Page 74

“You’re easy to own,” he replied easily, maliciously.

That dread that had been swirling around inside of me endlessly, suddenly settled into a razor-sharp panic. “Vaughn, I don’t know what happened in Italy, but whatever this is—”

“Don’ttry to psychoanalyze me,” he snapped. His hand shot out to grab my upper arm in an iron grip. He dragged me away from the bathroom doorway and down the hall. “I just realizedthings were simpler with you, Ruth. If I wanted something, I got it. If I asked, you did it. A point you’re going well out of your way to prove wrong.”

He wanted easy? I laughed, letting it bubble out and skitter around the room as he dragged me to the front door. “You want me because I’m adoormat?”

Vaughn paused, pulling me close and shaking me roughly. “You think you’re worth more than a doormat, Coldwell? Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m wrong.”

The manic smile on my lips died. I swallowed a sudden rush of tears, staring up into his doughy soft, unforgiving features. I couldn’t make my mouth move.

Vaughn scoffed, wrenching open the front door. “That’s what I thought. Get in the car.”

I stumbled away from him, pressing a hand to my glasses to keep them from sliding down my nose. But I righted my inner equilibrium faster this time. A comment like that would have thrown me off my axis for days, before. Not now. I saw his words for what they were, and I wasn’t going to let him use them like a cattle prod to force me into obedience.

But even knowingwhyhe had said those things, I was adrift in my fear, unsure of how I would pull myself back to shore and safety. As I walked numbly to Vaughn’s rented sedan, he circled my arm in a firm grip that even I knew wouldn’t look normal from an objective perspective. But I doubted anyone would say anything or do anything. Did they ever? Had they when I’d collapsed outside Vaughn’s door and wept for hours?

And then I was in the car again, we were pulling away from the parking lot, and I realized that I had been so consumed by my own thoughts, I’d forgotten my bag. I glanced at Vaughn, but his eyes were on his GPS as he followed it to our hotel.

Two days. I had two days to find a way to escape. There had to be a rational way, a methodical way. There was alwayssomething. Short of completely losing my cool, short of breaking free of rational decision-making and going batshit crazy, therehadto be something that made sense.

Vaughn made a left turn, heading down the main historical district street. In the passenger seat, I leaned my forehead against the window, watching the full trees pass by, and my eyes danced over the thin foot traffic that dotted the brick sidewalks. My eyes latched onto Goldbrook Urgent Care, and my stomach twisted so painfully, I brought my arms around it. Would Cal be in there now? Was he upset? Or angry? Had I hurt him, or had he already forgotten me and added me to the deck of cards that made up his stack of past dates? Maybe he’d been relieved to have gotten rid of me.

Bullshit, that courageous voice argued.You’re supposed to be smart.Besmart. He isn’t relieved. He was gutted. You saw him. He told you how he felt, and you threw it in his face. Be brave; accept that you are worthy of love.

Traffic lurched forward and we moved from the red light down the street where I knew we would pass Kiss-Met’s building. I almost closed my eyes. I almost let myself shield myself from the hurt, but I couldn’t. Gemma was there. The life I’dbarely begun to build was there. Cal was ther—

I did a double take. That had to be wrong.

But no, I hadn’t been seeing things. There, just outside the charming historical building, was a familiar tall figure in a gray dress shirt, his hands in his charcoal pants, and his copper-brown hair gleaming from a shaft of sunlight that broke through the maple tree leaves. He stared across the street, eyes on nothing in particular, and his mouth turned down in a heartbreaking line.

The image shattered through my doubts. It smashed them to pieces and left them in meaningless shards at my feet. That glass dome of insecurity that had muffled the braver voice, thesmartervoice, suddenly fell in a tinkling rain through my thoughts, and it left only one thing.

That voice.

Myvoice.

Go. Run. Run. Run, Ruth.

The thing about rationality was that it had limits. There were laws and rules, that if broken, led to messy results. It was this fact that had drawn me to science in the first place—there was nothing so messy as disorganized decision-making, but in science, there are systems. Methods. Equations. When solving a problem, all I had to do was choose the most logical course of action, follow through, and achieve the desired results.

But love? Nothing could be less logical. It doesn’t have bounds or constraints that rope actions into predictable outcomes. Love is wild and capricious. It’s a riot of color andspontaneity, and it follows no preset coordination to its destination. Love isn’t a science. Love is art.

That realization alone turned the voice in my head into a full-out roar. As the car passed that figure, that one body who housed all my hopes for somethingmore, my hand took hold of the door handle. I popped it open, and the wind whistled through the open crack.

Vaughn turned to look at me in surprise. “What are you—?”

The car slowed, but he didn’t stop. I didn’t care. I unbuckled my seatbelt and gave him one unyielding, determined look. I didn’t need words to convey my message.

Fuck. You.

Then I jumped.

Chapter twenty-five

Cal

Cal