “We’re sitting ducks here.”
He growls, hits the gas, and we stop-go-stop-go-stop-go all the way to the shoulder.
“Thanks,” I say. “Appreciate your thoughtfulness here.”
“Get out.”
I could.
I could get out, even without my phone, and I’d be fine.
Call it my superpower. I wouldn’t get more than two miles before someone would pull over, pass my vibe check, and let me use their phone to call Bea, first to tell her I’m okay, second to ask if she’s worked things out with the guy she’s been seeing this summer, and third to promise her I’m coming home.
When I told her I was headed to the Hamptons to stop Margot from taking Oliver back—the first time I’ve set foot anywhere near the city since I was disinherited—there was something in the way she hugged me that told me she was worried about me leaving.
I have to get my phone back to call her.
She’s as much my family as Margot is, and she saved my life when my parents cut me off.
She’d come get me herself because that’s who Bea is. Sister of my heart. Best friend. One of only two people on the planet that I would honestly die for, the other being Margot.
I finally look Oliver square in the eye and tell him the absolute complete truth of my life instead.
“I don’t know what’s going on in your life.
I don’t know why you’re here. All I know is what it looks like you’re doing.
I also know what it’s like to leave the world we grew up in.
I know what it’s like to not fit there but need to stay there because people like you and me aren’t taught how to live in the real world.
And I know what it’s like to suddenly have nothing, including the skills to survive without a driver and security and a household manager and a trust fund. ”
He stares back at me, nostrils flaring, a hint of desperation touching his eyes as one eyelid visibly twitches.
Or maybe that’s my imagination.
Maybe?
I don’t know.
I suck in a deep breath and keep going.
I’ve told this story a handful of times, but never to people from the world I used to live in.
Only to people in the world I live in now.
People who like me for me. People who know I have nothing and will continue to voluntarily have nothing for the rest of my life.
People who are dedicated to causes they believe in that are bigger than their own bank accounts and wine cellars and art collections.
“But now I know how to get along on my own anywhere from the streets of New York to mountain trails miles and miles from civilization. I know how to shop on a budget in a grocery store and cook for myself. I know how to change the oil in a car. I change my own lightbulbs and communicate with my own landlord and walk around festivals without security at my back. And I can do it because very, very kind people took me in and taught me how to live in the normal world when I had absolutely nothing to give them for it and when they had absolutely nothing to gain from it.”
His chest is rising and falling rapidly while he stares at me.
I keep going. “You’re clearly having some kind of crisis, and you were almost my brother-in-law.
I don’t have to like you to have empathy for whatever it is you’re going through.
And watching your father go to jail and taking over his company and breaking up with the woman you were with long enough to propose to her and then your father getting out of jail and you fleeing the city with literal suitcases of cash in the back of your car?
Something’s wrong. I’m not getting out until I know you’ll be okay.
That’s what Margot would want me to do. Because even if you’re not right for each other, she still cares about you.
And she’s a good person. The best, in fact. ”
Shiiiiiiit.
It’s not my imagination that his eyes are getting shiny.
That his Adam’s apple is bobbing.
That he’s gripping the steering wheel so hard with his left hand that his knuckles have gone a shade past white.
“I. Will be. Fine.” His voice is thick and gritty, and I can’t decide if he’s trying to not hit me or trying to not absolutely lose his shit.
Dammit.
Dammit.
I’m not supposed to feel sorry for this man.
But I suddenly do.
“Yeah, I know. You’ll have your money to help you in ways I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use my help.”
He breathes.
Breathes and stares at me.
“Where are you going?” I keep my voice quiet in case he does want to hit me.
He’s among the last people that I’d suspect of being capable of violence, but he’s also among the last people that I’d suspect would spend a weekend driving a boring old sedan loaded with briefcases of cash and a fake passport.
The boring sedan part, yes, even if I can’t talk since that’s what I can afford too these days.
But the rest of it?
This isn’t the Oliver I know.
“Away,” he finally says.
“For how long?”
He blinks.
One blink.
Then a slow, deep inhalation through his flaring nostrils.
“Forever then.” I can barely hear myself.
His eyes dip to my lips like he’s reading the words. “What do you care?”
This is bad.
This is very, very bad.
It’s not only if he disappears, the new CEO will cut funding to Beeslieve. It’s also if anyone finds out that I was the last person seen with him and all of his cash before he disappears, and disappears good, I’ll be framed for murder even without a body.
Disappearing is hard, but if anyone can do it, it’s someone with the kind of money that Oliver has.
I lick my lips. “Do you have a plan?”
Oh, goodie. It’s the dead-eyed look that always accompanied my father telling me not to be a fool until the day I quit talking to him.
I curl my fingers into my fists and fight the internal rage that starts swirling at the implication that I’m stupid.
“There are levels of plans when you’re leaving your old life behind.
Clearly, you have the whole go with cash, get the fake passport thing under control.
But your driving sucks. No offense. I get it.
You don’t drive much, so you’re new to driving this much.
Everyone sucks at first. I sucked at first. And honestly, for a long time before I suddenly couldn’t afford moving violation tickets anymore. ”
“I don’t suck at driving.”