The door cracked open, and her heart climbed inside her throat.
Holy shit.
She wet her lips and checked over both shoulders. The street was quiet, no busybody neighbors puttering around their yards wondering what Olivia was doing, breaking into her ex-husband’s truck. It wasn’t technically breaking into if he left it unlocked, right? Brad had never bothered to lock his car at home, something he could get away with in a town like Enumclaw.
He also a had a terrible habit of leaving the keys to his truck under the visor because—who would be bold enough to steal a truck like this?
Her pulse pounded in her throat as she threw her duffel to the ground. She gripped the door with one hand and rested the other on the leather seat. One foot braced on the footrail, Olivia levered herself up into the cab. The air was different up here. She snorted and with a shaking hand flipped the visor open.
Brad’s keys clattered against the dash, gleaming in the sunlight streaming through the windshield. She snatched them up and hopped down, landing in the grass with a soft squish, mud squelching under her feet and running up the sides of her flats. The metal was cold against her skin, sharp, too, as she ran the pad of her thumb idly over the teeth. Breaking into his truck was one thing; taking it was something else altogether.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to be happy.
All those years spent compromising, storing books under her bed, giving, giving, giving, answering his calls even after their divorce, so much time wasted trying in vain to please Brad at the expense of her own happiness.
How did that saying go? Better to ask for forgiveness than permission?
She reached inside her purse for a pen and a piece of paper.
Brad owed her one.
Chapter Twenty-Four
12:49 p.m.
Hey, this is Olivia! I can’t come to the phone right—
Margot ended the call.
Elle winced. “No answer?”
Margot shook her head. No answer, just like the last five times she’d called. Four rings followed by voicemail and each time the pressure inside Margot’s chest swelled a little further, squeezing her heart until it hurt to breathe.
“There’s still time,” Elle said.
Right. Eleven—no, ten minutes until the rehearsal started.
Elle was right. Olivia was cutting it close, but she could still make it.
Unless Olivia wasn’t coming.
Margot lifted a shaking hand, resting her fingers against the notch at the base of her throat. Her pulse fluttered wildly under her skin, her heart going haywire. She couldn’t think that way. She couldn’t let herself think that way. Olivia would be here. She had to be here. There was too much riding on this wedding, it mattered too much to Olivia for her to simply blow it off.
Unless . . . unless Margot was wrong. Unless Olivia had changed her mind. Made it home and talked to her dad and decided to do what Margot had feared she would, set what she wanted aside to take care of whatever was going on in Enumclaw that she hadn’t even let Margot know about.
Margot had never felt so utterly in the dark in her life, desperately wanting to believe that Olivia would show up, but not knowing. Not knowing where Olivia was, what had happened last night with her dad and his house and his health, if Olivia was on her way. A million terrible scenarios flashed through her head. That Olivia’s dad wasn’t actually okay. That maybe Olivia was there in Enumclaw, needing Margot and afraid to say so after their fight. That the reason she wasn’t picking up her phone might not have been because it was dead like Elle had suggested but because she didn’t want to pick up. Or worse, maybe she couldn’t.
The pressure in her chest ballooned further, each breath she sucked in shallower than the last.
Or, there was always the possibility that she’d made it to her dad’s and thought about everything Margot had said and had taken it all to heart, but instead of deciding that putting herself first for once meant getting in the car and coming back to Seattle, she’d realized that this—the city, this career, this life—wasn’t what she wanted. That Margot wasn’t what she wanted.
Margot set her jaw.
No, absolutely not. Olivia cared too much to simply blow off the wedding. She would, at the very least, show up to make this weekend happen, and then—
Only time and talking to Olivia would tell what would come after. What their future would hold.
Eight minutes.
“She’ll be here,” Margot said, sounding a whole hell of a lot more confident than she felt.
Elle smiled and reached out, squeezing Margot’s hand, a brief show of support that made a tiny bit of the pressure in Margot’s chest release.