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“Jenny’s not here,” her father told me. “She’s, uh, not feeling well.”

“Can I get her address?”

“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. “I don’t know what happened on that trip, but Jenny’s not been herself since she got back. You obviously hurt her. Don’t make it worse.”

“She hurt me too,” I cried out. “I thought… well, I thought we had something special but as soon as we got back to Seattle she ditched me. I… I love her.”

Jenny’s father stared at me so long that I thought he wasn’t going to respond. Then he stepped forward, grabbed a pen, and wrote something down on a piece of paper.

“Don’t make me sorry I gave you this,” he growled. “If you hurt my little girl again, I don’t care how rich you are or who your parents are. I. Will. End. You.”

Damned if I didn’t believe that.

“I won’t hurt her again,” I promised. “Thank you.”

I took an Uber over to Jenny’s place, wanting to see her before I lost my nerve. It took forever thanks to the rush hour traffic. By the time I finally got to Jenny’s building I was having second thoughts, but I pushed my doubts aside, drew on my righteous anger, and headed up to her apartment.

A shadow appeared in the peephole in the door and I knocked again.

“Jenny, it’s Blair. We need to talk.”

There was a pause, and then the door opened. Jenny’s hair was a mess, and there were dark circles under her eyes like maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d been having problems sleeping since we’d been forcibly separated. She was wearing faded pajama pants and the Mount Rushmore shirt I’d bought her on the trip, the one that matched mine. That gave me hope.

“I thought you were the delivery guy with my dinner,” she said dully. “Come in.”

I followed her into a small but neat apartment. She dropped down onto the couch, pressing a button on the remote to turn off the TV, and I sat across from her in an overstuffed armchair. When I didn’t respond, she raised her eyebrows and said, “Well?”

Her coldness made my chest pinch. Even our first day on the road when we’d been strangers she’d been friendlier.

“Are you still upset about the arrest?” I ventured.

“No. It’s good that it happened. It reminded me that we don’t fit and I was just the hired help.”

I winced, knowing she was baiting me and not liking it.

“Katy told me you were never actually booked. There’s nothing on your record.”

Jenny sighed. “Why are you here, Blair? Is it because I sent back the money? Because I don’t want your money. It doesn’t feel right after… after everything that happened. It’s like I’m taking money for sleeping with you.”

I didn’t see it that way at all, but I understood why she might.

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “If we hadn’t been interrupted by the cops that night, what would have happened next?”

“We would have continued onto Boston I imagine.”

“And we would have continued to have sex for the rest of the trip, right?”

“Probably.”

She was such a liar. We’d been insatiable since the first time we had sex. No way would we have been able to pull back from that while we were still on the road together in close proximity.

“When we got to Boston and it was time to fly home, if I told you I wanted to see you when we got back what would you have said?”

“I’d have said the same thing I’m saying now. You and I are not a good match, no matter how tempting you are.”

“What if I’d told you that I’d fallen in love with you?”

Her gaze softened. “You’ve led an incredibly sheltered life, Blair. But you can’t go falling for the first person you go on a road trip with. You’re still young, you’ve got a lot of years ahead of you to have adventures.”