2
AND THIS IS WHY I NEVER GO BACK TO THE CITY
Daphne Louise Merriweather-Brown, aka a woman who should’ve made an appointment to talk to Oliver instead
I’ve knownOliver Cumberland my entire life. He and Margot didn’t start dating until they were both out of college, but our families have operated in the same sphere since before I was born.
I always thought he was a stuffy pain in the ass. Slightly dorky. Definitely boring.
Soboring.
Like thehe would bore white toastkind of boring.
Never murderous.
Until now.
Oliver’s getting out of the car.
Right here. On the side of the interstate. In the middle of the night.
And he has murder in his eyes.
He wrenches my door open and holds his hand out, palm up. “Give me your phone.”
On a scale of one toI’m in deep shit and need to figure this out quickly, I’d say this situation is a very firmit’s actually quicksand shit and there’s no one here to toss me a rope. “My phone? I don’t have it.”
His dark hair falls across his forehead, and the glow of the interior car lights is enough to illuminate the stress lines on his forehead and the deep purple circles beneath his eyes.
He’s the same age as Margot.
Thirty-one.
In this light, he looks fifty.
At least.
“Why not?” he demands. “Where is it?”
I wave my empty fingers at him, knowing it’ll aggravate him, and tell him the truth. “It fell while we were pretending the SUV was a roller coaster.”
He growls low in his throat, then leans into the car.
I pull my feet up onto the seat, and he uses his own phone as a flashlight while he searches the footwells.
Not murdering me.
Yet.
My brain is in hyperdrive.
I don’t know where we’re going beyondawayfrom New York.
I don’t know why we’re here.
I mean, I know whyI’mhere. I’m here because I wanted five minutes to talk to him about something important, and I made a terrible plan for the best way to see him after a few weeks of the worst insomnia of my life, and then I fell asleep in the back seat of his SUV while I was waiting for him and his driver to get in to take him home, where, I’m rapidly figuring out, he was not going.
And I don’t know why.
