The Guardian
He took her from me.
Keeping a bland smile on my face while Liam shared the news was hard.
I wanted to scream and rage and throw something.
But I kept my cool. I imagined Jeremiah floating in the sky like a balloon, a string tying him to Lennon.
I imagined cutting the string with a pair of scissors.
I imagined Jeremiah getting smaller and smaller as he floated up, up, up and away until poof!
He was gone. My smile went from forced to genuine.
Camping. Honestly. Did he even know her at all?
With a derisive snort, I turned on my heel and stormed to the parking lot.
Lennon didn’t want to go fucking camping.
It was dirty and gross out there. She wanted to sit on a porch and enjoy nature from a safe distance away, with running water and flushing toilets and a soft bed.
There was no way she would really go on a three-week pack trip.
No fucking way. She could have this night with him—he better bring her back without so much as a goddamn scratch, or I was going to push him off the cliff like Miguel—but not three weeks.
It was good, actually. Twenty-four hours camping with Jeremiah would make her miserable.
She’d realize she needed to end things with him before this became her life and she was stuck with these camping trips forever.
Except…Lennon didn’t have the best track record, honestly. Men were a real weakness for her. She craved stability, and she thought men were the way to get that. Fucking dumb. Like men could be counted on for anything.
But I understood it. The world was unfair. Men had everything—they had taken everything. Power. Money. She thought if she played by their rules, she could win. I had believed that, too, once. Now I knew better.
But Lennon hadn’t learned her lesson yet, apparently.
Like that time one of her subscribers told her he liked Pokémon Go, and instead of laughing at him like she should have, she cosplayed as a female avatar while baking him a cake for his birthday.
Of course, he’d given her a huge tip for that, which only reinforced her belief that if she twisted herself into his perfect woman, a man would take care of her.
Now she was doing the same thing with Jeremiah. He was steady. Loyal. In possession of an apartment with an extra bedroom and a great view.
Oh, goddammit.
She was really going to do it, wasn’t she.
Lennon was actually going to go on a stupid three-week pack trip with him.
She would make herself miserable just to make him happy.
He didn’t deserve that, but he would take it from her anyway.
As long as he got what he wanted from her, he wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t happy.
Men were never as ashamed of themselves as they should be.
I couldn’t let him do that to her. I couldn’t let her do that to herself.
I threw my bag on the passenger seat of my car and peeled out of the parking lot. Tomorrow I would take my camper van to work instead of my car.
Tomorrow I would be ready.
Thank goodness I was here to save Lennon from herself.