Chapter 1
Best laid plans
Miles William Oliver Cumberland IV, aka Oliver to his friends, aka a billionaire on the run
Of everything I expected to feel when I left my father’s welcome-home party four hours ago, joy over my headlights illuminating a Welcome to Pennsylvania sign wasn’t top on the list.
It wasn’t on the list at all.
But here I am, driving into—actually, let me stop there.
I’m driving.
Myself.
Alone.
In the front seat.
No chauffeur. No assistant rattling off my meetings for the day. No business associate pitching a marketing partnership. No hovering security listening in to every word.
No relatives demanding to know why their exclusive, limitless credit card has been canceled or why I sold the family estate on Martha’s Vineyard.
No phone calls interrupting with an emergency that needs to be dealt with.
No weight of my family’s expectations squeezing my lungs and making it hard to breathe.
Just me, the pitch black of a moonless night, endless possibilities with zero expectations, enough mental preparation that driving doesn’t trigger panic attacks anymore, and my road trip playlist.
This must be what peace feels like.
There’s an edge to the peace—tossing my phone so it can’t be used to track me and operating with cash only isn’t a foolproof method of disappearing—but it’s more peace than I’ve felt at any point in my life, and especially the past four years.
I feel around on the door for the button to roll down the window, hit it, and my seat starts to recline.
The unexpected motion startles me, and I swerve the SUV before straightening it out. No panic. Road’s practically empty, and I corrected, and I’m nearly to my destination, and everything’s fine.
“Wrong button,” I mutter to myself.
I feel around again, and ah, yes.
There it is.
The right button this time. Fresh, cool air whips into the vehicle, drowning out the symphonic pop music I’m playing in honor of knowing how much my mother hates it when major symphonies cover pop songs.
And also because I love it.
It’s unexpected.
It makes me smile.
And smiling has been rarer than a penguin in the desert for the past few years.
Thirty miles to go once I hit my exit, and I should—ah, yes.
There it is.
My headlights illuminate the large green sign telling me that my escape off the beaten path and into the backcountry of nowhere-land is fast approaching.
I roll my shoulders, feeling even lighter than I did with the Welcome to Pennsylvania sign. The exit approaches, and I swerve onto it.
Huh.
Going a little fast. And that’s a sharp curve. A sharp curve that keeps going.
Oh, this is one of those exits. The kind with a two-seventy curve.
Probably need to—
“Slow down!” someone shrieks behind me.
Someone in my car.
I wrench the steering wheel and hit the brake.
“Slow!” she shrieks again. “Brake! Brake! Slow! Turn! Shoulder!”
Who the fuck is in my car?
Am I hallucinating?
Why isn’t the road stopping? Why am I leaning against my window? Why am I going faster when I’m hitting the brake?
I—shit.
Gas pedal. I’m hitting the gas pedal.
I switch my foot position and slam on the brake in the middle of the off-ramp while memories of crunching metal and screams reverberate through my head.
The SUV swerves. Tires squeal. The centrifugal force has me smushed against my door, and no matter how I turn the wheel, the car doesn’t go in the direction I want it to go.
It’s spinning.
It’s spinning out of control.
I’m spinning out of control, the laws of physics taking control of my car and my body, making breathing impossible and squishing me against the doorframe with my head leaning out the open window while I relive the reason I haven’t driven myself anywhere since I was in college.
This is it.
The end.
Four hours after freedom, four hours after leaving the life I was stuffed into thanks to my father’s greed, ego, and pride, and it’s over.
Done.
Just when I thought I was finally free, it’s done.
I’ve never eaten a fresh chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven in my own kitchen.
I’ve never gone skinny-dipping.
I’ve never watched a rainbow from when it formed to when it faded, or seen the sun rise or set from the top of a mountain.
I’ve never held a baby.
I’ve never held a baby.
And now I never will.
News headlines flash in my vision.
“Convenience Store Heir Dies in Inconvenient Fiery Crash.”
“Fitting End for Criminal’s Son on the Run.”
“Billionaire with Burnout Perishes in Spinout.”
There’s total blackness behind my eyelids as my world jerks to a sudden near-stop.
My lungs engage, and I gulp in a massive breath as I open my eyes again.
The SUV faces the pavement that was behind me a moment ago. Bouncing headlight beams illuminate fresh tire marks on the sharply curved exit ramp as the vehicle continues to rock and settle.
My fingers have gone numb. My thigh muscles quake as I push with all of my might onto the brake with one foot and into the floorboard with the other.
Dots dance in my vision.
My breath comes again in a gulp of air that’s too much and not enough at the same time.
The symphony hits a crescendo that matches a rush of loud, heavy breathing.
Is that me?
No.
Not me.
I still can’t get my lungs to work right.
“Hooo,” the person in my back seat says. “That was a trip, wasn’t it?”
The person.
In my back seat.
The one who yelled for me to slow down as I exited.
I finally make myself take two more breaths, more in control but still mostly fueled by adrenaline, before I shift to stare back at her.
We.
Almost.
Died.
And she thinks it was a trip?
“Park!” she shrieks as the car starts rolling. “Shoulder! Park!”
What.
The actual.
Fuck?
I slam on the brake again with a shaky foot, realizing my engine died sometime during the spin and the SUV is being guided by gravity, while I gape at the vision in my back seat.
No.
Absolutely not. This is not happening. I’m hallucinating.
I’m dreaming.
I’ve anticipated this day for so long that I’m dreaming, except my dream has turned into a nightmare.
Which means this—this woman I’m staring at—she’s not real.
Daphne Merriweather-Brown, socialite of chaos, boundary-pusher, and my former fiancée’s little sister, is not here.
Not in her tight black cocktail dress that’s somehow managing to shimmer in the ambient light off the streetlamps lining the exit. Not with her blond updo half-smushed and…crooked?…and sliding off?
I shake my head.
Why is her hair sliding off?
“First donut?” she says. “Nice one, big guy. High-five. Thought we were gonna tip for a minute there, but you pulled it off. Didn’t think you had it in you. But for real, how about you ease Betsy here over to the side of the road before we get murdered by a semi coming off the interstate and up this exit ramp?”
Oh my god.
I’m dead.
The car tipped and smashed my head, and now I’m dead.
And in hell.
Hell feels a lot like a cool Pennsylvania night, and it sounds a lot like symphonic flutes shifting into a Waverly Sweet pop tune.
Smells a bit like burnt rubber too.
I slap myself.
It hurts.
So either hell is very realistic, or I’m not dead.
But I’m definitely in a very realistic nightmare.
Daphne heaves the agitated, impatient sigh of every woman I’ve ever known. It’s not cold enough for me to see her breath hanging between us—of course it’s not, it’s August—but I see a glittery, sparkly sigh float through the car’s interior anyway.
Or possibly it’s late and I’m tired and those are dots dancing in my vision.
Am I dead?
Am I nightmaring?
And—“Betsy? Who the hell is Betsy?”
“I named your car. She felt like a Betsy. It’s very Mercedes G-Class, don’t you think? But if you don’t like it, or if she has another name, I’m happy to call her that. Or is the car a he? Or a they? I’m cool with whatever if I’m wrong about Betsy and they need a new name. So. The shoulder? Scootchy-scootchy to the sidey-sidey?”
I survived.
I had to have survived.
Even hell couldn’t be this annoying.
“Please,” she adds. “Dude, I’m all for fun, but I’m also in favor of living. Got a stuffed lobster waiting for me at home who’d be very upset if I didn’t make it, you know? Plus the whole Margot thing. She’d miss me. I think.”
Mention of her sister—my former fiancée from a lifetime ago—has me whipping my head back around to face forward, where headlights from another car are racing the wrong way, which is actually the right way, and is also exactly toward us.
I’m backward.
The SUV ended its spinout with us facing the wrong way on the sharp off-ramp.
My heart leaps into my throat a split second before the oncoming sports car veers onto the shoulder, honks, and then flies past us and onto the highway beyond with a string of obscenities mingled with what sounds like country music following after it.
Now that I’m breathing again, my shoulders have merged with my ears. My jaw is clenched at least twice as tight as it has been at any other point since my father’s driver pulled up to the house in the Hamptons three days ago, delivering him safely home from prison. And a red haze is obstructing my vision.
I restart the engine, lift my foot off the brake, and let the car roll to the edge of the road before another night owl takes the exit the way it’s apparently supposed to be taken.
Fast and reckless.
But without the spinout part.
I put the engine in park and debate getting out to throw up as Daphne rolls her window down too. “Good job. Very nicely done. Quick question. Where are we?”
“Get out.” The order is instinctive.
Or possibly protective.
All of my plans are unraveling because fucking Daphne Merriweather-Brown is in my car.
She smiles at me. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been dumped in the middle of nowhere, but hitchhiking home wasn’t in my plans today. And did I see a sign that said we’re in Pennsylvania when I woke up? A little far from home, yeah? You got something secret going on out here?”
“Get. Out.” As the words leave my mouth a second time, even with the sentiment ringing so hard through my entire being, I know I can’t leave her here.
Margot would kill me.
And while Margot and I are no longer a thing, and haven’t been since my father got arrested a few years ago, and never will be again, I still care about her.
Enough that I made an excuse to go tell her goodbye last week.
In code. So she wouldn’t realize it was goodbye. So she wouldn’t blow this for me.
But can’t a guy run away from home without his ex-fiancée’s little sister stowing away?
Daphne stares at me in the dim light with that perpetual this is fun grin that always annoyed the shit out of me. “Getting out does seem like the safer option, but I’m good with a little excitement. Also, you and I need to have a discussion, and so unfortunately for both of us, I’ll be declining your invitation. For the moment, anyway.”
I stare at her while I process exactly how much control of my life I’ve just lost.
Again.
She shifts in the seat and pulls her hair off, then some netting, revealing more hair underneath.
It’s a wig.
She was wearing a wig. That’s why it was crooked. Why—never mind.
Not important why she was wearing a wig.
What’s important is that I’ve clenched my jaw through countless boardroom meetings the past few years, not saying everything I’ve wanted to say to all of the people demanding I fix my father’s mistake to keep the company going while he was serving his time. I’ve clenched my jaw through countless dinners with my mother while she pretended he was on an extended spa vacation so that she wouldn’t have to face the reality that the company might not pull through after what he did and we might have to sell more than a few vacation homes and the artwork in three others and half of the unadulterated wine in the wine cellars to get through it.
I’m supposed to be done with my jaw-clenching days.
I’m supposed to be free.
But here I am, forcing words out of my mouth when my jaw is aching because the damn bite guard I’m supposed to use isn’t working the way disappearing from my old life will.
“What. Are you doing. In my car?”
“I would love to answer that question, but I’m starting to have a few more of my own that seem a little more important. You okay? You don’t look okay.”
“Because you’re in my goddamn car. Get—”
I cut myself off as crashing adrenaline battles with my rising blood pressure and makes me realize exactly how screwed I am in this escape attempt.
We’re thirty miles from the little house where I have an alternate car, an alternate wardrobe, and an alternate passport and matching driver’s license waiting for me so that I can shed this life and start a new one as a normal person with a normal job and maybe, maybe, one day make a normal family for myself.
Maybe I’ll be a farmer. Or an electrician. Lumberjack. Popcorn maker at a movie theater. Bush trimmer at a theme park.
My entire life, I haven’t had a choice. I’m the last in a long line of only children, raised from birth to be the next Cumberland to head up the gas station and convenience store empire that my great-grandfather built. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that the only option I have is to work for and eventually run Miles2Go. That my family’s wealth has given me privileges I have to pay for with my entire destiny. That I was brought into this world to serve a purpose that I don’t get a say in.
But it doesn’t fit.
It’s not me.
I’ve been the CEO of Miles2Go for the past four years, saving it from near-certain collapse—or rather, listening to my executive assistant tell me how to save it from near-certain collapse—after my father got caught embezzling company funds to invest in a fake rare wine scheme, and I’m done.
I did my part, played the role, and now I’m done.
And until Daphne sat up in my back seat, I thought tonight would give me what I’ve always yearned for—the freedom to figure out who I am when I’m not living up to family expectations.
If I kick her out and she calls her father for a helicopter rescue, she’ll tell everyone she was with me, and they’ll know I didn’t leave for the airport.
My parents think I’m headed out of the country for the next two weeks, having a well-earned vacation. By the time they get the letter telling them that I never went to the Galápagos, that I have officially resigned from the life they want me to lead and am never coming back, and that I’m endorsing Carmen Miller—my executive assistant—to be the next CEO, I’ll be somewhere in a small town in a flyover state with a new identity and a new look and a made-up history.
They’ll never find me.
If my family wants me back, they’ll spend years searching Europe and the Caribbean and Latin American countries.
But only if Daphne doesn’t fuck it all up.
If she hasn’t already fucked it all up. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Give. Me. Your. Phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I said to.”
She studies me with far more intelligence than I like to give her credit for but that I know she has in her.
Margot told me once that her family’s underestimation of Daphne would someday be their downfall. That everyone thought she was flaky and irresponsible and careless, but that she had a passion their parents didn’t understand and the drive to burn down any obstacle in pursuit of her causes if necessary.
Margot said it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for scoring an original, previously undiscovered Picasso or for putting a nemesis out of business.
“What are you doing out here, Oliver?”
Forget the dress. Forget the chaos. Forget the number of colleges she left or was kicked out of while I was dating her sister.
This woman is dangerous. “Give me your phone, or I’m coming back there to get it.”
Another car comes careening up the ramp, and my SUV shakes and my hair blows in the wind created by the other vehicle.
We need to get off the road.
But first, I need to get my hands on Daphne’s phone.
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