Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Kylie
That didn't happen.
That did not happen.
This wasn't real.
This couldn't be happening.
The words looped through her mind, but no matter how intently she thought them, reality didn't change.
Standing on tiptoe, Kylie pulled the handle down again and peered into the bin, eyes straining.
The bright moon behind her caught the glint of metal from the carabiner clip of her keychain, and a little sliver of her phone's glass face.
The screen was still on, the glow of her open Candy Crush app mocking her, the light just enough to illuminate her keychain.
On top of black plastic trash bags, a good five feet down and a million miles away, her keys and phone smiled up at her as if to say, “How you doing?”
“I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!!” she screamed, letting the door slam shut with a thud that echoed in the dark night. Something in the woods, about twenty feet away, skittered.
She froze in place, body tingling with fear.
Taking stock of her surroundings, she gathered her coat tight around her, pulling her long, loose hair out from its confines at the neckline around the hood. She was shivering as much from fear as cold, heart racing so fast it surely made her blood boil enough to shake off the chill.
The sound of her breath in her ears was a kind of torture. The truth was sinking in second by second, her eyes going wide, the cold making her corneas sting, her ears ring, and her feet go numb.
Not from the temperature, either.
“I'm stuck,” she whispered, breath warming her nose, which instantly chilled again when she inhaled.
“Stuck! What was I thinking?” she groaned, running through the last few minutes in her mind.
Holding the keys and phone in her hand was second nature.
It was how she made sure she didn't lock them in the car.
And she hadn't.
Hah.
Looking at the country road, she listened for the sound of a passing car. None had come by in the ten minutes she'd been here. That had been the point, right?
It was late on Thanksgiving evening. No one was driving anywhere. People were beached whales, eating their third piece of homemade pumpkin pie in a state of extreme self-loathing. Drive somewhere? Not in a food coma.
Privacy. She'd wanted privacy.
“I've got plenty of privacy,” she muttered, starting to pace. “I’m all alone. Just what I wanted, huh? Thanks, Perry!”
Think, think, think.
How could she get herself out of this?
She took a few steps back from the bin and found herself next to the driver's side door. With a trembling hand, she lifted the car door handle. It opened.
Whew! She could climb in and stay warm, which she did.
And promptly realized there was no way to use the heater.
Her sister had chided her for years for not having an emergency kit in her car, so now she had one. It was for broken car parts, flat tires, getting stuck in snowstorms.
Not for being stupid. If some company made a kit for that, they'd earn billions.
“THIS IS ALL PERRY'S FAULT!” Kylie shouted, banging the steering wheel, the tears hitting her fast and ugly.
It was true. If he hadn't been such a jerk, if he hadn't dumped her for a woman whose name was a freaking poetry format spelled wrong, if he had figured out how to get his stuff, if he'd just been a decent human being and loved her back, she wouldn't have accidentally thrown her car keys and phone into a donation drop bin and been stranded in the cold on Thanksgiving night in the middle of nowhere.
This was definitely Perry's fault.
But even he couldn’t save her.
Not that the rat bastard would. The guy wouldn’t even bother to rescue his old concert t-shirts, much less his ex-girlfriend.
Heart thumping like a djembe drum in expert hands, she took deep breaths, working hard to calm herself. “You’re safe,” she lied into the night, hoping the words would reach a piece of her she couldn’t easily access. “You have a car. No one can get you.”
Locking the doors was easy, even without keys. She was at a service station with a breakfast diner attached. It would open in nine or ten hours.
Her shoulders relaxed a centimeter. She was safe.
It might be a cold night, but she wouldn’t be mauled by a bear.
The thought made her laugh, then start to cry, the seconds ticking by in that unique way loneliness marks time. For the next five minutes, she cried.
And cried.
And cried so hard, it was as if her tear ducts thought that if they worked hard enough, she could conjure her car keys and phone.
Alas, she wasn’t capable of that kind of magic.
“If fairies are real, now’s the time to show yourself,” she said aloud to no one, everyone, opening her swollen eyes slowly in case, well…
You never know, right?
Cold silence and the scent of her own humid breath against the shock of cold was all she got.
She was stuck.
Really stuck.
Her sister, Wendy, was back at their apartment, finishing her packing.
On Saturday, Wendy was all wrapped up with Maine.
She’d moved in with Kylie after Perry dumped her and stayed longer than the planned month, but her paperwork had finally come through.
She was going to work as an au pair for a wealthy family in the South of France.
“Paris at Christmas,” was all she muttered these days, starry-eyed. “You should become an au pair, too, Kylie!”
Wendy was eight years younger, fresh out of community college and ready to travel.
But Kylie wanted roots, not wings.
“Ha,” she huffed into the night. “I want to set down roots somewhere? Guess I just did. I am sooooo stuck.”
Cold seeped into the tips of her toes the way only a frigid night in northern New England really can. Born and raised here, she’d left at fifteen, when The Divorce happened.
And yes, she thought of it with capitals. Their parents had split in the most angry, bitter way possible, her mom announcing the day after their last day at summer camp the August before her sophomore year of high school that they were moving.
To Indiana.
When she’d met Perry seven years ago, in their final year of college, it had been fate. Or so she’d thought. Because Perry’s family ran a chain of successful ski resorts, and one of them was 45 minutes away from where she’d grown up, in Luview, Maine. The place where love wasn’t just a feeling.
It was an industry.
Luview, Maine–cutely pronounced Love You–turned love into a vacation destination, and romance into an income stream.
While that sounded cynical, it was true.
Founded in the late nineteenth century by Abram and Adelaide Luview, a couple who went for a swim in the local hot springs and fell in love, over time the legend spread.
By the early twenty-first century, there was no part of Love You, Maine that didn’t involve hearts, love, or the colors red, white, and pink.
Including the pink police cars. Fire engines were already red.
Love You Coffee had heart-shaped mugs and nothing they served was round or square. If you wanted a bagel, it was a heart. Cupcake? A heart.
Plates? Take a wild guess.
Almost every restaurant was tied into the theme, and so was nearly every flower shop, antique store, movie theater, and more. Home to the world’s largest romance novel bookstore, Love You, Maine, was a place to find love, fall in love, or fall in love again.
And it was Kylie’s hometown.
Perry’s family, though… they didn’t buy into any of it. His family’s company, Nordicbeth Resorts, which ran a number of ski areas, was a behemoth in northern New England. Tiny Love You was just an afterthought to a corporation like that.
Last year, they’d hired her to manage children’s programming for their resorts.
Perry hated the idea of moving up here. He loved life in New York City, where they’d gone to college, but a hefty promotion for him and a full-time, on-site job working with kids for her was a perfect step forward in their life together.
Until Systina the Ubershag crossed Perry’s path.
Six months ago, they’d moved here. Busy with life and work that first month, she hadn’t bothered to go to her old hometown. Then Perry went on his trip to Thailand.
And never came back.
Too humiliated to do anything but work or stay home, she’d lived in a rut until three weeks ago.
When she was downsized.
Yeah, downsized.
Which meant she’d essentially been fired.
She knew this was all his fault. Perry never did like loose ends.
And speaking of those…
Turning around, she grabbed one of the bags from the back of the hatchback and hauled it forward, doing the same with the other four until she was surrounded by Perry’s old crap.
It kept her warm. His clothes were more affectionate and loving than he ever was.
The thought made her cry harder, the plastic heating up as she breathed against it, until condensation chilled her cheek.
She couldn’t see the time because she had no phone and couldn’t turn on the car.
And her feet were starting to get so cold, soon she wouldn’t feel them.
Headlights flashed in her rearview mirror, forcing her to shove the bags off her and open the door, her body tumbling out like a pretzel on its side, one hand pressed to the ground so she didn’t land on her knee.
Scrambling to her feet, she slammed the car door shut and ran to the road, waving wildly.
“HELP! STOP! HELP!” she screamed, but the car was already gone, turning right onto another road so far away, she couldn’t see it from here.
Shivering, she jogged back to her car and reached for the handle.
It didn’t budge.
Rattling it hard, she willed it to open.
And then she saw that one of the bags had rolled against the door’s locking mechanism. The weight of Perry’s unclaimed crap must have pressed the lock button. His battery toothbrush poked through the plastic trash bag, spinning away.
Mocking her.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” she screamed, primal and feral, horrified and outright livid. Adrenaline rushed through her, warming her body through sheer will and fury alone, but that wouldn’t last long.