Except this isn’t fiction.
It’s my life.
And it absolutely is happening.
Did my birth family really track me down just to marry me off? Anger and betrayal war within my heart. How could this happen? How could they do this to me? I know I’m a stranger, but I’m still family—right?
Marriage.
“He would have used you as a pawn. You would’ve ended up married to someone just like him—or worse.”
Her words have been on my mind ever since she left me in the hallway, promising that she would do what she could to get me home. But what then? He’ll just find me again, won’t he?
I curl into my side and grip the cell phone I can’t even use because they’ve apparently tapped into it somehow and will know exactly who I call and what we talk about. If Dylan figured out the message I was trying to give him, or Felicity did as she promised and called them, the last thing I need is Gio and Mattheus finding out and putting a stop to it.
Felicity said he would’ve killed her if he found out she was the one who orchestrated my fake death.
His own wife.
Forcing me into marriage doesn’t seem like too much of a leap when you compare it to that.
A gilded cage. That’s what I’m in.
Lord, why? I trust in You, but please get me home. Please, God. I need to be home. For the fall festival, for my students. So I can have a makeup birthday dinner with Talia and Connor. So I can tell Dylan?—
The fight we had in the parking lot of the church comes to the front of my mind. I was so angry—furious—at him for leaving the flowers and then pretending not to care. My heartbreak left a fissure where that anger took root, seeding until I couldn’t help myself. Because I wasn’t clear-headed, I completely ignored the fact that perhaps those flowers are his only way of telling me he cares.
Shouldn’t I be appreciative of that? Just because he doesn’t want to go back to what we were, should I really write him off entirely? It’s not as though he cheated on me or purposely broke my heart.
He was held captive and tortured for months.
Yet he still chooses to pick me wildflowers for my birthday and leave them in a pretty vase.
That’s kindness. And it didn’t deserve my reaction.
I wipe tears away from my cheeks, even though more are falling from my eyes right behind them. Right now, I’d give about anything to hear his voice again. To apologize for what I said and how I reacted without thinking.
Will I ever get that chance?
“Emma.” His voice fills my mind now. That tortured tone that I’ve come to know him by ever since he came home.
The tears come faster now, and I hug a pillow against my chest, curling around it and burying my face in it to stifle my sobs.
I want to go home.
To lie in my bed, with my pillows and blankets.
I want to cuddle my cat.
Grab breakfast at the diner.
And above all, I desperately want to see Dylan. At least one more time.
“Good morning, Emmaline,” Gio greets as I take a seat at the breakfast table. I set the piece of paper he’d used to summon me down beside me. It had been slid beneath my door right as dawn began to break.
Pretend. I force a smile. “Good morning.” The same woman who delivered dinner last night sets a cup of hot coffee in front of me, alongside a small container of cream. It smells amazing, but I eye it warily.
Could it be drugged?
