Chapter 69
HOME ISN’T HOME WHEN I’M MISSING MY HEART
Daphne
“You should’ve gotten Oliver out too,” I say to Margot while her private jet lifts off from a small airfield north of Denver.
It’s not the first time I’ve said it.
It likely won’t be the last.
But this time, instead of telling me that his own attorneys can handle things for him, that he’s in a lot more trouble because our father is refusing to drop the charges against him, or that it’s good for him after what he’s put his parents through, she squeezes her eyes shut, takes a notebook from the messenger bag beside her, and scribbles a note that she hands to me.
Would you please trust me?
I recline back into the plush seat and eyeball her.
She takes the note back and shreds it, tearing it into strips that she deposits into the water glass on the built-in console beside her.
“Thank you for getting here so fast,” I say meekly.
Her face softens, and she looks less like the angry CEO who marched me out of the county jail and more like the sister who comes to visit me on the weekends. “Bea and I have been waiting for the call all week. I’ve had the plane on standby since Sunday.”
I sit straighter. “Oh, god, did she see the footage?”
“It’s highly unlikely that anyone you’ve ever known could’ve missed it.”
I cringe while the plane dips in a bit of turbulence. “Can I call her?”
“If you’d like.”
“I didn’t mean to get arrested. I mean, in the end, I did, but I didn’t think the road trip would end like…this.”
“If our father hadn’t hired a private detective to verify you two were on a road trip after his staff alerted him to the coverage last weekend, and then decided to do…what he did… you wouldn’t have gotten arrested either.”
“What the hell was wrong with him? I’m not a pawn in his corporate games. And Oliver—” I suck in a deep breath, then plunge ahead. “Oliver’s not going back to Miles2Go.”
Margot and I haven’t talked about the elephant in the plane.
Not the thing where Margot left Oliver in jail, but the thing where it’s obvious she knows how bad I have it for him, and we don’t have to speak in code about it and make me wonder if I’m understanding her correctly this time.
And honestly?
If she is mad about it…I think I’d pick Oliver.
Because he’s picking me.
And that thought has my nose burning and my eyes getting wet.
He says he’s picking me.
For the first time in my adult life, I don’t know what I’ll do if it turns out a man has lied to me.
Because for the first time in my entire life, I am honestly, truly, and completely in love.
It’s the scariest thing in the world to know what it feels like to be abandoned and still want someone to love you anyway.
To wonder if he’ll get mad that I left him in jail and decide after a few days away from me that I’m not worth it after all.
If I really am just a pawn.
Margot hands me a tissue. “What happened?” she asks softly.
The whole story comes tumbling out.
Me going to tell him to leave her alone.
Waking up in his back seat as he drove into Pennsylvania.
Realizing he was running away and that he needed more help than he could’ve possibly understood or anticipated.
His first attempt at pumping gas. The way he looked so old and stressed and tired.
Him sleeping through the first two days. Us fighting, where he fought back.
Realizing he wasn’t who I always thought he was. That he’s changed.
His donut apology.
Angelina Juliana Priestly, who’s in the car back in Colorado.
Giving away as much cash as we could.
Drinking the Chateau Cheval Blanc with hot dogs and s’mores over a campfire.
Bea’s heads-up that we were drawing attention by giving away so much money.
Lying low. Heading to Colorado so he could see the sun rise and set over the mountains, which we won’t get to do now. And finally, the saloon.
“I love him,” I whisper to Margot as I finish up.
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. But he’s—he’s not who I remember.
He’s fun and he’s a little lost and he’s a lot like me—he doesn’t fit where we always thought we were supposed to fit, but he wants to do good in the world and he recognizes his privilege and it’s so irresistibly attractive. And I—please don’t hate me.”
She doesn’t flinch.
She’s smiled at times, cringed a little at other times as I’ve poured it all out, but me telling her that I love her ex-fiancé?
All that gets is another soft smile. “Good,” she whispers.
“Good? Seriously?”
“Daph, do you have any idea why you’re my favorite person in the universe?”
“Because you’re a saint?”
“Because you have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.
You have always—always—lived your life with kindness and compassion right beside the chaos and the fun.
When you had access to family money, you used it to make other people happy.
Remember when you bought a car for the cafeteria lady in your dorm at Vanderbilt?
And when you sent a hundred pizzas to that school whose principal had died?
And when you funded every pet shelter in the city for two years?
While people like Archie Westmore were buying themselves yachts and vacations all over the world? ”
I don’t mention to her that Oliver and Archie are apparently besties.
I’m too busy trying to see through the waterfall in my eyes.
“And then you put your entire life on hold to help someone you actively disliked when you realized he was in crisis,” Margot says.
“I have never understood how our parents couldn’t adore you the same way I do.
You are the easiest person in the world to love, and I’m so, so glad that someone who also has a ridiculously huge heart can see that. ”
“You—you think Oliver has a big heart?”
“He used to bring extra food on picnics to feed the ants, Daph. The signs were always there. You two fit in a way that he and I never would’ve. Not long-term.”
“But you said you wanted him back.”
“Guess I’ll have to find another way to help the Aurora Gardens empire branch out beyond hotels. Maybe there’s an airline heir who owns fifty-one percent of his family’s company somewhere.”
I gasp.
She cocks a sardonic grin that tells me she’s mostly not serious.
And I dissolve into tears again.
She passes me another tissue.
“Daph—” she starts, then shakes her head.
“What?”
“I don’t—I need you to know—I never loved Oliver.”
I gasp again. “How could you not love him?”
“It wasn’t his fault. It was all mine. You were right.
He was safe. We were boring together. We rarely fought.
We agreed about everything, had the same goals, wanted the same kind of life, and he is kind, which made it easy to like him.
Our relationship was comfortable and compatible, but it wasn’t—Daphne, it couldn’t have been love, because I don’t know how to love someone. ”
Is she serious?
She can’t be serious. “Margot.”
“You know how to love. You know how to put your whole heart into things in a way that I—that I’m not built for. So you and Oliver? Being this happy together?”
I arch a brow as I blow my nose again, tears drying on my cheeks.
She cracks a half-smile. “If you’re this miserable without him, I can only imagine how happy you are with him.”
“So happy,” I whisper. “But you—you do too know how to love. You love me. You show me all the time.”
“Loving you is cheating. It’s too easy.”
“You flew across the country to bail me out of jail.”
“I got an excuse to see you sooner than I would’ve otherwise. This was entirely selfish.”
I scowl at her.
“You being disinherited changed me too,” she says softly.
“And whatever labels you want to put on it, I never had what you have. How you live your life. The way you feel about Oliver. I thought I loved him at the time, but the kind of love I can give someone—it’s not enough.
He deserves more. Especially now, after all that he’s been through.
And you keep saying I should have big, messy, exciting, life-altering love.
Daph, you’ve found it and you’ll thrive in it.
I never will. And I’m okay with that. My life is good.
Amazing, even. Just as it is. Especially with you in it. ”
“But—”
“What would you tell me if our roles were reversed?”
If Margot had found someone who made her world that much brighter and more perfect, if she found someone who finally made the puzzle pieces of her life make sense, if she found someone she loved so desperately that leaving him behind made her feel like her heart would never work right again?
Even if I’d been with him before?
I’d tell her everything she’s telling me.
Because I’d want her to be happy.
That’s what you want for the people you love.
My eyes overflow again. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I love you so much.”
She rubs my knee. “You really are my favorite person on the planet, Daphne. Always.”
I need a few minutes before I can talk normally again. “He says he’s coming to find me at home in a week.”
“If that’s what he says, then that’s what he’ll do.”
“What if—what if he doesn’t? What if this entire road trip was some big dream? What if he realizes I’m a pain in the ass and he doesn’t want me anymore once the road magic wears off?”
She squeezes my hand. “Then you keep the good memories and let me handle the rest. I might be able to appreciate him if he makes you happy, but if he hurts you, well, I hear Bea has a brother with all the resources necessary to hide a body.”
I laugh until I’m crying again.
Margot pulls herself out of her seat and joins me in mine, hugging me tight. “I missed you,” she tells me while she presses a kiss to my forehead. “You make life the best kind of interesting.”
“You’re sure you aren’t mad at me? Not even the littlest bit?”
“Daph. He’s bossy and arrogant now. And he punches people? You know that’d never work with what I’d accept in a man. If I ever get back in the dating game, I want meek and subservient.”
“You are the very best sister in the entire universe.”
“Not even close.” She nudges my phone. “Call Bea. She’s worried, and she needs to hear from you that you’re okay.”
So I do.
I call my best friend, my bonus sister, and I repeat my story all over again.
And then I somehow sleep the rest of the flight.
Margot’s pilot delivers us to Albany instead of the city, and Bea picks me up in Simon’s car. Well, the car that his security people have been driving him around in.
Not like she was driving her burger bus out here, and she apparently hasn’t replaced her own car yet after an incident with a tree a month or so ago.
She crushes me in a hug, her curly brown hair wild like she’s been running her fingers through it. She smells a little like cooking oil and a lot like some new kind of shampoo, and I swear I’ve never had a better hug from her.
She hugs Margot too, and the two of them have a quick whispered conversation that I don’t even attempt to overhear before Margot hugs me one last time and then gets into a car that’s waiting for her at the airport.
Bea gets me buckled in like I’m a little kid again, and I can’t argue with that either. I’m tired, and I’m worried about Oliver, and I could sleep for four days.
That would make a lot of the next week pass by quicker.
And that’s when I realize I don’t have Oliver’s phone number.
And he doesn’t have mine.
We never traded numbers.
We didn’t have to.
“Daph?” Bea says softly. “You okay?”
Everything around me is familiar. It’s home.
And I feel upside down and inside out. “I forgot to get his phone number,” I whisper.
She squeezes my hand as she steers us out of the parking lot of the private airfield. “The guy I saw on that video last night? He won’t let something like not having your phone number stop him.”
“I left him in jail, Bea.”
She grins. “Then you’ll really know he loves you when he shows up like he said he would next week.”
I’m tired of crying.
So tired of crying.
“Tell me everything about you and Simon and the burger bus,” I say to her.
“Everything?”
“Everything. And please don’t get mad if I fall asleep while you’re talking. I missed your voice so much, and I miss Oliver, but also—I’m so glad to be home. I’m so glad you’re my home.”
“Do you want me to start at the part where you were right that what he did was a forgivable offense and I’d already decided to see if we could work things out when I found out he bought the drive-in and was showing my favorite movie, or do you need a refresher on why we were temporarily mad at him in the first place? ”
I stare at her. “He bought the drive-in?”
Her face lights up, and she launches into her story.
I don’t fall asleep on the ride home.
It’s obvious I missed a ton while I was gone, and I want to soak in every detail.
I want to live my life. And be happy with the family I’ve chosen.
And trust that Oliver will still want to come find me after he’s back in his regular element too.