Chapter 15
I DON’T WANT HELP EXCEPT I MIGHT NEED IT
Oliver
How is it that I spent the past four years working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, yet six hours driving a car has me completely wrecked?
And it’s not a post-trauma thing.
Despite the close calls last night and this morning, I’m not worried someone’s going to sideswipe me every minute anymore. Not worried that we’ll end up upside down beside a river. Not concerned that a runaway train will appear out of nowhere.
I’m beat. Physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I slide a glance to my right as I pull off the state highway and onto a bumpier road marked with a wooden sign announcing some state park.
This isn’t a planned stop, but I don’t have four more hours of driving in me to get to my next destination.
And if I don’t make day two, I’m not making day three, or day four, or day five, and just dammit.
Daphne pops a gummy bear into her mouth. “You sure you don’t want one? That protein bar you had this morning wasn’t a lot of food.”
We’re maybe forty minutes past the ValuKart, and she’s been suspiciously quiet the entire time. Like she took me seriously when I told her to shut up. “No eating in the car.”
She grins at me and pops another gummy bear into her mouth. “Won’t find food in a state park either, and if you eat outside of the car, the bears will smell it and come and eat us.”
“Bears don’t eat humans in this part of the country.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“Rarely.” Fuck me, I need a nap. A nap, and a drink, and a steak.
And then a solid night of sleep.
Or maybe a solid month of sleep.
“Do you have another secret cabin in this park, or are you looking for something?” Daphne asks.
I ignore her.
“Are we meeting one of your friends?”
“I don’t have friends.”
“None? None at all?”
I have a friend. One that I trust with my life, and one that I’m due to check in with tonight to verify that I’ve survived on my own this long.
One that I probably could have called to handle the Daphne problem, but that didn’t occur to me until right now, and it turns out, she might be useful, even if I hate that.
Everyone else that I’ve ever considered a friend?
They either dropped me as soon as my father was convicted, or they slowly fell away when I didn’t have time for drinks after work anymore.
I don’t trust other executives because I didn’t know who was honestly being nice versus who was being cordial to get secrets out of me or who was hoping I’d fall flat on my face so they could take my job or even the company.
So what I truly have is paranoia.
All of it. I have all of the paranoia to ever exist in the entire universe.
I spot a parking lot that’s relatively empty and pull in at the far end.
My shoulders relax as I shift the car into park.
My breath eases out.
My head drops back.
My eyelids droop.
And Daphne crinkles another goddamn bag.
Then crunches.
Loudly.
“Tired?” she says.
“Stop talking.”
She doesn’t have to say a word for me to hear what she’s thinking. I can drive if you’d like to go farther down the road.
I pry one eyelid open and glance her way.
She holds up a misshapen thing in an unnatural orange. “Lava Cheese Puff?”
And my shoulders are at my ears again.
The interior of my car will be glowing orange from all of the fake cheese dust coming off her fingers, and I doubt anything that unnatural comes out of the cloth seats easily.
I squeeze my eyes shut and turn my face away from her, willing myself to imagine the sounds of a burbling creek or a thunderstorm in one of those apps that never worked well enough to help me fall asleep.
“That was a nice thing you did for that little girl,” Daphne says quietly.
“We’re not talking.”
“I helped my—someone with a carwash fundraiser a few years ago, and the town’s worst person ever came through and barely gave five dollars, and then this single mom came through and dropped in a hundred bucks, and every single teenager working that car wash that day remembered her until they left town.
If they had part-time jobs at the diner, they gave her a discount.
She’d get tickets to the high school plays dropped in her mailbox.
One day, she found homemade cupcakes right after a rumor went around that she’d had a bad day. ”
I suck in an uneven breath.
That.
That’s what I want.
A community where people help each other and remember each other and don’t care if you were born a billionaire or piss-poor. Where they remember each other and do nice things for each other because it’s what you should do, not what you do to look good.
Where you can belong.
I rub my chest where the longing for a place to belong is sucking the life out of me.
I never belonged in my parents’ world, and the only thing these past four years since my father was arrested have proven to me is that I never will.
Can I run a multi-billion-dollar corporation?
Apparently yes. Save it from the brink of ruination, even.
But I don’t want to. And honestly, it only worked because I listened to the people around me who seemed to have better ideas than the others.
Half of what I did wasn’t because I thought it was what needed to be done.
It was because my executive assistant is a genius who told me what to do, and I was smart enough to listen to her.
“That little girl will remember you for the rest of her life,” Daphne adds, even softer.
My eyes flare open, and I jerk my face toward her.
Dammmmmmit.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Daphne lifts a brow. “Kinda doubt she recognized you. Her mom either. If they did, they’ll remember you more for this than anything else.”
She flicks at my shirt with her orange-covered fingers.
I look down and spot the price tag hanging off the breast pocket. “Goddammit,” I mutter.
She grins and munches on another cheese puff.
And I cave.
I fucking cave.
“If I let you drive, will you drive where I tell you to go?”
“Yep.”
“Without any side trips or stops along the way?”
“If we pass the world’s largest pink eraser or I realize we’re within five miles of any world-famous attraction involving cows, we’re stopping. You’re not really on a road trip if you don’t.”
I can’t believe that’s a comforting answer, but it is.
She’ll go where I tell her in the hopes she can see some stupid—
I shake my head.
In the hopes that she can see something unique.
Something that a community somewhere is proud of.
Or even a single person.
Something out of the ordinary that a single person cares about enough to try to draw visitors to it.
I pop open my door. “If you double-cross me—”
“Oliver.”
“What?”
She stares at me with an intensity that’s unnerving coming from her. “Our families suck, and the world they exist in sucks worse. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard to break away and set your own course. I still don’t like you, but I respect you for what you’re doing right now.”
Also unnerving?
How much I relate to that last sentence.
I don’t like her either, but I appreciate that she has exactly the experience I apparently need.
Travel logistics were easy to plan. A driving route to explore as much of the country as possible in two weeks, and lodging booked with prepaid credit cards and a fake name on hotel and vacation rental accounts that match my fake ID.
Check that.
Not easy, but at least logical.
Spontaneously finding ways to give away as much of my money as I can along the way—I can already tell that will be far more difficult. I’m seven hours in, and I’ve rid myself of less than five grand of the literal millions in my trunk.
Less than what Daphne won on that stupid scratch-off that’s sitting in the cupholder between the seats.
I point at the wooden structure at the other end of the parking lot. “Go wash your hands. You’re not getting that shit on my steering wheel.”
She doesn’t tell me not to leave her while she’s in the bathroom.
I want to think that’s weird, but I get a glimpse of myself in the side mirror, and I grimace.
There are dead people who look more alive than I do right now.
I’m so exhausted that I don’t even stretch before lumbering around the car and shoving myself into the passenger seat. I’d be asleep when Daphne returns, except my knees are shoved up against the dashboard and I can’t find the button to push the seat back.
She climbs into the driver’s seat, takes one look at me, and reaches between my legs.
“What the hell—” I start, and then the seat is jerking backward.
“Lever’s under the seat. No automatic buttons on the passenger side.”
I pinch my nose and squeeze my eyes shut.
“There’s another lever near the back of the seat if you want to recline it.”
“Wasn’t planning on sitting in this seat, so I didn’t need to know how it worked,” I grumble.
“There’s a lot I wasn’t planning on today.”
I slide her a look.
She grins at me again.
Like no big deal, just on an unexpected road trip to start my week, and now I’m having fun.
She scoots the driver’s seat forward, adjusts the mirrors and the steering wheel, straps in, and starts the engine.
Then she revs it. “Did Margot tell you that I’m racing cars for a living now?”
I spring straight up and slap my hand on the dash. “Out—”
“Kidding. I don’t have my driver’s license on me, so we’d be screwed if I get us pulled over. Take a nap. I’ve got this.”
I glare at her.
Meanwhile, she’s smiling so big—a real smile, a smile that holds pure joy, not a spite smile, not a smile that says she’s enjoying torturing me—that something else takes hold in my gut.
Envy.
Envy that Daphne has found that magical, mystical thing I’m chasing.
The thing that I’m terrified I won’t find no matter how far I get from my old life and no matter how hard I look for what I know is missing.
I ease back into the seat, feel around, and find the lever to recline it.
But only a little.
“You’re happy,” I say.
She glances at me before putting the car in gear. “My life doesn’t suck.”
It’s more than that.
Much more than that.
Maybe I’m too tired to pick up on everything I always noticed about her before, but while there’s still chaos to her, there’s something else.
It’s like…peace.
The frantic energy that went with her is gone.
She’s not a tornado operating at the whims of whatever pressure system steers her next.
It’s like she is the pressure system steering the tornado.
She can control it.
I tap the screen in the middle of the console. “Follow the GPS.”
“You got it, Captain.”
“Don’t call me captain.”
“Okey-dokey, Skipper.”
I’d be annoyed, but I’m too busy letting my body melt into this seat.
It’s uncomfortable as hell.
But that doesn’t stop me from falling asleep.
All while hoping Daphne takes us where the car GPS is pointing.
If she doesn’t—
What the hell.
In this exact moment, I’m too tired to care.