I'd always known her parents had a hand in sending her away but it was the ensuing silence that'd really fucked with my head. To my mind, even if her parents were calling the shots, she wouldn't have turned on me like that. And it hadn't occurred to me that they'd screw with her email.
She brought a hand to her neck. "I never—" Turning a pained gaze to the ceiling, she said, "I didn't get them."
"I know. You told me that in Sedona." I pushed away from the door. "The ecstasy told me first but then I knew when you asked about Caltech. Right from the start, I told you about my plans to transfer. I wanted to make the move in the springsemester but they didn't have space in the engineering program. Half the messages were my ramblings on the Jet Propulsion Lab and making the switch to aeronautics."
"How…how is any of this possible? How did I not get these emails?"
"I can tell you but you're going to have to forgive me for a massive invasion of your privacy first."
Eyes flashing, she snapped, "What?"
I crossed the room to grab my laptop. "Remember my friend Jordan? He works in private security and has access to the kind of hackers who know how to get to the bottom of problems like this one."
"You've been in my email?"
"Not exactly, no." I shot her a glance as I keyed in my password. "But Jordan Kaisall's hacker has and he came back with the results this morning."
She paced away from me, kneading the bridge of her nose. "My god. Jude."
"They found everything from me sequestered in a hidden folder," I said, motioning to the screencaps Kaisall had sent. "And anything you tried to send me landed in a dead-end drafts folder. Same story with texts sent from our old phone numbers."
"But I have emails from you. Back in June, the flight info. And I responded to you."
"They think something reset on the back end when you changed your email handle. After you got married." I cleared my throat. "You still couldn't see the messages but we would've been able to send and receive emails. We just didn't try again until recently."
"I can't believe they did this to me." She glanced at the screen but then quickly away as if it hurt to even see the evidence. "At the same time, I absolutely believe it. The only truly unbelievable part is that I didn't think of it."
I didn't need any clarification to know we were talking about her parents. I still didn't understand how such objectively terrible people could've created someone as gentle and loving and precious as Audrey. Or how she'd managed to escape their world in one piece.
"I should've known they'd use their tools against me," she said. "I'd overheard enough conversations about tapping into a candidate's email accounts or a journalist's voicemails to know they had that kind of reach. I just didn't think…" She gave a sad, tired shrug and it sent an ache spiraling through my chest. "But I should've."
I closed my laptop and set it aside, and then quickly shifted all the clothes piled on her bed into my suitcase. I sat on the edge, pulled her between my legs. "No one expects their family to betray them," I said, seating her on my lap. "Don't blame yourself for what they did."
She shook her head at the ring. "Every time I thought about this ring, my heart broke all over again. I felt like I'd failed you. I mean, I knew you hated me for it all, but it only made it worse knowing I couldn't even keep track of this one perfect thing I had left of you."
I took it from her, slipped it onto her fourth finger. "I didn't hate you." She gave me herPlease don't fucking lie to meface. "Would I have kept this if I hated you?"
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe it fueled your rage."
"Or maybe I just never stopped loving you. Even when it killed me."
"Sounds brutal."
"You'd know. You lived through it too," I said, my chin on her shoulder. "Worse, probably, since you married that dickbag."
She laughed at that but it was short-lived. "Why does it have to be so hard for us?" she asked, the words a whisper. "Every time we get close, the world shows up with a wrecking ball."
She wasn't wrong. Life—our families, surprise babies, death, disease, custody situations—liked jamming up the gears. "It doesn't have to be that way anymore."
Another hard, quick laugh. "How do you figure?"
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close to me though it didn't seem close enough. "I don't know what's going to happen in court this week and I can't guess how your parents will try to manipulate your life next?—"
"They've been trying to marry me off to a big finance guy."
"Do us both a favor and don't go through with it this time," I said, nipping at her jaw. "Listen, we don't know what's coming next but I know I'm coming back here. This kid and I, we've spent a long time trying to figure out where we belong and now we know that place is with you."
"But what about Penny's family?"
