I close my eyes and lay my head on Wilder’s shoulder, my feet no longer aching.
“I’m going to set you down, Blondie,” Wilder whispers.
I yawn. “Okay.”
Once I’m standing on both feet, Wilder releases me and unlocks my car.
He grabs our phones from the center console and passes them out.
Predictably, no one has contacted me.
But I see out of the corner of my eye that Elowyn has texted Wilder.
Predictably, he ignores it.
Suddenly, Cash gasps as he holds up his phone.
There, on the front page of our small town gazette’s website, is an alarming article.
Notorious Small-Town Embezzler, Fanny Allred, Has Escaped From Prison
My eyes widen.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Wilder groans as he takes the phone from Cash.
Wilder reads the article, but I’m too busy watching Cash to pay any attention to the sentences he throws out every few seconds.
Even from two thousand miles away, Fanny Allred is making sure everyone’s still talking about her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Mommy Issues
Cash
My mom escaped from a federal prison. Somehow, that’s the last thing on my mind as I make my way up the front walk of an intimidating two-story house.
I’ve never dated anyone other than Ingrid. Her door is the only one I’ve ever knocked on. Am I ready to knock on someone else’s?
It’s been a year.
I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.
Is anyone?
I thought this thing with Ingrid and Wilder would fizzle out. That she would get what she needed from him—fun, an adventure, sex—and then she’d realize that what we had was real.
It was real for me.
But it’s hard to love someone well when you have no idea what that even looks like. My parents hated each other. My dad was always having an affair. And my mom decided to focus her attention on me.
And Ingrid, by default.
I didn’t realize what was happening. I trusted my mom. She’s my mother. I was naïve enough to believe she had my best interests at heart. That her advice was solid. That she could see things I couldn’t.
Turns out, she’s diabolical.
And not my problem anymore.
