And she’d watched him, utterly blank, empty inside.
“Switch,” he’d ordered, and out of habit, she’d obeyed and walked over to the other side of the car, gotten back in, and buckled up. She’d opened her mouth to tell him to do the same and then decided not to.
Fuck him.
He’d leaned forward to put on some late-night NPR show and turned out of the lot toward home, as if everything were normal. As if he hadn’t just upended her entire existence.
Did he think they’d go home and get ready for bed together? Was he planning to somehow explain what he’d done? Would try tomake loveto her? “You need to move out.”
“Come on, Ange, you know this isn’t—”
“And you either buy me out or I find an outside buyer.” She hadn’t known she wanted out until that very moment. A thread of relief had wound its way into her, turning hurt into anger.
He’d watched her for a few seconds, then turned back to the road, his jaw twitching in the dim light. “It was a mistake. Didn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t care. It’s dead. We’re dead. This…it’s been dead for a while.” She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d lost faith in him. In them. They’d been together forever, it seemed like. She’d been twenty and he more than twice her age.
“You’re tired. We’ll talk in the—”
“No!” Her voice, punctuated by a hard slap of her hand to the dashboard, had filled the space—and because that kind of yell deserved an echo, she’d screamed it again. And again. And again.
His grip on her wrist had been a vise, a testament to the strength in those famous hands. Hands that had held Lorraine’s hips to the table while he’d pistoned into her, mechanically. Did he fuckherlike that? The way he might take a leak? Without any expression at all?
“I’m done being your—” Jesus, what had she been? His tool? His muse, he used to say, but that seemed about as fake as his front-of-the-house smile. His stooge? Puppet? “I’m done.”
“Done?” The look he’d thrown her was different from the others, more highly charged. As if he’d had a right to be pissed. “You’re done with me?” He downshifted to take the next turn, cutting it close the way he always did. The tires squealed on the wet road. “After everything I’ve done for you, you ungrateful little…” Another turn, onto the highway this time, full acceleration. “Bitch. You think I brought you up from nothing to have you turn your back when things get bad? At least Lorraine’s willing to spread her legs. You won’t even let me into that—”
“What things are bad?”
“What?” He’d used that “big man, I’m the chef and you’re my minion” voice.
The speedometer read over a hundred miles per hour, with the rain hitting the windshield in staggered bursts. “Slow down.”
“No. What did you say? Before?”
“I asked what’s bad in your life? What things?”
His laugh had been a strange hollow sound, woven into the low-pitched radio voice droning on about rising sea levels. “We’re broke, sugar!” he’d said gleefully. “We’re broke and you’re all happy in your little kitchen, totally ignorant of how bad it is for me. All these guys after—”
With a sound like hell breaking open, the world had gone completely still for one breathless moment in which she’d taken in so many things: his hand, too tight on her thigh; his eyes nowhere near the road but on her instead, focused and hard and more than a little desperate; and in front of them, one of those thick concrete guardrails.
And then the blurry, too-quick crunch of metal to asphalt, bone to plastic, the taste and smell of blood, inhaling it, choking on it. Another crash shoved them forward, and a roll turned her into a rag doll, heavy, limp, the world upside down.
Slowly, in the vacuum left by all that noise, she’d opened her eyes, swiped the wetness away, and looked to the side.
The last thing she remembered with any clarity was Hugh watching her, fixed and still, the oddest, shocked expression on his face.
Then darkness, yelling, sirens, flashes of light. More yelling and voices asking her to stay with them while they worked hard to get her out.Angel, they said over and over.Hold on, Angel. Angel.
That was a bad day. But not the worst. The worst was the day she’d found out he’d been right. There was nothing left. No restaurant, no home. The bastard had mortgaged it all and spent every last penny in his constant race to keep up, to be the biggest, best, most impressive chef. No health insurance, no life insurance. Nothing.
And she couldn’t even yell at him because he was dead.
Her snowshoe caught on a bump in the ice and she stumbled, landing hard on her butt. It took her a few seconds to blink back to reality. To here. Now.
Ford turned and started to unclip from his skis.
“No!” she yelled. “It’s fine.”
