CHAPTER SIXTY
TRISTAN
I went back to my van and sat behind the wheel.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t understand my feelings.
I’d had breakfast with a man who, for all intents and purposes, was normal and calm.
Unsettling and intense, but some people were like that.
Even when I’d gotten annoyed, he didn’t get flustered or pissy.
Was I wrong about him? How could I shake the unease in my limbs?
Why was I jittery, hair raised, like I was still under some threat?
Oliver hadn’t threatened me. He’d told me he didn’t want to see me in his rearview mirror, but I’d said his wife had bewitched me, too.
Fucking bold, but I did it. I didn’t even regret it. She bewitched me, and I wanted her, and I fucking hated that she wasn’t mine.
Oliver had said some fucked-up things, though. I couldn’t imagine him being that open with just anyone. Had something about me put him on edge enough to say all that shit out loud?
I watched as a patron left the pub, tossing a napkin into the bin, and that’s when I remembered the paper bag Oliver had discarded. I stilled, thinking.
Was I seriously considering fishing it out?
Surely not—
I answered my own question by stepping out of the car and going to the bin. I popped the lid and found the paper bag within seconds. I grabbed it, took it back to the van, and sat once more behind the wheel. I felt crazy opening it and peering in.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I frowned at what I saw. I stuck my hand in and pulled out what looked to be a puffer.
The prescription sticker on the front was scratched to shit, leaving no way to tell whose name had been there.
I dropped it back and pulled out the second item.
A lanyard with a white keycard that had the University initials decorated on it, with B13 labeled in the corner.
Maybe it was something Oliver used at the University that he no longer needed.
Both items were underwhelming. What did I hope to find?
Something incriminating? Who was I truly after right now?
Oliver… or was it Daisy? Was I so tormented by the thought of her using me that I needed to disprove it by having evidence that Oliver was some kind of evil man?
I dropped the lanyard back, scrubbed away the tired lines on my face, and grabbed for the cold bottle he’d given me.
One glance in the mirror and I could understand why.
I was red, lips dry. While he looked like Prince fucking Charming, I looked like a spooked drifter.
I guzzled the bottle down and then sat there watching the blue sky, feeling lost…
Feeling empty.
Feeling like I just wanted to drive back to her.
I shut my eyes.
Fuck.
I woke up with a dry mouth and a pain behind my eyes that felt like someone had driven a nail through my skull.
For a second, I didn’t know where I was.
Darkness pressed against the windows. The parking lot was now full and loud with people and headlights and bodies moving in and out of the restaurant like the whole fucking world hadn’t slipped sideways while I slept.
I sat up too fast.
Pain cracked through my neck, and I gripped the steering wheel, breathing hard.
“What the fuck?”
My voice sounded thick and slurred.
I looked around the van.
The guitar case in the back. Satchel still on the passenger seat. The paper bag folded open near the cupholder—
Empty.
I stared at it.
The puffer was gone.
So was the keycard.
For a few seconds, my mind wouldn’t move.
I just sat there, looking at the open bag like the things might reappear if I waited.
I grabbed it and turned it upside down. Nothing fell out.
I checked the cupholder, the floor, under the passenger seat, between the seats, my jacket pockets, and the console.
My hands moved too fast, stupid and frantic, searching places I knew they couldn’t be.
Gone.
The puffer and the university keycard were gone. The same puffer and keycard Oliver had thrown in the rubbish bin outside the pub. The same ones I’d fished out like a fucking lunatic because something about him had made my skin crawl.
My eyes moved to the empty water bottle.
The one Oliver had tossed me.
It lay on its side near my boot, label half-crushed, a few drops still gathered along the plastic tip.
My stomach twisted as I remembered his face in the parking lot.
The concerned smile. The way he’d said it was going to be a hot day.
Like he was doing me a fucking favor. As though I were some poor red-faced idiot who needed saving from the sun.
I grabbed the bottle and brought it to my nose.
There was no scent.
I tried to remember whether I’d heard the plastic seal crack when I opened it. I couldn’t.
What did I think? That he’d put something in it to knock me out?
For what purpose?
Except now I had a purpose, didn’t I?
The passenger door was unlocked, though I couldn’t remember leaving it that way.
Someone had been inside my van while I was out cold. That very someone had opened that paper bag and taken only the two things that mattered. Not my guitar. Not my wallet. Not the cash in the console. Just the puffer with the scratched-out label and the university keycard marked B13.
My pulse began to pound.
Oliver had known.
Maybe not everything. Maybe not Daisy. Maybe not the hotel, or the road, or the way I’d been watching his house like some deranged, jealous drunk.
But he had known enough. He had known I followed him to the pub. He had known I saw him throw that bag away. And then, circling back, he had known I’d gone into the garbage after it.
I had drunk from his hand. I had sat in my van afterward and folded like a dead man. And sometime after that, Oliver had come back.
Or someone had.
But I knew.
I fucking knew.
Old Mill Road.
Tom had asked Oliver if he was heading up Old Mill Road, to his cabin.
Getting it ready for my wife, he had said.
For Daisy.
A cold feeling moved through me.
What he just did was enough of a warning to keep away.
I should have driven back to the hotel. I should have found her.
I should have told her I was losing my fucking mind and let her decide if she wanted to stand anywhere near this kind of crazy.
How would I even tell her I’d had breakfast with her husband after I’d followed him out of their giant house after I’d parked out front of it?
Holy shit.
And no, it wasn’t the first fucking time. I was twisted, and maybe enough damage was done. The sane thing—the right thing—would be to go back to that hotel room and come clean about how warped and consumed with jealousy and pain I was.
Instead, I started the van.
I sat there for a second, hands tight on the wheel, waiting for some other awful thing to happen.
Nothing did.
The van idled along with me. I’d just been fucked with, and I still felt crazy. My vision spotted for a moment as that strange heaviness returned. A voice in my head whispered to go back to the hotel. To stay away from Oliver Black and his cabin. If he wanted his trash back, so what?
I couldn’t avoid the pull, though. The need to understand was louder than the urge to run back to familiarity.
I pulled out of the parking lot. The road out was darker than before.
The further I drove, the more streetlights thinned and houses spread apart.
Trees moved in close on either side, crowding the road.
Old Mill Road wasn’t hard to find on the folded road map I kept in the glove box.
I drove with one hand on the wheel, glancing down at the map when I had to. Every few seconds, my eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
No white car.
No headlights hanging too long behind me.
No Oliver Black appeared out of the dark with that concerned smile on his face.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being moved. Not driving. Moved. Like every choice I made had already been anticipated by someone colder and smarter than me.
About half an hour out, the gas light came on.
I stared at its glowing orange symbol. At first, it didn’t make sense.
“No,” I muttered.
I looked at the gauge.
Nearly empty.
That wasn’t right.
I’d filled up to full this morning. There should have been enough that the needle shouldn’t have been scraping the bottom like this.
The van gave a small, ugly shudder.
My grip tightened on the wheel. I pressed the gas. The engine answered, but weakly. A cold understanding moved through me. This wasn’t a slashed tire—something that would have appeared obviously tampered with. This was more premeditated and quieter.
“Motherfucker,” I whispered.
I pulled onto the shoulder. Gravel crunched under the tires as I killed the engine.
For a moment, I just sat there in the dark, breathing through my mouth.
Then I got out into the night. I walked to the side of the van and crouched by the fuel door.
It wasn’t hanging open, but the cap was loose.
Fucking loose. My stomach sank. Maybe I’d been careless and done it.
Maybe.
But I saw Oliver’s hand tossing me the water bottle and then the way he’d been watching me all throughout our cute breakfast and then outside of my fucking car. The way he’d asked if I’d followed him, like there was a genuine accusation beneath his bullshit humor.
The puffer was gone. The keycard was gone. The gas was gone.
I swore under my breath and went to the back of the van.
I always kept a fuel can. Anyone who lived out of a van and didn’t carry spare fuel was either rich or stupid, and I had never been rich. The red can sat strapped behind the back bench where it always did, tucked under a blanket, right where I’d left it.
For one stupid second, relief moved through me. Then I lifted it. It came up weightless.
Empty.
My hand tightened around the handle as anger raced through me.
I shook it. It made no sound. Nothing moved.
I stared at the can, my breath turning rough.
It was still there. That almost made it worse.
Much like the loosened cap, this was a subtle action that made me question my sanity.
This was controlled and deniable. Something a deranged fucking professor might do.
I stood at the back of the van with the empty can in my hand and looked down the dark road. I didn’t carry a phone because I was a fucking hippy. It would take me a long while to walk back, but that was the sensible thing to do.
Instead, I returned to the driver’s side and checked the map.
Old Mill Road was still ahead. Not far by car, but brutal by foot.
Was I doing this because he’d bruised my ego? Because he’d one-upped me, and I couldn’t stand letting him have the last move? Or was it the quieter, more unsettling voice in my head telling me this was too fucked up to ignore?
I grabbed the small flashlight from the glove box and pocketed my knife. I started walking, determined and foolish, but too fucking stubborn to stop.