Page 6 of Wed to the Devil
Giving him a smile, I put the money on the seat between us and open my door. “It's for the best. Trust me, when my husband comes looking for me, you don't want to know where I am.”
“Your husband?” He asks. “But is he really going to track me down?”
I shrug and get out of the car. “Maybe. I can't say. Thank you for the ride, though.”
Before he can protest anymore, I slam the car door and turn away, walking quickly down the cracked sidewalk. The college where Olivia works is only a few blocks away in the other direction, but I need to be cautious. Even though the chauffeur acted as my white knight just now, who knows how he will behave under the pressure of Dare Morgan. My heart speeds up as I think of just how angry Dare is right now.
Rushing along the unkempt sidewalk, I swallow and try to hold my head high. My husband will no doubt be furious when I disappear. But he has lied to me and deceived me for most of the time that I've known him.
Dare Morgan deserves what he gets.
I take the long way around, doubling back and retracing my steps several times before I walk up to the college campus. It's late on Wednesday night and the campus is hushed, only a few students rushing to and from late-night studies and their respective dorms. In the daytime, I know that this small college has several sets of multistory red brick ivy-covered buildings. I rush past the brick and stained glass chapel and the looming administration building with its great dome looking down on the rest of the campus. I have to get to the massive science complex, the place where I know Olivia will be working late. She always works late on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I approach it from the back, heading straight across the immaculately trimmed grass and up the steps to a white marble building.
There are a few lights on in the building. I make a note as I climb the stairs that the lab that Olivia runs is definitely one of them.
I try the door and find it open. Inside, my footsteps echo on the white marble floor as I head up the stairs, straight to Olivia's lab. I make it all the way to the door of the lab before I find a locked door. I peer inside through a long rectangular window, knocking on the door. Olivia is bent over a lab table, carefully pipetting a liquid from a beaker to a small tray of samples.
At the sound of my knock, she snaps upright, her blonde head turning toward the sound, her eyes wide. I give her an urgent wave and she pulls out a pair of earbuds from her ears as she sets the science equipment down. She rushes over to the door and opens it, her puzzlement clear on her face.
“Talia! What are you doing here?” She looks at her watch, squinting. “It's after ten p.m. I was just about to wrap up my experiment and head home.”
I glance behind me, licking my lips. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” She steps back and waves me through the door. I glance around at the table in her lab and the desk with everything neat, tidy, and extremely organized. Olivia is a little bit of a neat freak. Perhaps it was a necessity in her job as a researcher in this lab.
I close the door firmly behind me and then turn to her. She reaches out to me, rubbing my bare arm.
“God, are you cold? It's freezing outside!”
“I didn't have time to grab my coat. I sort of ran away from the Morgan estate and Dare. I…”
My eyes well up with tears and I inhale a shaky breath. Olivia looks a little horrified and guides me over to her desk, where she plucks a navy cardigan off the back of her chair and hands it to me. I take it thankfully and swallow against the lump in my throat.
“Talia, what's going on? Why did you run away from Dare?”
“Because… Because he's a liar!” I spit out. “He paid someone to break into Aunt Minnie’s store. And he paid them to make it look like Aunt Minnie was being threatened by the sketchy guys that she took her loan out from. But that’s not all… Then Dare paid actors to come into the restaurant where I was working and mistreat me. He's… he's horrible.”
With that, I dissolved in tears. Olivia quickly wraps her arms around me, rubbing my shoulder.
“Oh, Talia.” She inhales sharply. “I had no idea. Really. If I had known that he would do something so horrible, I would never have advocated for you to accept his marriage proposal. Honest.”
I let myself cry for a full minute, great gasping sobs as I lay my head on my best friend’s shoulder. But after that, I control myself, wiping at my face and struggling to voice my thoughts.
“I don't know what to do,” I admit. Olivia grabs a handful of tissues from a box on her desk and hands them to me. I blot at my face, which is hot and wet from crying.
“But it's okay. You're going to be okay. You are with someone that loves you and cares about you,” she says soothingly.
I give her a one-armed hug and then separate from her. “I need to think. I need to be alone and figure out my next step. Where can I go so that Dare won't find me?”
Olivia looks pensive. “What about my grandfather's old cabin up in the woods near Ketchum mountain? I know we haven't been there in ages. But my mom still rents it out on occasion. It's not really the warm summer season, so I'm pretty sure that the cabin will be deserted. And there's no way to find you if you're out there. I mean, it's hard enough to find the cabin on a map, much less know that you're there.”
I inhale, blowing the breath out as I nod. “I hadn't thought of that. It's been so long since we even went there… I was probably fourteen the last time I laid eyes on that place.”
“Well, since Grandpa passed away, my mom has put a little money into fixing his old cabin up. She's made sure that it is fortified against the cold as long as whoever is staying there runs the wood stove the entire time.”
For a moment, I picture the two of us as teens, laying in the grass by the cabin and giggling about our crushes. It almost makes me smile, despite the dire circumstances I'm currently facing.
“You really think that I could use the cabin?” I ask anxiously.