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Brooke looked at me. ‘Well, I couldn’t do it anymore,’ she said, and I could hear the tears catching at the back of her throat.

‘For seventeen years they’ve been in control of everything.

I’m not allowed an opinion unless they endorse it.

They decide what dentist I go to, my doctor …

my fucking gynecologist is one my mom picked for me.

I’m not allowed to choose where I go to college or what career I’ll end up having, and to tell them no?

’ She shook her head. ‘It’s fucking impossible. ’

‘So you ran away,’ I said, finally understanding.

I didn’t know what it was like to live under that kind of pressure, but I could understand why it had driven Brooke to run away.

Finally escaping her parents’ control must have felt like sweet freedom.

I was surprised that she was willing to share her secret with me after making me promise not to ask her why she was leaving Seattle, but I was touched that she clearly trusted me now.

‘I had a plan,’ Brooke said. ‘Tony and I worked out how many years I’d need to be at trade school.

How I’d take business management classes, too, so when I was done with school, I’d be able to open my own garage.

You know, a female-owned garage, one where women feel like they’re not going to be ripped off or talked down to because they don’t know what’s wrong with their car.

I’d set up a training program to have other women come and apprentice with me.

Uncle Tony was going to back me financially for the first five years, and after that I would’ve hopefully paid him off. ’

‘Your parents said no.’

‘They didn’t say no, Jessie. They laughed at me.’

I took her hand and led her over to the stable block. It looked to me like most of the horses were out, and a small crew was cleaning out the stalls and tending to the tack. I stepped up onto the bottom rung of a fence and draped my arms over the top. Next to me, Brooke did the same.

‘They fucking laughed at me,’ she murmured. ‘Said I was being a silly little girl. That I don’t know what the real world is like, and, anyway, they weren’t having a daughter of theirs doing a manual job. Like I was a working-class stain on their upper-class sensibilities.’

‘That’s … gross,’ I said, not able to find a better word. I was from the sort of family that Brooke’s parents wouldn’t approve of, and, though I’d never met them, I felt a sudden burst of deep, visceral hatred for them.

‘I want to make my own choices.’ Brooke breathed deeply. ‘Not just because cars are really interesting to me, not just because it’s something that I could see myself making a really fucking amazing career out of. I want to make choices for myself, for once . For the first time in my freaking life.’

‘I get it,’ I said.

‘They threw my plan in the trash. And it was that moment that I realized I was totally, completely trapped by them. They frame everything as if they’re doing the “best thing” for me, but what that really means is that I will never be able to set a toe outside of their boundaries, or else I’ll be punished, for the rest of my life.

I’ll never be able to get married unless they approve the person …

they’ll control my social life, even my kids, if I ever have them. Could you live like that?’

‘No,’ I said plainly.

‘Me neither.’

I wasn’t sure what else to say to that. ‘I’m sorry’ felt pathetic and insincere, even though I was sorry. No one should have to live under somebody else’s control. Not Brooke with her parents, or me either, having to hide from the Creep in case he decided to lash out at me. It was all so wrong.

I shuffled over and wrapped my arm around her waist, and, after a moment, she tilted her head to kiss my cheek.

It felt like the whole world was shifting – the air, the sky, the ground under my feet all moving to accommodate Brooke and what she meant to me.

My friend, the girl I liked, the girl who liked me back.

It was so much more than I could ever have hoped for.

I didn’t want to force Brooke to keep talking about her parents, especially when she was clearly dealing with so much trauma from the whole situation.

And it was trauma. I could see it: in the way she shrank herself when talking about her parents, about the expectations that had been put on her and the absolute control she’d been forced to live under.

I wanted my mom to care about me more, but the Summers took it to such an extreme that I almost felt grateful I hadn’t been brought up that way.

We took a meandering route back, even though the afternoon had brought on the kind of heat I really wasn’t used to after living in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life. I was going to need a new wardrobe soon.

‘Do you want to do anything this afternoon?’ I asked as Brooke unlocked the door to our room.

‘Honestly? No, not really.’

‘Want to watch crappy daytime TV and share your pie with me?’

‘Yes and no, in that order,’ she said with a laugh.

I shut the door and Brooke doubled back to flip the bolt across. I felt better knowing no one could get in. She left the gun on the dresser, in clear sight of the bed and the door, and I held my tongue again.

‘The diner is, like, thirty seconds from here,’ I said as she settled back down on our unmade bed. ‘We can get more pie later.’

‘Fine,’ she sighed, and I didn’t think she minded really.

The pie was blueberry, with a brown-sugar crust, and it looked and smelled insanely good. Brooke handed me one of the wooden forks Molly had given us and pushed the container toward me so I could take the first bite.

‘Thanks,’ I murmured, breaking off a small piece to try. The taste lived up to the look and smell.

Brooke didn’t stand on ceremony and shoveled a huge bite into her mouth.

‘We’re going back there for dinner tonight, right?’ she asked with her mouth full.

‘Unless you want to get in the car and drive somewhere?’

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘I looked at their dinner menu earlier and they’ve got burgers and fried chicken.’

‘Your two main food groups!’

‘Fuck off,’ she said, laughing through another mouthful of pie. ‘I’m going to order both, and you can split with me.’

‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘And more pie?’

She nodded. ‘They have a chocolate peanut butter pie and I want that .’

‘Why didn’t you order it earlier?’

Brooke pulled a face at me. ‘It’s not breakfast pie.’

I snorted with laughter. ‘Isn’t all pie breakfast pie?’

‘Absolutely not.’ She held up her hand to tick off on her fingers. ‘Pumpkin, oatmeal, or any fruit pie can be for breakfast. Chocolate, pecan, anything caramel is dinner pie.’

‘Key lime? Or lemon meringue?’

She circled a finger in the air. ‘All day long, baby.’

I laughed again, took a final bite of blueberry breakfast pie, and nudged the rest back to her. I was still full from earlier.

‘Brooke, where do we go from here?’ I pushed myself to ask.

‘Nashville?’

‘Brooke.’

She took another huge bite of pie – to give herself time, I was sure, to come up with an answer.

‘Nashville,’ she repeated determinedly. ‘Then Atlanta, then Orlando.’

‘Then?’ I prompted.

‘I told you,’ Brooke said, scratching off some of the brown sugar from the piecrust and licking it off her fingernail. ‘We can call Meredith and she’ll help us get jobs as princesses.’

‘You really think that, Brooke? Really?’

She sighed heavily and pushed her hands through her hair. ‘I have to believe it.’

‘I don’t think you do,’ I countered. ‘I think we need a better plan than let’s get jobs as princesses .’

‘That plan got us this far.’

I couldn’t argue with that – the Princess Plan had been a big enough dream when we left Seattle to propel us more than halfway across the country.

But the closer we got to Orlando, the more outlandish it felt, even with the possibility of Meredith helping us.

Everything seemed more real since Brooke had been kidnapped.

It wasn’t that we were blind to the dangers of what we were doing up until now, but we couldn’t ignore them anymore.

Even if Brooke was happy with the Princess Plan, I needed a Plan B.

I wanted to know someone wasn’t going to come along and steal away this freedom we’d fought so hard for.

‘I looked it up on my phone the other night, Brooke, and we can’t afford more than, like, four nights in Orlando before we go broke. Do you know how much hotels cost there? It’s insane.’

‘So we’ll go lifting some more wallets.’ She shrugged. ‘It worked last time, it’ll work again.’

‘I know.’ I didn’t want to be mad at her, but she was so frustrating . ‘I know, Brooke, but every time we do shit like that, we draw attention to ourselves.’

‘Look, I’ve been to Disney World before,’ she said. ‘Trust me, there are literally thousands and thousands of people walking around. And none of them are paying attention to anything. They’re all too busy looking up at whatever shiny, sparkly thing has caught their eye.’

‘So we start stealing from families?’ I asked hotly.

‘You didn’t want to steal from anyone a few days ago. You changed your tune on that quick enough.’

‘Are you trying to rile me up on purpose?’ I groaned, frustrated.

‘No.’ She closed the lid on the takeout box and put the leftover pie back in the fridge. Then she turned to me with regret written all over her face. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ I replied softly. ‘I just want to know what happens next.’

‘We’ll figure it out,’ she promised.

‘I can’t go back,’ I whispered to her.

‘Will you tell me why?’

It was almost inevitable that I was going to tell her now.

She’d told me what she was running from, and so our old deal was off.

Before I could go there, though, I had to accept that when she finally knew, she might not be able to get over it.

Opening up could potentially be the deal-breaker that shattered what we had right now, and, selfishly, I wasn’t prepared to let her go. Not yet.

‘Yeah,’ I said, full of the inevitability of it. ‘But not now.’

She sighed, and I had to look away from her sad eyes, feeling her sense of betrayal like a knife in my gut.

‘Okay, Jessie. Okay.’