Chapter 31
SHE’S NOT WHO SHE USED TO BE
Oliver
Despite the havoc watching Daphne eat those donuts played on my hormones, it’s easier to breathe on the road today without the crushing weight of her pissed silence yesterday.
I’ve made a peace offering.
It’s been accepted.
Honestly, it was accepted easier than I expected it to be.
She could’ve—should’ve—held out for more than donuts and coffee and me fumbling through trying to apologize after four years of having it hammered into me that CEOs don’t apologize for anything.
And now I have to figure out how to convince her she wants to stay in the car with me for another few days without making her suspicious about my intentions or angry that I’m keeping her from her regularly scheduled life or provoking any other unpleasant reaction she might have.
That was another hard thing about being CEO of M2G.
How I felt about letting someone down or making someone mad.
Those radio talk show hosts yesterday—they thought I had some master plan with the charities and initiatives I invested profits into.
I didn’t.
It was the only part of my plans that I didn’t fully consult with my executive assistant for, and the only part of my plans that she cautioned me could turn out to be a bad idea.
Throwing profits away is one thing when you’re investing in expansion.
It’s dicier when you’re not expecting a return on investment at all.
But I needed to do something worthwhile and meaningful at a time when all of the bad was crushing me. I needed to know there was a bigger purpose than making as much money as possible through gasoline and convenience store junk food and knickknacks.
Bonus that my father hated my methods.
Unfortunately, a lot of other people did too, and they had no qualms in telling me I was fucking up. Even when they didn’t tell me, I could sense it.
That they thought I was a dumbass nepo baby who was only in the role because my family has the majority share of the company’s stock.
I roll my shoulders and try to let it go. It doesn’t matter anymore.
I’m free.
In the middle of nowhere.
With an unexpected travel companion whom I’d like to have fun with today.
“You can change the station,” I tell Daphne after we’ve stopped at another ValuKart to get more essentials for both of us, including another pair of jeans and three more relaxed shirts for me, and for her, more underwear that I’m actively not thinking about, two pairs of shorts, a package of socks, three T-shirts with jokes I don’t fully understand, a hairbrush, shampoo, conditioner, a bag of Halloween candy—hell if I know why it’s in stores in August—and two gossip magazines from the checkout counter, plus a root beer from the fast-food restaurant inside the ValuKart.
And I don’t know if she needed all of that because she wants to stay on the road with me or because she’s screwing with me.
Screwing with people always seemed like one of Daphne’s favorite pastimes.
Case in point?
She’s grinning at me as she points to the radio. “Nah. This is my favorite station.”
We’re still on symphonic pop, and I veer a little on the road as I whip my head toward her, but I correct faster than I would’ve two days ago and have much less of a panicked reaction to my own poor driving.
Sleep’s helping my driving skills. This is the first time I’ve veered all day.
“You’re a little easy to manipulate.” She punctuates the statement with a loud slurp as she finishes the root beer.
She follows it with a soft burp, then chuckles. “Can you imagine if I did that in front of my parents? They’d shit a brick.”
My upbringing has me appalled.
My freedom has me smiling.
At all of it.
Her lack of basic drinking manners. Her fucking with me. Her saying shit a brick.
But mostly—I’m grateful for the opening to talk about her family.
Talking about her family will definitely take my mind off the way she looked when she was eating that donut.
Wait.
Was she screwing with me then too?
Goddammit.
She probably was.
Still, I push ahead. In case she wasn’t. “I thought you didn’t see your parents.”
She snorts softly. “I don’t.”
I cut another glance at her before turning my attention back to the road.
Pretty outside today. We’re driving through a hilly area with green trees surrounding us. The sky is a deep blue with a few nonthreatening clouds floating along without a care in the world.
I’m close.
I’m close to not a care in the world.
But not quite there.
“Ever?” I ask.
“Don’t see them. Don’t text them. Don’t talk to them.”
My pulse rattles unevenly.
I don’t know if I ever want to see my own parents again.
Definitely not for several months.
They’re not bad people.
Yes, yes, my father went to prison. They are actually that kind of bad people.
I meant that they’re not the worst parents in the world.
They just never saw me as anything other than a person to train to take over the family business. A person who should be grateful for the opportunities I had, even if they don’t fit the personality that I was born into.
Walking away like this—it’s not something anyone would expect of me.
“Was that ultimately your decision or theirs?” I ask. She said something about them not calling or checking on her, but she didn’t say if she tried to contact them.
Did she?
She might’ve.
I can’t remember, but I know my brain feels more awake today than it has been. I probably missed a lot of subtext the past few days.
She slides me a look like we’ve been over this, but answers anyway. “Mine.”
“But you’re still tight with Margot.”
“Yes.”
I fully recognize the discomfort in my stomach that was a result of donuts for breakfast.
It’s sitting next to the discomfort that came with thinking too much about the bras and panties Daphne threw into the cart at ValuKart not half an hour ago.
And the discomfort that’s come from remembering her ass cheeks when she climbed into the back seat two days ago and the memory of how badly I wanted to kiss her as much as I wanted to throttle her when I caught her with that phone.
That wasn’t something I was able to acknowledge to even myself until this morning when I watched her eating that donut.
Probably time to call Archie and check in and get some much-needed perspective and a reminder of what I’m doing this for.
I subtly clear my throat. “Does she play go-between?”
“Like, so I stay in touch with my parents without having to talk to them? No. She tells me things about them occasionally—she does work for the family business, so it’s part of her life, and I like to know what she’s doing—but as far as I’m concerned, they’re dead.”
“Harsh.”
“It’s not because they cut me off, if you’re thinking I’m some spoiled rich girl who—okay, yes, I was a spoiled rich girl who always thought I’d have my trust fund. But that didn’t make me a bad person.”
I cut another look at her.
This one’s very pointed.
She grins. “Lighten up, Tighty-Whities. I’m saving the world on a regular basis now, so I have to balance that out with annoying the shit out of some people.”
“I suddenly understand why they would’ve revoked your trust fund.”
She snorts softly, clearly not offended at all.
“Yeah, they weren’t the assholes at all with how and why they did it.
But you better believe if I ever have kids, I’ll pay attention to who they are and what they need and not worry about the box I want them to fit into to make sure I look good and that they do what I want them to do.
And even if Aunt Margot leaves them each ten billion dollars, they’ll know how to survive in the world without it. You know?”
I steal another glance at her.
She’s frowning at the windshield, clutching her empty cup so hard it’s caving in.
Maybe I haven’t offended her, but I’ve hit a nerve.
“Why’d they cut you off?”
She looks at me, then down at her cup. “Three months before I would’ve fully come into my trust fund outright, I started a protest at my college over their policies around emotional support animals, but it turned out I’d misread the policy, and I made the college look terrible when they weren’t at fault, and they kicked me out. ”
I wince.
She laughs softly, but it’s not an amused laugh.
“Yeah. So with one more failed college experience under my belt, my parents sent their family manager to tell me that I would no longer be financially supported by the Merriweather-Brown fortune. Effective immediately. No money except what I had in my purse. They took my security team and chef and stopped payment on my rental house and disconnected my phone from the family plan. I didn’t know how to cook.
I didn’t have any credit cards that weren’t tied to them, and they stopped those too.
I should’ve set myself up to take care of myself in basic ways already—I was old enough.
But I was still in college and I’d never had to learn.
They used their money and my own ignorance to try to control me, and when they realized it wouldn’t work, they cut me off with no idea how to get by in the real world. ”
I rub my chest.
I’m running away. I’ve put plans in motion to give away a significant portion of the fortune I was born into, and I’m developing plans to give away most of the rest of my money as well.
But I’ll keep enough to live a comfortable life—more than a comfortable life, honestly—so that no one else ever has to take care of me.
So that I can invest in learning how to be a normal person with normal hobbies and interests and goals without worrying about paying my bills for the rest of my life.
Shit. I’m boring.
“That’s—” I cut myself off, uncertain what word is right to describe what her parents did.