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“What?” I yelled at my phone. “You son of a bitch!”
Collin snatched the device out of my hands and hit “end,” just as Lisa’s rapturous moans hit a crescendo.
“You didn’t need to hear more,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes on the road.
Speechless, I stared at the phone as if I could reestablish the connection, reach through it, and throttle my former fiancé. Collin actually leaned away from me at the wheel as if he wanted to stay out of smacking range. I crossed my arms over my chest and seethed silently.
What in the actual fuck? How long had Jason been sleeping with Lisa? Had he been lying when he swore that he hadn’t touched her while we were engaged? Had he waited until I was out of town to jump into bed with her? Did it really matter?
I thought about all of the times Jason had apologized for what happened with Lisa, all of the gifts and tearful talks. And I just couldn’t wrap my head around why he bothered. What was his plan? To keep screwing Lisa until the wedding? For the rest of our lives? Why did he spend all that time asking me to come back to him if he loved his childhood friend? If he was in love with her, fine! Why not just take my breaking off the engagement as some sort of sign that they were supposed to be together? Was it that he couldn’t bear being dumped by me? Did he want me back just so he could do the official dumping?
I rubbed my hands over my face, realizing that this was the question that had been eating at me, keeping me from committing to a life with or without Jason. If he loved someone else, why did he say he wanted me?
I’d never trusted his sudden change of heart. I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop all this time, and it had kicked me in the face months ago. All this time, I knew deep down that as much as I wanted to, I’d never be able to forgive him. Not really. I mean, I assigned him “Liar” as a ringtone. That should have been a whopping subconscious clue.
My heart had known for a while. It just took my brain a few months to catch up. And just when I was starting to feel a little bit better, I realized that we had a bigger problem looming ahead of us.
“Hey, Collin, where are we?”
NOT OK, JOHN DENVER
8
We were supposed to be in Kansas City by now. Instead, we seemed to be stopped on the proverbial dark country road in the drizzling rain, in front of an ancient, rusting bridge. Well, half of an ancient, rusting bridge. The span that was supposed to project over the ravine seemed to have broken off and fallen in, leaving a precariously tilted bridge stump on our side of the crevasse.
“Collin.” I straightened in my seat. “Where the hell are we?”
“I didn’t trust the GPS system on your phone,” he said hesitantly. “I believed I remembered a shortcut from my previous travels through the Heartland.”
“Previous travels through the Heartland? Decades ago? Before modern highway systems were built?”
He pursed his lips. “I may have gotten turned around in a few spots.”
“How long have I been asleep, Collin?”
His lips pressed together, glowing white in the greenish light reflected by the dashboard. The clock read 3:20 A.M.
“How long?” I demanded. “How long have you been lost?”
“About six hours,” he admitted. “You were so tired, and I didn’t want to wake you. You haven’t slept properly since you left Half-Moon Hollow.”
“Six hours?”
“Miranda, I know you’ve just received some upsetting … news, but there’s no reason to get overemotional.”
“Overemotional!” I yelled, shoving the door open and stomping down the slight incline to the mouth of the bridge. Wind whipped my hair around my head in a crazed crown as the rain misted over my cheeks. The headlights were warm against my legs as I stood in front of the car, throwing my arms wide. “Overemotional!”
The sky was pitch black above our heads, the moon hazy and soft through the rainclouds. I gave the rocks at my feet a vicious kick, listening as they skittered over the edge and plummeted at least five stories to the shallow water below.
“You get us lost, in the middle of God knows where, when we were only a few hours’ drive from home, and you don’t want me to get overemotional?” I yelled as Collin climbed out of the car. I flew at him, slapping my hands against his chest. I shoved at him, forcing him off the crumbling asphalt shoulder into the grass. “We could be anywhere!”
“Why are you getting so upset? It’s my deadline, not yours. Look, I’ll call Iris and Ophelia. I’ll explain that it was my fault we got off track.”
“You’re not even supposed to be driving the car, Collin!” I exclaimed. “It’s my responsibility to get us from point A to point B. If you tell Iris you got us lost because you were driving, I will be fired.”
“Miranda,” he said, his voice hoarse as he wrapped his arms around me. I struggled against him, shoving my hands against his chest to break free. “Please, stop.”
“You suck,” I hissed.
