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I gritted my teeth. “I do own sneakers. I didn’t pack the bag. That was some stranger my would-have-been mother-in-law paid to do, so for all I know they’ve been stolen.”
“No.” He pulled them out and strode over, carrying a white pair of socks with him. He knelt down in front of me. “Give me your feet.”
That was sweet, and I almost laughed before I stopped myself. This man didn’t give the impression that he was particularly gentle and kind all that often. “I know I’m not smart.” I said it purposefully to piss him off. “But I can put on my own clothing.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Fine.”
Although I was sure he wanted to throw them at me, he instead handed them to me gently and stormed to the other side of the car. Twice now, I’d provoked him, and twice now, he’d not really reacted in a terribly mean way.
Sure, he probably had a line he couldn’t be pushed past, but I’d hit him, and he hadn’t done anything about that at all.
Who was this man who tried to put my shoes on, buckle my seatbelt, and had no qualms about yelling at me in public?
Why didn’t he know the rules about dealing with me? You never did anything you didn’t want to see later on five different social media platforms.
Or did he just not care?
As he drove his Porsche through traffic, I examined my feet. They were torn up, and much as I was glad to have my shoes to put on, I almost didn’t want to touch them. They needed to soak before I even attempted to put shoes back on. “Stay in the car,” Zeke said as he pulled into a space.
I should have argued, but the truth was that I didn’t want to. If he wanted to be this nice to me, my sore feet were going to take him up on the offer. He left the car running, and I watched from behind the tinted window as people stared at it on their way into the hotel. Most of our guests from the wedding-that-wasn’t were staying at the reception site, and I was glad I didn’t have to go there to collect anything.
It would be very awkward to have to see my ex-fiancé’s great aunt right at this moment. Zeke was back fast holding a trash bag I presumed held my stuff in it. Laura Allard had certainly been busy getting my stuff removed from everywhere I’d been. Even the hotel room that should have been mine until the next day.
Zeke got back in the car and held out my phone to me, which I gladly took. He must have pulled it out of the bag. The trash bag got shoved in the small area in the back, that wasn’t really a seat but could hold a bag of that size. Thank goodness I hadn’t had very much stuff here. Had it only been hours ago that I’d been here getting ready to get married?
He didn’t speak when he drove away this time, and I looked down at my phone to distract me from thinking about how all the plans I’d had before today were in three bags, including one made for trash, traveling in Zeke’s car right now.
My phone had blown up. It was really amazing how many of my friends wanted to sympathize with me and claimed to hate Kit when they’d all been singing his praises the last time I’d seen them. And most of them were already leaving Paris. It was also amazing how much privilege we really had. I hardly ever thought about it. I mean, I knew I’d been rich. Right now, I was as poor as I could imagine being financially, even as I sat in a car with a billionaire. But they’d all been in Paris, and now that my wedding wasn’t happening, they’d hightailed it out like I’d asked them to come to some bug infested nightmare instead of a city people dreamed of seeing their whole lives.
In any case, no one was particularly asking to speak to me. It was like an obligatory text they’d sent to say they did. As I was about to fall off the face of the Earth for most of them, I was sure this would be the last time I heard from at least three-quarters of them. I should have done better than this in picking people to spend my life with. They were just on to the next event, the next photograph opportunity. Did Hope and Bridget have friends? Did Justin?
My betraying brother…
I steadied myself as I opened up Instagram and was immediately bombarded with pictures of myself running away from my wedding. That hadn’t taken long. Hell, probably some of the people who texted me were the ones who’d uploaded these shots.
“Everything okay?” Zeke asked without looking at me, which I appreciated. Right then, I needed to pretend I was in a bubble that no one could see through. My own private bubble that no one could see through but me.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Uh-huh.” He made a left turn and had a little space ahead of him, so he revved the engine and we sped up like we were floating in air instead of the road. I should have been impressed.Like my friends should have felt lucky to be in Paris. All of us were really just fucked in the head. Did anything impress Zeke? I wasn’t going to ask him. He might ask me back, and then I’d have to explain just how pitiful I was, even in my own head.
“Where are we going?” I should at least know that. Now that I had my clothes, I’d really like to take off this dress. Take it off and burn it. Never have to look at it again. Pretend this whole thing had never happened. That I’d never said yes to Kit to begin with.
“Home.”
That was sort of impossible since that was technically in New York City, right? “Can this baby fly?”
He smiled, a real one, like he’d given to me when I’d admired the birds in the hotel. “No. I wish. Funny, I thought when I was a kid, we’d have flying cars by now. But how would we handle that with the air travel? We’d have to book passages in our own cars to not conflict with airlines, otherwise there could be crashes. We’d get in each other’s lanes. Can you imagine that noise? The ones that they hear in the cockpits when another plane is even nearby?”
The loud alarm that sounded. He’d clearly been in a private plane where he could hear that noise in a cockpit, as I had more than once. Commercial planes didn’t let the passengers hear that. “They’d have to do something about that noise. It would have to be another signal. Like a flashing red light.”
“No, it would have to wake you because you’d have to set the car on auto fly for most of the trip over the Atlantic.” His smile hadn’t faded, and I sort of loved that we were talking about this. It might have been the strangest conversation of my life. Cars didn’t fly, and we didn’t need to worry about being woken over the Atlantic. But…it was fun to think about.
“I wouldn’t sleep. I never sleep on planes. It’s like total hell the whole time. But I don’t drive cars, so I doubt they’d let me drive one that flew.”
He shot me a look, side-eyeing me the whole time.
“You’re not going to say it, right?”
