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“Okay,” I said. “Let me get my things.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” said Alex. “I’m parked on the corner.”
“Don’t you have a driver?”
“It’s just going to be us,” he said quietly, and turned away, his face half in shadow, the other half lit by the streetlamp.
I went upstairs and knocked on Sara’s door. She was still in her dress, and was texting.
“Who are you talking to?” I said.
“I’m texting Zeke,” she said. “He’s so sad about the restaurant.”
“I know you’ll find a way to cheer him up. Listen, I have to get out of here. The police say that I’m in danger.”
“In danger? Lola,chica, what have you done, baby?”
“Nothing. I guess I got mixed up with the wrong man.”
“I’ll take care of Macy,” said Sara. “You go.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “You can call me if you need anything.”
“You tell that new husband of yours that if anyone touches a hair on your head, I’ll cut his you-know-what off.”
***
I told that to Alex as we drove off into the night.
“I believe her,” he said grimly, as we drove out of the city and began to go north. I’d hardly been out here at all. I’d never seen the thick, dark pines that covered the land, the rolling hills. But my eyes glazed over the scenery with an exhaustion as physical as it was emotional. I checked the clock. It was almost 10pm.
I’d placed a kiss on Macy’s forehead while she slept before we’d left. I’d picked her up and driven her home promising that we’d play together tomorrow, now that mommy wasn’t busy organizing her party. What would my little girl say when she woke up the next morning and discovered her mommy wasn’t there?
I fell asleep for a while, letting the tiredness overtake me. But I kept waking up with the bumping of the car, and after a while, I resigned myself to sleeplessness.
“Where is this place?” I said.
“About an hour from Syracuse. It’s isolated. I got it a few years ago, but I don’t really come up here all that much.”
“You don’t ever take a vacation, do you?” I said.
“I think the last vacation I took was to Bali,” said Alex.
But I didn’t want to think about the past. It was easier than thinking about the future, than thinking about what we were going to do when all this was over. How I’d untangle myself from the messy, murky world that Alex Lowe had brought me into.
I felt certain of one thing: I despised him. I couldn’t forgive him for getting me pregnant and ignoring me, all those years ago. And now I had more things I couldn’t forgive him for. For dragging me into a fake wedding. For getting me into danger. I’d always felt like I was in control of my destiny before I met Alex. And I couldn’t control myself around him. Couldn’t control my feelings, didn’t feel strong. I felt something with him—call it vulnerability if you like. But right there in the car, I felt like it was weakness.
The roads were getting rockier and bumpier. We were passing through thick forest.
“You like it up here?” said Alex.
I pursed my lips. “I’ve never been,” I said.
“I go running up here in the mornings sometimes,” he said.
“In the mornings? We’re two hours’ drive from New York.”
“I get a helicopter.”
