“You go out with him,” I told Erika.
“This isyourrebound. Oh,” she said and typed furiously on the phone. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Maybe you can’t go out with him.” She showed me the text conversation. “It’s Mark Holbrook.”
“I thought that picture looked familiar. Tech billionaire, ex-marine, tragic backstory,” Jasmine said, looking over my shoulder at the screen. “He’s just Sadie’s type. You totally have to go out with him!”
“No,” Erika said. “She’s about to work at the Holbrook Foundation, remember? The nonprofit his family owns.”
“Agreed. She cannot sleep with another boss.”
Through the wine, my brain kicked in—Mark Holbrook.The Holbrooks.The ones Parker hated.
He’ll be upset.
But why did I care? Parker obviously didn’t care enough about my feelings. Why should I care about his? I had been so blinded by my desire for a perfect fairy-tale ending that I hadn’t noticed the furiously waving red flags. I looked at the pie on the plate in front of my face.
Sticking my head in the sand and refusing to face reality was how I had let my father get away with stealing all my money and taking out loans and opening credit cards in my name. It was why I had stupidly thought that I would magically lose my virginity in a perfect moment without having to work for it. It had made me think that good things would just miraculously happen in my life and that Parker was the answer to all my problems.
Parker was not the answer. Parker was the problem.
“Screw Parker. I’m going to do it!”
“You are?” my friends chorused in disbelief.
“I am no longer the hapless virgin. I will be in charge of my own sex life!”
63
Parker
Iwas sleep deprived and still furious the next morning. Instead of sleeping, I had sprawled on my bed, obsessively checking my phone for news about Sadie. No one knew where she was or how she was doing. What if I had lost Sadie forever? I didn’t think I could take it.
“Are we going down to the police station or not?” I growled at breakfast as I watched my brothers slowly drink their coffee.
“Don’t you want to enjoy your last bit of freedom before you go to prison?” Mace said.
“Parker’s going to prison?” my little brother, Andy, cried. He, Nate, and Henry ran over to hug me.
“We’ll mail you nudie magazines,” Archer joked. Hunter rolled up a newspaper and swatted him with it.
“Hey!” Archer said, inspecting his shirt. “You got newsprint on me.”
“Stop making inappropriate comments.”
“I was helping Hazel entertain the local flock of busybodies yesterday—I can’t help it,” he said. “Ida must have put out a notice, because as soon as you carted Parker off, a hundred old women showed up with cameras and notebooks. They ran Hazel ragged. They all wanted to see the place where the kidnapping went down.”
“No one was going to be kidnapped,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Ida’s convinced that there’s some sort of human trafficking ring in Harrogate. They organized a protest, there’s a charity drive for the women affected, and she’s demanding meetings with the mayor. Mayor Barry is calling a town hall meeting to deal with the issue.”
“I expect we’ll need to make some sort of a contribution to the charity drive,” Greg said.
“No, that’s an admission of guilt,” Hunter retorted.
“It’s a gesture of goodwill.”
