Page 66 of The One Night Dash
He shakes his head, lips twitching like he’s heard this a hundred times before. “This is how I spend time with my family, Miss Pembrooke—by keeping my job, by making sure the boss man’s happy.”
“Dash wouldn’t even know,” I argue weakly.
Joel tips his head, grin just sharp enough to land. “He’d know if you disappeared on my watch. And let me tell you—pissed-off boss means no paycheck. No paycheck means no food on the table for my wife and kids. You don’t want that, do you?”
Damn him. He knows exactly which buttons to push. Sympathy, responsibility, guilt—my favorite cocktail.
I exhale hard through my nose. “Fine. But I really don’t need an escort.”
“And yet, here we are.” He opens the back door with a little bow. “After you.”
I slide in, clutching my bag tight to my chest, and stare out the tinted window as the SUV pulls away and I tell him the address.
Harbor Point is where the only family I have left lives, but it was never my home. Twelve miles from Greenwich is the town of Harrington. Wealthy, polished, almost too perfect—cedar-shingled colonials with big windows and wide porches, kids riding bikes with golden retrievers trotting behind them. It’s the kind of town where every front yard looks staged for a magazine, and it’s deemed one of the best places to raise a family on the East Coast. My family’s home is situated just south of an area known as Harbor Point.
It’s waterfront property. The home is a colonial with porches that wrap around like open arms. I never lived there. Never unpacked a single box under that roof.
By the time they moved in, I was already gone.
Michigan feels like another life now, one I don’t talk about. Senior year, I was the it-girl, cheerleading, straight A’s, dating the football star who happened to be my stepfather’s best friend’s son. Perfect on paper. Until I found out he’d been cheating on me.
I still remember the party—sticky floors, beer pong, music rattling the walls. He wouldn’t let me leave, his grip too tight, drunk words slurred with anger and entitlement. I said no. He didn’t listen. After I could not fight anymore, I just closed my eyes and prayed for him to pass out.
After he passed out, I walked three miles home from the party at his home on the lake.
The next morning, I woke to Mom standing there, asking why I had come home, as I was supposed to stay. I started to cry. Mom hugged me, held me, told me it would be okay, that boys are stupid, and some never do grow up. She then told me Jimmy was here, and he said some girl lied to you, that he would never cheat on you. When she asked me to just talk to him. I refused.
My stepfather brought him to my room, telling me to hear him out. I had never been afraid of anyone before in my life, but that day, I found myself terrified to be in the same room with the boy I loved, spent more time with him there and as a result, less with my father. I’d given Jimmy my virginity after junior prom. I’d trusted him with my heart and body.My assailant.
I ran into my bathroom and locked the door.
Jimmy cried, said the same thing over and over, “I would never hurt you, Noelle. You know I would never hurt you.”
After several minutes, maybe an hour, Rick stood outside the door. “Noelle, enough. Your brothers do not need to hear this.”
Luckily, I had my phone and sent Dad a text.
Me
I need you now.
Twenty minutes later, I heard my mother say, “You can’t just walk in here and?—”
“Get the hell out of my way,” Dad had said.
Rick started in on him, and at that moment, I didn’t care if Jimmy was in the room—I knew Dad would get me out of there … and he did.
Elijah Pembrooke has never been the loudest man in the room. He’s a reader, a quiet thinker, someone who knows how to steady a storm without raising his voice. That’s what he did for me the night everything cracked.
He didn’t ask questions right away. Didn’t push. He just drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine, thumb running back and forth over my hand. Calm and steady.
His house was waiting at the edge of the lake, the other side—three bedrooms, cedar siding, windows that caught the water like it was painted there for him alone. Not big or flashy like Rick’s Harbor Point place. It didn’t need to be. It was warm, lived-in, the kind of house where the bookshelves were full and the lamps cast golden light no matter the season.
When we walked inside, he didn’t sayyou’re safe now. He showed me.
He made dinner, something simple but grounding. Spaghetti and meatballs with too much garlic bread, because he knew carbs and warmth soothed the soul. He poured me a glass of ginger ale, put a stack of napkins beside my plate, and let me eat in silence until my chest loosened.
Afterward, he put a blanket on the couch, made sure my favorite, old, dog-eared paperback favorites were on the coffee table.The Diary of a Young Girlby Anne Frank,A Moveable Feastby Ernest Hemingway,Nightby Ellie Wiesel, andTo Kill A Mockingbirdby Harper Lee. He sat on one end of the couch and pulled my feet onto his lap. Not watching me, not hovering—there. The room was filled with quiet companionship, the kind that only my dad could manage.
