“I wouldloveto answer that question, but I’m starting to have a few more of my own that seem a little more important. You okay? You don’t look okay.”
“Becauseyou’re in my goddamn car. Get?—”
I cut myself off as crashing adrenaline battles with my rising blood pressure and makes me realize exactly how screwed I am in this escape attempt.
We’re thirty miles from the little house where I have an alternate car, an alternate wardrobe, and an alternate passport and matching driver’s license waiting for me so that I can shed this life and start a new one as a normal person with a normal job and maybe,maybe, one day make a normal family for myself.
Maybe I’ll be a farmer. Or an electrician. Lumberjack. Popcorn maker at a movie theater. Bush trimmer at a theme park.
My entire life, I haven’t had a choice. I’m the last in a long line of only children, raised from birth to be the next Cumberland to head up the gas station and convenience store empire that my great-grandfather built. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that the only option I have is to work for and eventually run Miles2Go. That my family’s wealth has given me privileges I have to pay for with my entire destiny. That I was brought into this world to serve a purpose that I don’t get a say in.
But it doesn’tfit.
It’s not me.
I’ve been the CEO of Miles2Go for the past four years, saving it from near-certain collapse—or rather, listening to my executive assistant tell me how to save it from near-certain collapse—after my father got caught embezzling company funds to invest in a fake rare wine scheme, and I’m done.
I did my part, played the role, and now I’m done.
And until Daphne sat up in my back seat, I thought tonight would give me what I’ve always yearned for—the freedom to figure out who I am when I’m not living up to family expectations.
If I kick her out and she calls her father for a helicopter rescue, she’ll tell everyone she was with me, and they’ll know I didn’t leave for the airport.
My parents think I’m headed out of the country for the next two weeks, having a well-earned vacation. By the time they get the letter telling them that I never went to the Galápagos, that I have officially resigned from the life they want me to lead and am never coming back, and that I’m endorsing Carmen Miller—my executive assistant—to be the next CEO, I’ll be somewhere in a small town in a flyover state with a new identity and a new look and a made-up history.
They’ll never find me.
If my family wants me back, they’ll spend years searching Europe and the Caribbean and Latin American countries.
But only if Daphne doesn’t fuck it all up.
If she hasn’t already fucked it all up. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Give. Me. Your. Phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I said to.”
She studies me with far more intelligence than I like to give her credit for but that I know she has in her.
Margot told me once that her family’s underestimation of Daphne would someday be their downfall. That everyone thought she was flaky and irresponsible and careless, but that she had a passion their parents didn’t understand and the drive to burn down any obstacle in pursuit of her causes if necessary.
Margot said it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for scoring an original, previously undiscovered Picasso or for putting a nemesis out of business.
“What are you doing out here, Oliver?”
Forget the dress. Forget the chaos. Forget the number of colleges she left or was kicked out of while I was dating her sister.
This woman is dangerous. “Give me your phone, or I’m coming back there to get it.”
Another car comes careening up the ramp, and my SUV shakes and my hair blows in the wind created by the other vehicle.
We need to get off the road.
But first, I need to get my hands on Daphne’s phone.
