Chapter 8
EIGHT
Devon
Present day
I was insane. Or at least I was if the definition of insanity really was doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.
Dropping my phone into the cupholder, I pushed open the car door. It slammed closed behind me, and I cringed at the sound that echoed through the quiet suburban neighborhood.
I rounded the front of the car, but Piper was already locking her front door.
“Are you ever going to let me knock on your door when I pick you up?”
She spun and smiled. But she spun too quickly, catching her foot on the edge of her welcome mat and nearly dropping the casserole dish in her hands. She caught herself with her hip on the doorframe and saved the dish from shattering on the concrete porch beneath her.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath as I jogged up the walkway. I reached her just as she steadied herself .
“That was terrifying,” she said, still wearing a smile that hadn’t faltered. She stood up, but I took the casserole dish from her hands as a precaution. Knowing she would argue, and probably try to take it back, I turned and started walking back to the car without saying a word.
“I could still carry it,” she argued, following behind me. I stopped at the passenger side of the car and waited for her to catch up.
She stopped in front of me. Her long, blond hair kicked up by the breeze and blowing in her face, she batted it out of the way before she pressed up on her toes and kissed me quickly.
“Hi,” she said.
I opened the car door, and she hopped in. Safely seated, I handed her back the dish. “You can carry it now.”
She shook her head as I closed the door and walked back to the driver’s side.
“I’m just nervous, okay? I’m trying to make a good impression on your friends,” she said the second I slid into the seat.
I buckled, and my hand grazed my phone where I’d left it in the cupholder. My hand itched to glance at it one more time, but I refrained. Although the strength it took to do so was absurd.
“You’ve met them all before,” I said. “You’ve already made a good impression.”
I backed out of her driveway and headed out of the neighborhood.
She let her head fall back onto the headrest and stared out of the windshield. We were heading to my friend’s house—Amanda, Reed, and Josh’s house, actually—for an impromptu New Year’s Day party. All of our friends would be there, which could be a little intimidating at first, but Piper had already met all of them. And Ivy, my friend James’s girlfriend, was one of her best friends.
She didn’t have a reason to be nervous.
“I’ve met them all twice. The first time doesn’t count, because that was Ivy’s birthday and that entire day was chaos. And the second time, I had to leave super early to get to the hospital. This is the first time I’m actually going to spend any real time with them,” she said. I peered over at her and waited. Her fingers tapped nervously on the plastic cover of the dish in her lap before she finally said, “And it’s the first time since we officially started…dating.”
Her hands flattened on the lid, and she took a deep breath. But she didn’t look over at me.
We had only been dating for a few months, and she’d been traveling for most of that time—seeing family for the holidays and going to her sister’s wedding on the other side of the world. But neither of us were planning on seeing anyone else.
It was also the first time in…I couldn’t remember how long that I had a woman in my life that was anywhere near the level of a girlfriend. The term sounded juvenile for someone nearing their midthirties, but I couldn’t think of anything better. The idea of it already fried my brain.
Accelerating through a stoplight and merging onto the freeway, I reached over and grabbed her hand.
“It is,” I said. “But I promise it will be okay. They’ve all been asking me for the past few days if you were coming. They are excited to hang out with you, too.”
From the corner of her eye, she appraised me and relaxed. “Okay,” she sighed. “Anyway, how was your New Year’s Eve?”
“Good,” I said. “We spent it at Murphy’s like we usually do.”
“I can’t believe I missed it. And I can’t believe I still haven’t been to Murphy’s Law yet.”
I smiled. It was a great place and held sentimental value that couldn’t be replicated. It was our spot. And so much had happened there—both good and horribly bad—that there would never be another place like it.
“That’s what you get for spending your New Year’s Eve on a plane,” I joked.
“It was horrible. Our flight was delayed and, when we finally boarded, we sat on the runway for almost an hour. But thankfully, the actual flight itself was good. It was just ten hours of trying to keep myself entertained.”
“The wedding went well, though?”
“It did,” Piper said with little enthusiasm. “The wedding was beautiful, because, well, Italy is beautiful, and my sister was beyond happy. But whoever told her that getting married three days after Christmas was a good idea was crazy.”
“I understand that, but you got to go to Italy.”
“Because my sister married rich,” she said with a laugh. “But I had to miss our first New Year’s Eve. Did you kiss another girl in my absence? I wouldn’t put it past you.”
I scoffed and signaled to change lanes, shaking my head and squeezing her hand tighter. “Absolutely not.”
There hadn’t been anyone before Piper. I hadn’t had a girlfriend since right after I’d graduated college, and I hadn’t even kissed another woman for at least a year or two.
Especially when the woman I thought could be my forever ended up disappearing two years ago.
I shook the thought away as best I could.
“Okay, good,” Piper said, pulling me back to the present. “What else have I missed while I’ve been gone?”
I focused on the road and the white stripe running down the center. “We’ve talked almost every day since you left. You’re caught up on everything.”
She thought for a moment. “Are Ivy and James still gone?”
I chuckled at the mention of them and the conversation I’d had with Amanda the night before. “Yes, but they’ll be there today. Amanda thinks they’re going to get engaged, but the rest of us think that’s insane. It’s way too soon.”
Piper bounced a little in her seat. “No way. They’ve known each other their entire lives even if they weren’t together the whole time. And a cute little cabin in the Texas hill country is the perfect backdrop for an engagement. I’m with Amanda.”
“I’m surrounded by a bunch of hopeless romantics.”
I saw her roll her eyes out of the corner of my eye, but unbothered, she continued, “Speaking of romance, I saw Hazel is having a release party for her new book next week.”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, all my attention was focused on not flinching at the mention of Hazel’s writing or tensing too much where Piper could feel it in my hand she still held.
“I still have to read her second book, but while I was on the plane…” I tried to prepare myself, but there was no use. “I read her first one.”
Anxiety sliced through me as I hit the brakes in dead-stop traffic. It was a conversation I’d hoped we never had to have. But Hazel’s account of her experiences was too raw and gripping—no one could resist that.
After she’d been kidnapped, Hazel wrote a book about her and Luke. It grew in popularity not long after, and she continued writing books.
I was proud of my friend and her success. Although I’d skimmed the sex scenes—because reading about my friends’ sex lives wasn’t on my to-do list—the rest of it was beautifully written and powerful.
But her book was based on true events. Although it wasn’t known to the public, there were whispers about it all the time online and on her social media. Hazel refused to fuel any of the rumors, but it didn’t keep people from wondering.
Changing people’s names and small details of events only did so much.
“It was really good,” Piper said, and the longer we sat unmoving, the higher my anxiety climbed. It was a foregone conclusion the types of questions she’d ask and the people from the book she’d want to know about.
That thought made my hand itch to reach for my phone again and continue the search I’d randomly started that morning yet quickly dropped when I realized it wasn’t going anywhere. It hadn’t produced any helpful results in the past two years, I don’t know why I thought it might now.
“Devon?” Piper asked, and I quickly glanced at the passenger seat. She was looking at me expectantly, and I must have missed what she’d said.
“Yeah? Sorry.”
Luckily, she wasn’t bothered by my lack of attention. I’d also honed the ability to keep my expressions neutral, no matter what was happening inside my head. “Is it really all true?”
The second the question left her mouth, the person in the car behind me honked, and I pressed the gas. Stuck in memories, I hadn’t noticed that we’d begun moving once again. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.
I needed all the help I could get to divert my attention from Piper’s too-knowing gaze.
“It’s based on true events,” I said in an even voice. “Not all of it is accurate. It’s still technically fiction.”
She nodded. “There’s a lot of talk about it, and at first, I dismissed it, but something Ivy said a few weeks ago stuck with me. I know Hazel had a horrible relationship before Luke, and that tracks with the book. She also said something about Luke’s ex-wife, Valerie, although that’s not her name in the book. I just…the pieces fit together.”
Grinding my teeth together and deciding at the last minute to switch lanes since it was moving a little faster, I could only manage a nod.
Piper turned back to stare out the window.
“Looking at Hazel now, you wouldn’t expect that she’d been kidnapped. Especially by her boyfriend’s ex-wife.”
I didn’t respond. She was right—you would never know now that so much had happened only two years ago. Piper was quiet for a second, and I hoped the conversation was finished. But I wasn’t that lucky.
“What about Brianna? Or I’m guessing that’s not really her name?”