“I hope you—” She pauses, searching for something terrible enough. “I hope you get constipated for a month and when you finally shit it feels like giving birth to a cactus.”
Despite myself, I laugh. It’s a real laugh that surprises both of us.
Emma looks even more outraged. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at the cactus thing. That’s—” I shake my head, still grinning. “That’s really funny. I’ll have to remember that.”
Emma slams her hands into the seat. “Stop finding me entertaining!”
“No.”
That single word—the same one I’ve been using to deny every request—seems to break something in her.
Her shoulders slump and she falls back against the seat, breathing hard, mascara running down her face.
The fight has drained out of her again, and she looks defeated.
Even looking disheveled and furious and probably plotting my death, she’s still beautiful.
I can’t think like that.
This is about Connor Brennan feeling a fraction of the pain I’ve carried for five years.
This is about revenge.
Nothing more.
Even if Emma Brennan’s sea-glass eyes and creative cursing and complete inability to handle being told no are making that a lot more complicated than I planned.
3
EMMA
The drive takes two hours, though I lose track of time somewhere around the forty-minute mark when the adrenaline finally crashes and exhaustion hits me like a goddamn truck.
I’m still wearing this ridiculous wedding dress, the lace scratching against my skin, and the bodice so tight I can barely breathe.
The veil finally falls off completely somewhere on the highway and I don’t even care enough to pick it up off the floor.
Leo doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the drive.
He just sits there in that infuriating calm way of his, occasionally checking his phone or looking out the window like we’re on a pleasant Sunday drive instead of fleeing a kidnapping scene.
George—the driver, I heard Leo call him that—takes back roads and side streets, doubling back several times in a way that makes it clear he knows what he’s doing.
He’s making sure we’re not followed.
Not that it matters.
My father will find me.
Hehasto find me.
But as the city gives way to suburbs and then to actual countryside with rolling hills and dense forests that look like something out of a postcard, I feel my hope starting to dim.
We’re far from Manhattan now and from anyone who might help me. Far from everything I know.
The terror I’ve been trying to hold back threatens to overwhelm me, but I shove it down deep and wrap my anger around it like armor.