Chapter 13
THINGS GET WORSE IN THE WORST-WORST WAYS
Daphne
In the interest of not being the total asshole that I could be, when we stop at a ValuKart Goods and Groceries after getting gas, I don’t insist Oliver try on any of the shirts with funny animal jokes on them.
Voluntarily, for the record.
Kind of.
He changed into it in the car to get out of that undersized T-shirt that left nothing to my imagination when it comes to his body.
Not that seeing him shirtless helped steer my imagination away from his body.
Just—holy shit.
He’s ripped.
That time I saw him in his tighty-whities, he was your average slender guy who was a little too cautious about everything.
Not buff like he’s been training for a boxing match when he wasn’t at his CEO’s desk for the past few years.
Nor nearly as forceful as he’s been since last night.
Oliver is—
He’s not Oliver.
And it’s causing me some very distinct problems.
And that’s another reason why I’m not pushing anything fashion-wise. Instead, I steer him directly to the jeans and the simplest button-downs that I can find in ValuKart’s men’s clothing section.
But I do tell him he has to try them on before we can leave.
So that I know what sizes to tell him to look for when he shops for his own clothes later.
Not because it’s fun to watch him grimace under the watchful eye of the suspicious lady watching over the changing rooms.
That’s merely an added bonus.
“Is it supposed to be itchy?” he mutters to me from behind the closed door.
“Yep.”
Silence answers me, but I can sense him aiming a growly, aggravated face at me.
He is easily the grumpiest man I have ever met in my life, and Bea’s brother Ryker is pretty grumpy.
I’m beginning to think Oliver’s grumpies are permanent.
Probably also my fault.
“You should wash it before you wear it,” I tell him.
While not imagining him without a shirt on at all.
Stop it, stop it, stop it, Daphne.
The lady watching us squints at me.
I point to the door. “Just left a nudist colony,” I stage whisper. “He grew up there. It’s his first time off the naked compound.”
A very loud inhale from inside the dressing room tells me Oliver overheard that.
And I have now left myself thinking about Oliver completely naked, my brain filling in details about what his thighs must look like if his arms and abdomen are that buff.
This is not what I need.
It’s not what any of us need.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The door swings open, and Oliver stares at me.
It’s the darkest, growliest, most dangerous stare I’ve ever seen on him, and I’ve seen plenty of dark, growly danger from him since I woke up in the back seat of his Mercedes SUV last night.
I suppress the wince I want to make, and I step into the doorway. “Turn around.”
He’s in a blue short-sleeved button-down that does unexpected things for his hazel eyes and one of the pairs of jeans I grabbed for him to try on, and he does not do what I’m telling him to do.
“I need to make sure it all fits right,” I mutter.
“I think I can tell if it all fits right,” he mutters back.
“Did you bend over? Sit down? Test how it feels when you’re moving?” You’d think the questions aren’t necessary, but they are. This man is accustomed to tailor-made clothing for his entire wardrobe.
I’m completely certain he’s never seen the inside of a ValuKart, much less the inside of a ValuKart fitting room.
“I know how to—do I look fucking normal or not?” he hisses.
He does.
He looks like any other guy who might be randomly walking through ValuKart.
Except for the part where his whole body is vibrating with an angry energy that I feel in my soul and his jaw is too tight and his eyes are too full of rage and if the wrong person says the wrong thing to him, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much for him to snap and murder them.
So basically, he still doesn’t look like he fits in at ValuKart.
Mostly.
The store can be pretty aggravating sometimes, but not usually I want to murder people levels of aggravating.
I swallow hard. “Yes. You look like a normal human being.”
He doesn’t answer and instead slams the changing room door.
Ten minutes later, we’re strolling to the checkout with three pairs of jeans and four shirts for him, plus two sets of shorts, a pack of underwear, three bras, a pair of flip-flops, and an extra shirt for me.
Plus a bag of gummy bears and a basic toiletry kit—also for me.
We’ll have to stop somewhere else for more clothes later, but for now, we won’t attract too much attention. Small clothing shopping spree, paying in cash? All good.
Dropping a thousand dollars at ValuKart on complete new wardrobes and full-size toiletries?
Nope.
People talk, and Oliver’s all over the news, and probably not only the news on the Miles2Go pump screens.
I point to the bathroom once he’s paid and dropped the change into the charity bucket at the end of the checkout lane. “Since we paid, we can both change. Plus, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“You just went to the bathroom.”
“This is something else.”
Oliver’s eye twitches, but his sigh tells me that he’s not going to argue more.
I take the bag with my clothes, cringing only a little at the thought of putting them on without washing them first, and dash for the women’s room, hovering long enough to verify that he’s headed to the men’s room.
And then I reach into my cleavage for the secret purchase that I made at the gas station when I went in the first time, power it up, and dial Bea’s number from heart.
Beatrice Best saved my life. She’s been my best friend since a few months before I got disinherited, when we met in class at Austen & Lovelace College in Athena’s Rest, and I won’t be able to live with myself much longer if I don’t call her.
She’s a worrier.
I was supposed to be home by now.
I hope she answers, since she won’t recognize the number on this burner phone, and—
“Hello?” she says on the other end.
Thank you, baby sea turtles. “Bea. It’s me,” I whisper.
“Oh my god, Daph, where are you?”
Hearing her voice makes me tear up. “I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m voluntarily doing what I’m doing.”
“Why is your phone showing in Pennsylvania?”
“Shit. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Daphne.”
I rip the tag off one pair of my new shorts and step into them.
“The reason I don’t go home? I don’t go home because then I’m the Daphne who was an epic fuck-up and things just happen that aren’t supposed to happen because I have the worst timing ever, and something happened again, but I am okay, and I’ll be home…
sometime…and I just didn’t want you to worry. ”
“There is nothing about this conversation that isn’t making me worry.”
My heart squeezes so hard in my chest that I almost can’t breathe.
She’s my age, and she worries too much about everyone. Because she’s had to for the past decade since her parents died in a house fire and she left college to move home to finish raising her brothers. I hate making her worry about me.
“Remember when I moved in with you?” I say in a rush while I tear the tag off of my new bra. “When you had to teach me to drive and how to do laundry and grocery shop on a budget?”
“Yes.”
“I have to do that for someone else right now.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Daphne—”
“Bea. Listen. I love you more than I love anyone else on this planet. You saved my life, and I would literally die for you, but I cannot tell you who I’m with.
It’s—it’s sensitive, and it’s just easier if you don’t know, okay?
But I’m okay. I’m on a little unplanned road trip.
My phone is, erm, temporarily out of commission, so I got this burner phone.
I’m going to have it off a lot, but if you need need me, you can call me on this number or my other cell.
I’m…working on getting it…working again. ”
“What about your job?”
“I’m calling in sick for the week. If Margot calls—if Margot calls, just tell her I got twitchy and had to go camping off-grid, and that I’ll call her back in a week or two, okay?”
“Daphne—”
“Did you make up with Simon?”
“Yes, but—”
Yes! My eyes prickle with tears. The good kind. When I left, she was debating if the hot single dad she’d accidentally started dating this summer was worth a real risk after he betrayed her trust. “For real?”
“He’s right here. Want to say hi?”
I do.
I want to hear Bea’s British boyfriend say something normal and funny, and I want to tell him if he ever lies to her again about anything, I’ll murder him, and then I want Bea to tell me every last detail about how they made up, but I don’t have time.
“No, I need to go. He’s going to notice that I’m taking longer than I should in the bathroom. ”
“He? Who’s he?”
“Bea, I really have to go. But quick—are you happy?”
“Other than my best friend disappearing with an unnamed he and being really cryptic about it? Yes. Very happy.”
Best.
News.
Ever.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“Madame Petty told me you wouldn’t come home one day,” Bea blurts.
Stupid fortune teller.
Who’s too right sometimes. “Fuck Madame Petty. I’m coming home, and then I’ll tell you everything. I’ll call you every other day or so. So you know I’m still alive. Gotta dash, Bea. I love you.”
I hang up before she can stop me, and my nose gets that telltale sign that tears are on the way.
Everything I’m about to teach Oliver, Bea had to teach me.
She’d be so much better at it.
But there’s zero chance I’m convincing Oliver that the best way for him to learn to live like a normal person is to turn around and head back toward New York, even upstate instead of the city.
Not with his plans.
I leave my boss a voicemail and rush through changing the rest of my clothes, and then use the toilet one more time since I have no idea if Oliver will be the type to tell me to hold it.
Oliver several years ago?
He was a pushover who did whatever Margot told him to, or whatever his parents told him to, or whatever my parents told him to.
This Oliver?
I have a feeling—