Chapter 1
The bonesof my fingers ache when I finally unclench my hands from the steering wheel.I look out the front windshield.Rain is pouring down on the hood, and I can't see anything. Just a torrent.
I lean back in my seat, assessing my body.I don't think anything is broken. The airbags didn't even go off, probably because I hit from behind first before whipping to the side.I look out my window at the guardrail that I spun and smashed into. I bounced off of it, and it feels a mile away now.
Fucking mountain roads.I’m not quite sure what to do next.I don't have any signal on my phone, but I'm sure I would be able to get an emergency call to go through.
But do I even need emergency services?I think I'm fine.I didn't spin that fast. I was going pretty slow, all things considered. My car is still running but even if I got back on the road, I’m smart enough to know I shouldn’t go any further in this storm.
As I'm still trying to sort through what to do next,I see headlights.
It's my first reaction to panic.I can't tell how much of the road I'm blocking, and I don't know if the person driving will beable to see me in time to stop. I brace myself and hope for the best.
But when I glance back up, I realize the headlights are, in fact, slowing down.The car is stopping.Maybe it's somebody who can help me.
Oh, hello.
Through the rain, I see a big, hulking figure, probably a man, come up to my window. His big palm slams down on it three times in quick succession.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” a deep voice calls through my window. I can see the vague shape of him, but the delugeis so heavy that he's just a blur.
“I think so,” I shout.I could just be high on adrenaline. I might have a concussion or something and not even know.But I think I'm okay. Everything feels fine.
“Your door's a little dented,” the man yells,“but I think I can get it open.One minute.” He starts to pull at the door and I'm afraid he's going to break the handle right off.But once it budges an inch, he gets his fingers in the crack and pries it open.
For a moment, I just sit there, stunned. It's like a superhero just opened my door.
But his voice brings me back out of my shock.“Can you move?” he asks from somewhere up by my front tire.
“Yeah,” I say, blinking back into awareness.He puts out a hand and I take it without thinking,letting him help me out of the car.
And then I'm standing in front of him, the cold rain pouring down around us.
I look up into his face and freeze.
“Brynne?” my husband asks. “The fuck are you doing here?”
Chapter 2
I'm trying notto shiver.It's bad enough that my estranged husband had to come and save me in the middle of a storm on the side of a fucking mountain.I don't want him to know just how deeply uncomfortable I am, even though I'm worried that I might have frostbite on my toes.
I got into a warm, cushy car back in New York, not expecting to have to get out of said car until there was another very warm building waiting for me in Vermont.
But here I am, drenched from head to toe, shivering.
“What about my car?”I ask as Emmett, silent as a grizzly bear, pulls back out onto the highway with me in the passenger seat of his pickup truck.
“We'll come back for it when the storm is over,” he growls.“Are you going to tell me what the fuck you're doing here?”
“What I'm doing here?”I ask. “What about what you're doing here?”
“Yeah, which brings me to another question,” he says as we head down the highway in the direction I was heading before I crashed. Up the mountain. “How the hell did you know where I was?”
I am not going to answer that question, because the answer is that I hired a private investigator with Emmett's money.
He glances sideways at me, fire in his eyes.“You had me fucking followed, didn't you?”
“What was I supposed to do, Emmett?You disappeared in the middle of the night.It's been two years. Was I supposed to just go on wondering where the fuck my husband was?”
