Page 122 of Say You Will

She steps back with a wounded expression. “I never said you’re unlovable. You’re putting words in my mouth. He poisoned you against me.”

I take a deep breath in through my nose. There’s no point in continuing this conversation. “Leave.”

“Even if I believed you that he wouldn’t hurt you, just being near that man puts you in danger,” she says desperately. “When I heard someone shot at you, and you were in a car chase on the highway, I’ve never been so afraid in my life. Every time you try to go off without me, something horrible happens to you. How are you not terrified? Because Iam. You’re my child. I’m trying to protect you.”

The world goes still around me. I no longer hear the wind in the trees or Oliver’s frantic barking behind the door as I look at my beautiful, manipulative, awful mother. “How did you know I was in a car chase or that someone shot at me?”

She blinks in bewilderment. “What?”

“How did you know?” I repeat slowly.

“One of your friends told me.”

I shake my head. “Try again.”

“I don’t know. I must have seen the car chase on a news report.”

“You pretended you had no idea where I was, but you were using location services on my phone. You’re here now because I turned the phone back on long enough to block you last night. You knew before I answered your call that I was in Pennsylvania. It was you.”

She shakes her head, her face contorted in pain. “How can you believe that?” she whispers.

“Were you responsible for every time someone came after me or assaulted me? Or was the first one a happy accident that gave you the idea to keep going?”

“You’re insane.”

“What did you give Oliver to make him sick so I wouldn’t leave?”

“You’re mentally unwell,” she says.

“I was assaulted by your unhinged fans three times, nearly four if you count the one in the hotel lobby, but always managed to escape by pure, dumb luck without any real injuries. You convinced me every time not to contact the police. Not a single bullet made contact with our car. It didn’t make sense. He drove like a professional, but couldn’t hit his target even once? Credit where it’s due, at least you weren’t actually trying to kill me. Though you’re clearly escalating. You could have killed someone in that car chase. It probably wouldn’t even have been me. Henry and I were in an armored vehicle. Do you have any idea how close we came to hitting a minivan with a bunch of kids in it?”

Her eyes flare briefly before her lips tighten. “You need help. You’ve completely lost your grip on reality,” she says.

“So, if I go to the police, and a judge subpoenas you and and your boyfriend’s phone records, or your plane tickets to Pennsylvania, they aren’t going to show any evidence that you and David Vance—”

“Nick, take her.”

I have less than a second for my mother’s words to penetrate before her bodyguard gets his beefy arms around me and lifts me over his shoulder as I kick and scream. I try the evasive maneuvers I practiced with Henry, but I can’t think through my panic, and when I do try, he compensates too quickly.

“I’m doing this for your own good, Franki. You’ll see that when I get you home,” she says. “This is an intervention.”

Nick has me down the steps before I’ve even oriented myself.

“Remove your hands from her this instant.” The words are shouted in a crisp British accent, as Oliver barrels down the steps and straight for us.

The driver, whom I can make out in my peripheral vision, has exited the car and drawn his weapon. “Call him off, or I’m shooting the dog,” he says in a hard voice.

“Stay!” I scream.

Oliver skids to a stop and snarls at Nick, his growl malevolent.

Nick turns to face the cabin, and in his distraction, I hit him in the kidney with my elbow, then reach up and grab the back of his hair, yanking his head back as fast and hard as I can. The body follows the head, and he fights to stay on his feet as I drag him into a back bend.

Nick loses his grip, scrabbling to keep hold of me. I slip from his hands when my momentum drags us both backward and, rather than lose his own balance, he lets go. I land hard on my right hand and arm, then my face and shoulder, before crashing onto my back.

Pain radiates from my right wrist and up my arm. My left leg sprawls at an angle briefly before I scramble away from Nick. My cheekbone throbs and my hip burns like fire as I hang onto the car handle and drag myself to stand, whirling to face the others.

Nick doesn’t look back at me, his attention on Spencer as Henry’s PA advances toward us. I reach beneath the oversized fleece jacket I’m still wearing and manage to unsnap my holster. With stiff fingers, I attempt to wrap my hand around the butt of the Sig Sauer P365 Henry gave me, but I don’t draw it. I’m not certain I can even lift it. My wrist is sprained or broken. Either way, gripping the gun, even one that is smaller and lighter weight, isn’t something I want to try yet. I can barely feel my fingers making contact with the weapon and have no idea if I can maintain my grip on it to pull it from the holster. Even if I weren’t afraid it would fall from my nerveless fingers the moment it cleared the holster, I need to de-escalate this scene, and drawing another weapon, especially one I may not be able to control, could make things worse.

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