Page 3 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
"Just what?" I look at him, and for a second, everything goes very quiet and very clear. "You want me to walk down the aisle anyway? Smile for the cameras? Shake hands at dinner and thank everyone for coming and pretend I didn't see—" My voice breaks on the last word, and I stop. Breathe. Reset. "No."
"This is not the time to be dramatic?—"
"I need to go."
"Harper." His voice shifts. Harder now. Control reasserting itself. "Think about what you're doing. Think about your family. Think about what this looks like."
And there it is.Think about what this looks like.There is no,I'm sorry.He doesn’t say,I love you.Only the optics and the overall image.
I think about what the last five years of my life have looked like, and I realize, standing here in my eleven-pound dress with mascara I'm fighting very hard to keep in place, that looking good from the outside is the only thing either of us has ever asked of each other. That is the entire relationship. That is every dinner party, every charity function, and every conversation about the guest list, the venue, and the goddamn centerpieces. Appearances.
I walk out the door.
Jess calls twice before I've made it back to the main hall. I silence the phone. My mother calls immediately after. I silence that too. Someone on the venue staff sees me coming through the foyer and starts toward me with a concerned expression, and I redirect, cutting through a side hallway I mapped during thevenue tour because I always, always map the exits. Practical to a fault.
The valet stand is near the service entrance. I see my key on the board before the attendant even notices me—a habit Dawson found neurotic, always insisting I give my own keys, never using a valet bag. The one useful neurosis I have, I think, and I almost laugh again.
The attendant turns around and stops short at the sight of me.
"Ma'am—"
"That's mine." I point to the key. "The white Subaru."
"Are you—are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine." I take the key off the hook myself. "Where is it parked?"
He points.
My phone is vibrating continuously in my hand by the time I reach the car, a steady rhythm of people trying to reach me, trying to pull me back, and trying to manage this situation back into something that can be managed. I set it face down on the passenger seat. The wedding dress takes three tries and a colorful word to get fully inside the vehicle.
I start the engine.
The gates of the estate are open for arriving guests, and I drive through them without stopping, still in my veil, the skirt of my dress pooling over the console and across the passenger floor, the mountains rising ahead of me in the distance as if they've been waiting.
I don't know where I'm going.
For the first time in five years, it feels as if I’m taking control.
I drive for a long time without thinking about where I'm going.
That's the point, maybe. Movement without destination. The white lines and the mountain road unspooling ahead of me; thephone face-down on the passenger seat, vibrating in intervals that are starting to space out. The city falls away. Then the suburbs. Then the last familiar exit, and then only the highway climbing into elevation, the sky going from orange to deep blue.
That's when the temperature gauge starts to climb.
I notice it the way you notice things when you're running on fumes—slowly at first, and then all at once. The needle is creeping right. There was a faint smell of something burning underneath everything else. I turn off the heat, crack the window, and tell myself it's fine.
The car disagrees.
Steam curls from under the hood in thin, pale threads, and I have enough time to pull onto the shoulder before the engine shudders and quits entirely, dropping me into sudden, total silence on a mountain road with no guardrail, no streetlights, and no other cars in either direction.
I pick up my phone.
No signal, bar, or even flicker. I get out and hold it up like that'll change anything, turning a slow circle on the shoulder in my wedding dress while steam drifts off the hood and the treeline presses dark and close on both sides.
Nothing.
The temperature is dropping fast. I pull the skirt up in both hands and start walking.
