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I’m just terrified.
Hands-shaking, throat-closing, short-of-breath terrified.
I don’t have enough information to find a way out.
And the handsome, hot stranger in the front seat is a dangerous, unpredictable man.
7
JAMESON
Silence reigns over the SUV.
Then Snowball hops up on his pathetic metal perch and rustles his wings, singing quietly, like he understands that it’s an awkward silence. His singing trails off and he flutters back down to the floor of the cage and pecks at it as if to admonish me.
I bought some stuff for the cage at the hardware store, along with everything else. If I’d stopped to make his home less of a barren research wasteland, I wouldn’t have seen Lily.
Now I’ve not onlyseenher, I’ve changed my entire revenge plan, kidnapped her, and scared her.
I steal a glance at her in the mirror.
She’s staring down at her lap, her chin trembling.
I don’t know how long I was wrestling those memories into submission. A minute? Two? Long enough for her to decide I’m going to murder her as soon as I stop the car.
I won’tmurderher, for Christ’s sake. I’m so angry that it's eating into my muscles and bones like alcohol, like poison, like fire. Kidnapping her has only made my heart pump harder, so the anger is everywhere my blood goes.
I’m still not going to kill her.
The part of me that survived my parents’ deaths is appalled that I’ve scared her this much. I’ve disappointed their memory. I can see the looks on their faces like—
No.
I can’t see the looks on their faces.
The first thing that comes to mind is a family photo that Gabriel took before a cookout at our house.
The second thing to elbow its way in is a crime scene still shot.
The third is nothing. A blurry impression of my mom putting her hair up in a bun, her face indistinct, and my dad cheering for Remy at a T-ball game.
It’s not that I can’t remember their faces in accurate detail, it’s that I can’t summon up anything more than some bullshit, cartoonish expression of disappointment, and they weren’tcartoons,they were people, they were my mom and dad, and I can’t remember them, I can’t remember what they looked like because—
Because of Judge Beaufort Hayes.
It brings me back to reality like a pair of cuffs on my wrists. This is exactly the reason I’ve taken that motherfucker’s granddaughter. He has to pay for more than taking our money, more than Mason screaming into a pillow, more than Gabriel sneaking in at four in the morning with a haunted expression, more than Remy whisperingwhat did they look like?
He has to pay for this, too. For all the things he burned out of our future.
Mom and Dad didn’t cheer at Remy’s graduation and they didn’t walk Mason down the aisle at his wedding and they never got to let Gabriel introduce his new family at dinner.
They won’t be at the hospital to meet Mason and Charlotte’s new baby. They won’t get to take FaceTime calls from Remy when she’s in Greece.
I’ll never call my dad and tell him I finally got a promotion at work, and it was really hard, and I don’t deserve it, and he’ll never say he’s proud of me.
Never.
So I won’t feel anyremorseover this. I won’t feel guilty. I won’t pull the car over and let Lily Hayes go back to her perfect little law school life.
