Chapter 57
THAT STUPID L-WORD
Daphne
It’s official.
I’m in love with Oliver.
It’s Sunday morning. A full week since I tried to get my phone back from under the mattress in his secret serial killer cabin, when he’d glare at me for breathing, and today couldn’t be more different.
I’m playing the role of the little spoon in the tent while a light rain falls on the canvas.
He’s sleeping, his hand curled around my belly, and he’s breathing peacefully in my hair, the warmth of his breath in direct contrast to the cool morning air tickling my nose.
The sun’s up, but with the rain, it’s a muted light coming through the tent.
I close my eyes and let myself breathe peacefully too.
It’s not hard to imagine staying here forever.
Camping for eternity. The lure of how easy it would be to fall into old habits and tell myself things like he can afford for us to live like this forever, we don’t have to work, we could do good things with his money—but the thought sends anxiety swirling through my belly at the same time.
As it should.
He’s taking his life in a new direction, and I’m only along for the journey between destinations.
But I don’t know how I can end this journey without my life changing because of the experience too.
I can’t go back to what life was before either. Life without Oliver.
The thought makes me sad.
He inhales a deeper breath, one of those waking-up breaths, and his fingers stretch across my belly before he pulls me closer.
“Morning,” I whisper.
“I love sleep,” he mumbles back.
I smile even as my heart dips.
For a hot second there, I thought he was about to tell me he loved me.
But there’s a big leap from him telling me he liked me in the hotel the other day to loving me.
A lot of people like me.
It takes someone special to love me though.
“Sleep seems to like you too.” I trace the veins on the back of his hand. “You almost could pass for thirty-seven now.”
His amused snort tickles my ear. “I almost feel forty-five.”
“So, is that your plan? To run away somewhere and pull a sleeping beauty for a few years?”
“Yes.”
It’s so easy to picture myself in a little cabin with him, making him pancakes for a late brunch after he wakes up, going on a hike, donating to charities for an hour or so, and then making grilled cheeses for an early dinner before we collapse into bed again.
Making love to him.
Slipping out of bed once he’s asleep to call Bea or watch TV or take care of a garden.
No stress.
No anxiety.
And not actually my future or my reality because I can’t ever let myself depend on someone else to provide for me again.
Even Oliver.
Who’s provided my job for me for the past few years anyway, and who says he’ll continue providing for my job.
And everyone else’s too.
So that it’s not just for me. Even when it is all for me.
A sigh slips out of me.
He wraps me tighter. “I like the rain. How it smells. How it sounds. Don’t want to leave.”
Same, Oliver. Same. To all of it. “Do we have to?”
“Nuh-uh.” He tenses. “Unless—do you have to get back? For work?”
“I can tell my boss I’m wooing a donor.”
The man has the nerve to relax.
Like it’s no big deal that I can tell my boss I’m using him.
He doesn’t even ask if this is how I woo all of my big donors.
“That’ll work?”
“If not, Bea’s on track to have a whole burger bus empire, so I could go work for her forever.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“That would make you happy?”
Not the way my current job does. “Working with Bea? Yes.”
“Saving the world through burgers?”
“Don’t underestimate Bea’s burgers. They’re more life-changing than Cod Pieces.”
He’s smiling.
I can feel it.
The rain picks up, buffeting the tent along with another gust of wind.
I wiggle my ass back into Oliver.
He kisses my shoulder.
And we lie there, him stroking my body, me stroking his hands and arms while he strokes my body. “Why fairies?” he murmurs against my skin as he traces one of my tattoos.
“It’s what I want to be in my next life.”
“You’d make a very good fairy.”
“I totally would.”
His low laugh vibrates against me, and I almost don’t realize there’s another vibration coming from somewhere else cutting through the morning.
“Your phone?” he says.
I slap around the tent until I find it, glance at the readout, and smile. “It’s Bea.”
“Wanna take it?”
“You don’t mind?”
“Nuh-uh.”
He sounds like he could fall back asleep.
And that would be good for him.
“I’ll be quiet,” I whisper.
“I like your voice,” he mumbles back.
I’m smiling through emotions flooding my sinuses while I swipe to answer the call. “Hey,” I say to Bea.
There’s a pause, and then her sentence comes out in a rush.
“I’ve been trying very, very hard to not look at where you’re at because I have plausible deniability that way, but I started seeing some things on social media when I was updating my pages this morning, and Daph—are you…
have you…did you give away millions of dollars from Mississippi up through Iowa? ”
Oliver tenses behind me.
Understandable.
I’m tensing in front of him.
“That’s a very specific question,” I finally force out.
“Oh my god, Daph,” she whispers.
Shit.
Shit.
Oliver’s grip tightens around me. “So we lay low for a few days,” he murmurs.
“How—” I swallow. Then try again. “How likely do you think it is that anyone else would think that’s what I’m doing?” I ask Bea. “Not saying I am or that I’m not. Just asking…do you think anyone else would suspect it?”
“Margot called a little bit ago.”
I put Bea on speaker and check my missed calls.
Four from Margot. The first at a reasonable, if early hour, then three in rapid succession about half an hour ago.
I took her off my emergency contact list so that her calls wouldn’t ring through the way Bea’s do while I’m traveling.
“What did you tell her?” I whisper.
“Exactly what you asked. That you said you needed to disconnect and go camping for a while.”
“She gave a marvelous performance,” Simon says in the background. “I believed every word.”
“Did she believe you?” I ask Bea.
“Daphne, I love you, and I will continue to always love you, but in the spirit of honesty, I have to tell you that I checked your location this morning, even though I really, really didn’t want to look…
It’s just that, when the reports started saying a woman with fairy tattoos and blue and green highlights in her hair, wearing a unicorn T-shirt, was with a guy—and I know you—and I…
can you maybe please tell me you’re okay and I don’t need to worry that you’re into something you can’t handle? ”
I blow a soft breath out of my nose.
This is okay.
Bea and Margot are the only two people from my past who would know what I’ve done with my hair recently, and I’m not the only person in the world with fairy tattoos.
“I’m good,” I tell Bea. “Everything’s good.”
“If you need anything—”
“No. No, I’m good. Totally under control here.”
“Daph?”
“Yeah?”
“Margot sent me a picture of her ex and asked if I’d seen him too.”
I stifle a good fuck.
Oliver presses his face into my shoulder, and I’m pretty sure he’s doing the same.
“Why do you think she would do that?” I ask Bea.
“There was a partial picture of a man in one of the news stories about…the people giving away money in the Midwest. She sent that to me first. To see if I thought there was a similarity between him and her ex.”
I can’t talk.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t think.
Oliver’s partial picture made the news.
He’s frozen behind me too.
“Oh my god, Daphne,” Bea whispers.
And I can tell by her voice that she knows.
She knows I’m with Oliver.
It’s not like he has any distinctive moles or tattoos or unusual features. To anyone else, he’d be your everyday brown-haired, hazel-eyed, scruffy-jawed guy.
“Bea, everything is okay. I swear,” I tell her when I can make myself talk again.
“This doesn’t sound like the boring guy you described.”
Oliver relaxes a bit as he snorts behind me.
“Um…he can hear you,” I whisper loudly to Bea.
“Well, isn’t this is a delightful plot twist?” Simon says cheerfully.
And Oliver—oh my god.
Oliver laughs harder.
“And it passes the rocking chair test,” Bea says. “Daph, what do you need? Seriously, what can I do? Do you have security with you? Simon’s guys are freaking a little at the idea that you’re doing this without help. And what do you want me to tell Margot? I can call her back for you.”
I need to do it.
I need to tell Margot.
“No, you’ve done enough, thank you,” I tell Bea.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Happy to send someone along to trail you at a safe distance and pretend they’re not there,” Simon adds.
If we’ve been made, we’ve been made.
And if Margot suspects where Oliver is—then I need to talk to her.
We need to talk to her.
“Not necessary, but thank you,” Oliver says.
“You still know how to use your manners?” I ask him.
“With other people.”
A brief silence lingers on the other end of the phone.
I cringe to myself.
Bea knows me. She knows me.
She has to have heard so much more in my voice that I’m not saying, and my face is getting hot because I did tell her Oliver’s boring, and she knows I hate him.
Hated him.
Who he used to be.
Not who he is now.
This guy?
This Oliver?
“Don’t worry about us, Bea,” I say in a rush as she says, “Okay, then, let us know if you change your mind or think of anything else we can do.”
We both fall silent for a minute, and then Bea cracks up. “Miss you, Daph. Be safe, okay?”
“Of course. And I’ll be home soon. I miss you too.”
We hang up, and silence—other than the pitter-patter of rain on the tent—surrounds Oliver and me again.
“They seem nice,” Oliver says.
“Absolute best,” I whisper back.
He hugs me tighter. “Daph—”
“I need to call Margot.”
“Daphne.”
I fall silent.
“Your sister adores you,” Oliver says softly. “And she and I have been over for a long, long time.”
I swallow hard.
I know both of those things.
I know Oliver doesn’t want her back.
I know she was willing to take him back for all of the wrong reasons.
And I don’t know what I’ll do if she decides she wants nothing more to do with me after this.
Be grateful for Bea, I remind myself.
Except it’s not enough. I want both of them, both Bea and Margot, sister of my heart and sister my whole life.
I don’t want to sacrifice my relationship with my sister.
I don’t want her to move on from tolerating me too.
Margot was there my entire childhood.
She’s held my hand through relationship heartbreak. She’s stood between our parents and me when I messed up. She’s bailed me out of jail.
She’s always been there for me.
And here I am, sleeping with her ex on a road trip after she was making noise about wanting him back.
My eyes sting and my lungs burn.
Oliver’s grip on me stays tight. Like he’s trying to hold me together.
I take one deep breath.
Then another.
And another, and another, until I’ve put myself in the right frame of mind to dial Margot’s number.