Page 46 of The Cabin-A Reverse Harem Romance
It was awkward and difficult, but Brad got in, and managed to drag me in behind him, despite the fact that I was struggling so hard. When he had me in the seat, he leaned over me, and pulled the door shut, quickly locking them, and using the secure lock feature to keep me from opening it back up.
Without even looking at me, he fired up the engine, and then looked through the windshield, a strange expression crossing his face. It was like he was only just realizing how crazy it was to drive in those kinds of conditions.
“This is crazy, Brad,” I said, panic filling my body, and coloring my words. “You’re going to kill us out on those roads.”
“It’ll be fine,” he grumbled. “I have chains on the tires.”
As if my voice had galvanized him into action, he threw his BMW in reverse, and tried to find the road out. I tried the door handle, rattling it, but it held fast. With the safety feature on the locks, I couldn’t get it to unlock or open. “Let me out of here, Brad.”
He rounded on me, absolute fury in his eyes. “Shut the fuck up!” he roared.
In such an enclosed space, his voice was impossibly loud, and made me cringe, then shrink back in my seat a little. He jammed on the accelerator and the tires spun for just a second, before they caught, and shot us forward. The car lurched forward, and as the cabin dwindled behind us, the blanket of snow coming down and blocking it from view, my panic started to set in even deeper.
“Brad, please –”
“I said shut up,” he replied, though with less heat and force than before.
I shrank back against the passenger door, racking my brain, trying to figure a way out of this. Brad stared straight ahead, concentrating on the road before us, or at least, what he could see of it. Because the canopy of the forest sat high over this little road, the massive drifts of snow weren’t nearly as bad as they were back at the cabin, though, it wasn’t easy going, either. One wrong move, and we’d end up in a ditch.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Brad said.
“I don’t know what you –”
“If you would have just sent those four away, we could have talked it out, Elise,” he said, his voice tight with barely controlled anger. “We could have worked it out together, you and me. It didn’t have to be like this.”
“Be like what, Brad?” I asked, the fear ratcheting up in me. “What are you planning?”
He shook his head. “I – I dunno,” he said. “I don’t fucking know yet. Just shut up. Let me think.”
“Brad –”
“I told you to shut up, Elise,” he said, his voice firm and strong.
I lapsed into silence and looked out at the road beyond the windshield, trying to figure out how to get through to him, to stop him from doing whatever it was he was thinking about doing. Eventually, we found our way to the main highway, and it looked like the snowplows had been through recently. There were drifts of snow piled high on either side of the road, and although the road itself was still covered in a thick layer of powder, it wasn’t as thick as it could have been.
Which meant, with the chains on his tires, Brad would be able to navigate the road. If he could navigate the road, he could put a lot of distance between us, and the guys – and if we got too far away from the them, and they weren’t able to find me, I was absolutely screwed.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Brad, please –”
“I loved you, you know,” he said.
He looked over at me, and his eyes shimmered with tears. They rolled down his face, and his body shook with his sobs. I couldn’t believe he was actually crying. Brad never cried. He wore his stoicism like armor, so to see him actually weeping was as disconcerting as it was shocking.
“I know you did, Brad,” I said, trying to strike a conciliatory tone I thought would appease him. “Sometimes though, things just don’t work out.”
“But why?” he wailed. “We were perfect together, Elise.”
I shook my head “We weren’t, Brad,” I said. “I pretended we were. Pretended I was happy. Maybe even believed I was for a while. But, deep down, I knew we ultimately weren’t compatible. I knew this wouldn’t last. I just –”
“You bitch,” he sneered. “You led me on. Used me for my money. You just kept stringing me along”
“You forget that my family has plenty of our own money, Brad. Why in the hell would I use you for your money?”
“Because you’re one of those bitches who can never have enough,” he spat. “Always wanting more, more, more.”
