Page 149

Jacob glanced over first. Then I turned too. And my blood ran cold.

It was the Tower of Terror at Disney World on my twenty-fifth birthday. The elevator doors opening to show you something awful and confusing before plummeting you to your death.

It was Nick and Kelly.

They stood frozen, like deer in headlights. Nobody moved.

They were dressed up. She had her arm hooked in his. Nick’s brown hair was shorter. He looked fitter than before. He was tan. He had a band on his wedding finger. Kelly’s blond hair was down around her shoulders. Pink lipstick. Dangly gold earrings that looked like leaves. She was wearing an enormous diamond wedding ring. She was glowing.

And she was pregnant.

I felt instantly nauseous. Lieutenant Dan made a crying noise in the silence. Time stood still.

Nick cleared his throat. “Uh, we’ll take the next one.”

I stood there for another painful, paralyzed moment. And then the doors closed in slow motion.

The whole thing had taken less than fifteen seconds. And the bomb was nuclear.

“Briana?” Jacob said, staring at the side of my face.

I couldn’t hear him. My ears were ringing. My knees were weak, my vision was getting dark around the edges.

And then I threw up all over his shoes.

Chapter 44

Jacob

Are you okay?” I asked.

Briana had her forehead against the truck window. We were almost home. She hadn’t talked for most of the ride. Or in the hotel room while we packed up this morning. Or anytime, really, since the encounter in the elevator last night.

It was a long moment before she answered me. “I’m sorry I threw up on you,” she said again.

“That’s never happened to me before—in my office job as an accountant.”

She laughed a little, but there was no mirth in it.

Lieutenant Dan was sitting with his head on her lap. He’d been whining and crying to get to her from the back seat so badly I finally pulled over and let him sit with her. Same thing last night. I had to let him sleep on the bed.

“Was that the first time you’ve seen them together?” I asked.

She didn’t reply. I reached over and grabbed her hand. She didn’t squeeze it back.

Something was off.

I understood why she was upset. Running into her ex-husband and the woman he’d left her for and seeing that they were married and pregnant had to be jarring.

But there was something else going on too. She hadn’t looked me in the eye since the elevator incident. And it made a knot form in the pit of my stomach and my anxiety fire to life.

Maybe I was worried about something that wasn’t anything to be concerned about? She was just in shock and not feeling well and needed some time to process.

But she didn’t take the bouquet this morning. She’d been so happy to catch it last night. She’d said she wanted to dry it. And then she just left it on the hotel dresser. When I went to pick it up, she said she didn’t want it. It felt like some kind of omen that I didn’t want to think about too closely.

We drove the rest of the way home in silence. When we pulled into the garage, she got out. I grabbed her luggage out of the trunk, but she wouldn’t let me take it up the steps to the house for her. She just mumbled that she had it and started walking, dragging it without waiting for me. When I came in after her, she was standing in the living room staring at the couch.

“I’ll make you some soup,” I said, setting down my duffel bag. “Maybe we can watch a movie? Or Schitt’s Creek?”