Chapter 3- Mia Has Vanished.

I drove for another few hours.

By then, daylight had completely overtaken the darkness, and I was so stupidly tired that keeping my eyes open required actual effort.

I was starving.

My back hurt.

My feet were beginning to protest against the gas pedal.

And, once again, the Mustang was running dangerously low on gas.

This time, however, I had a considerably larger problem.

I had twenty-seven dollars left to my name.

Twenty.

Seven.

Dollars.

I glanced at the fuel gauge and released a humorless laugh.

“This is going remarkably well.”

Anxiety was beginning to replace the numbness.

Running away had been easy. Apparently, remaining gone required considerably more planning.

I needed somewhere to sleep.

I needed food.

I needed clothes that didn't consist of a topless evening gown.

Eventually, I would need another tank of gas.

Technically, every problem I had could be solved within seconds.

All I needed to do was pull out one of my American Express cards, tap it against a terminal, and voilà—food, gas, clothes, a hotel room. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, we already knew what would happen if I did that.

One transaction.

That was probably all it would take.

And I hadn't driven through the night, thrown my phone off a bridge, and reduced my available fortune to twenty-seven dollars just to make William's job easier.

So, no.

I could walk into a luxury hotel, request their best suite, order breakfast to the room, purchase an entirely new wardrobe, and have another vehicle delivered before lunch.

I simply couldn't do any of those things without leaving a trail.

One swipe.

One transaction.

One electronic breadcrumb.

And I'd probably be found within three hours.

I could already picture it.

My father, Charles Sterling, descending from his helicopter like an enraged deity, with William and Anton right behind him.

Nope.

Absolutely not.

I loved my father dearly.

I had no desire to see him.

And I certainly had no intention of seeing my cheating husband.

A gas station appeared ahead, and I immediately turned into the parking lot.

The place was practically deserted.

Good.

I parked beside one of the pumps and turned off the engine.

For a few seconds, I simply sat there.

I needed gas.

But with twenty-seven dollars left, filling the tank wasn't an option anymore.

Not if I intended to eat.

I reached for my wallet.

Then I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror.

I looked ridiculous.

Not merely disheveled.

Ridiculous.

I was sitting at some random gas station in the middle of nowhere wearing an evening gown, Valentino sandals, diamond earrings, and a wedding ring large enough to attract attention from across a room.

I looked exactly like what I was.

A wealthy woman who had fled somewhere she wasn't supposed to leave.

“Wonderful.”

I climbed out of the Mustang.

I couldn't keep traveling dressed like this.

The diamonds alone probably cost more than everything inside the convenience store.

I glanced toward the Mustang.

Then something occurred to me.

The trunk.

I hadn't driven this car regularly since my art-school days. For years, it had been shuffled between garages and storage while I repeatedly refused to sell it.

God only knew what I'd left inside.

I opened the trunk.

And stared.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

There, beneath an old blanket, was a piece of my former life.

White denim overalls.

Although white was generous.

They were covered in old splatters of blue, yellow, red, and black paint.

I pulled them out.

Underneath them was an ancient pair of Converse.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

“Oh, my God.”

I remembered these.

I'd worn them constantly as a student. They were scuffed, stained, and decidedly less glamorous than the Valentino sandals currently torturing my feet.

Perfect.

Then I saw the wooden box.

My breath caught.

“No way.”

I reached inside and pulled it out.

My old painting supplies.

Several tubes of paint had undoubtedly died years ago, but beneath them was a familiar leather case.

I opened it.

My brushes.

My favorite set.

For several seconds, I simply stared at them.

Those brushes had existed before I became famous.

Before the Governor's Mansion.

Before galas and campaign dinners and photographers shouting my name.

Before collectors paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for something I'd touched with a brush.

They belonged to the version of me who'd spent entire nights in a studio with paint on her face, surviving on takeout and stubbornness because she was determined to prove that becoming an artist wasn't a foolish decision.

I ran my fingertips over the worn handles.

“Well,” I whispered, “apparently you came prepared.”

I gathered the clothes and headed inside.

In the restroom, I removed the gown.

Then the Valentino sandals.

The overalls and the crop top still fit, although differently than they had years ago. I fastened the straps and slipped my feet into the old Converse.

I looked in the mirror.

The transformation was almost comical.

Then I removed the diamond earrings.

Finally, my eyes fell to my left hand.

My wedding ring.

I stared at it.

For almost five years, that ring had meant something.

Now it felt obscenely heavy.

I couldn't take it off.

Not yet.

I wasn't ready.

So I curled my fingers into my palm and looked away.

One thing at a time.

I folded the gown carefully rather than abandoning it. The Valentino sandals went with it, along with the earrings, and I returned everything to the trunk.

Then I looked at myself again.

Paint-stained overalls.

Old Converse.

Bare ears.

Messy hair.

Red eyes.

No makeup worth mentioning.

I looked nothing like the woman who had walked the red carpet the night before.

And strangely...

I recognized this woman more.

I returned to the trunk and picked up the leather case containing my brushes.

For some reason, I couldn't put it back.

So I carried it with me and placed it carefully on the passenger seat.

My old car.

My old clothes.

My old brushes.

Pieces of a life I'd had before William Peterson.

Maybe that was what I needed.

Not to figure out where Mia Sterling was going next.

But to remember who she'd been before someone else's life became tangled so tightly around hers that she'd nearly forgotten.

I headed back inside the gas station.

Before I reached the register, I spotted an old-fashioned road map on a display for $1.99 and reluctantly added it to my purchases.

Apparently, Mia Sterling—Yale graduate, internationally recognized artist, and woman who had never willingly traveled anywhere without GPS—was about to navigate America like it was 1987.

“Wonderful,” I muttered, tucking the map beneath my arm. “At this rate, I'll be sending Bella a carrier pigeon.”

I paid for it and immediately opened the folded monstrosity.

It really was humiliating, but I needed to figure out how far I was from home.

More importantly, I needed to know how big this place ahead of me actually was.

I stared at the endless collection of lines, numbers, and microscopic town names for several seconds.

Absolutely nothing.

Apparently, Yale had failed to prepare me for this particular crisis.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching the pregnant woman behind the register. “Would you mind pointing out where we are on this thing?”

More humiliation.

Thankfully, she was nice.

With a gentle smile, she took the map from me and spread it across the counter.

“My phone has no reception,” I lied.

I was getting better at this.

I had to be calculated with every word that came out of my mouth. If I'd told her my phone was dead, she probably would've pointed me toward one of the chargers hanging on the display two feet from the register.

And then I'd have to invent another lie.

No reception, however, required no solution.

Look at me.

Twenty-four dollars and some change to my name and already developing the survival instincts of an international fugitive.

She reached beneath the register, pulled out a red Sharpie, and marked our location with a small star.

Then she smiled again and handed the map back to me.

“Here. That way you know where you are.”

“Thank you.”

I folded the ridiculous thing—or attempted to. Apparently, road maps were designed to open easily and never return to their original form.

After fighting with it for several seconds, I gave up, tucked the mangled mess beneath my arm, and walked out before the woman could ask me anything else I might not have a believable answer for.

Still, she had been kind.

If the place at the end of this road was filled with people like her, perhaps I wasn't in quite as much trouble as I thought.

I needed somewhere to rest.

I needed food.

And, most importantly, I needed to figure out exactly how much this little money could do for me.

I looked down at the stupid map beneath my arm and sighed.

Twenty-four dollars.

Some change.

No plan.

No destination.

And now I owned a piece of paper covered in lines I'd never understood before.

Somehow, I felt even poorer than I had five minutes ago.

“Come on, Mia. You have a brilliant mind. Use it.”

I needed a plan.

A real one.

Twenty-four dollars wasn't going to sustain me for very long.

Good God, it wouldn't even secure me a room for the night.

But perhaps it didn't need to.

I could work.

The thought was so startling that I actually stopped walking.

Work.

Not paint-a-canvas-and-sell-it-for-half-a-million-dollars work.

Regular work.

The kind where someone gave me a schedule and paid me for showing up.

Could I do that?

“Of course you can.”

Although the confidence in my voice exceeded the evidence available.

I had degrees.

An exceptional education.

A successful career.

Surely, somewhere in America, those qualifications translated into the ability to earn enough money for a sandwich and a bed.

There was only one problem.

I couldn't exactly walk into a business and hand someone a résumé that said:

Mia Sterling.

That defeated the entire purpose of disappearing.

I climbed back into the Mustang and unfolded the map across the steering wheel.

Or tried to.

“Jesus Christ.”

The thing was enormous.

I found the little red star the woman had drawn for me and traced the nearby roads with my finger.

Then I saw it.

PLEASANT VALLEY — 4 MILES

I stared at the name.

“Pleasant Valley?”

Who came up with these names?

Four miles.

That was manageable.

More importantly, it meant I didn't have to waste what little gas I had left wandering aimlessly.

I folded the map again—badly—and tossed it onto the passenger seat beside my brushes.

Then I started the engine. 

The road ahead gradually became narrower, the buildings fewer and farther between. Mountains surrounded me now, covered in endless stretches of green.

It was beautiful.

Inconveniently beautiful.

A faded sign appeared ahead.

PLEASANT VALLEY, WEST VIRGINIA

West Virginia.

I blinked.

“How the hell did I end up in West Virginia?”

Apparently, that was what happened when one navigated exclusively by the sophisticated strategy of away from New York.

I continued down the road.

The morning air coming through the cracked window smelled different here.

Cleaner somehow.

There were no skyscrapers.

No black SUVs.

No photographers.

No security detail.

No one shouting my name.

Just mountains.

Trees.

A few pickup trucks.

And people going about their morning as though the Governor of New York's wife hadn't vanished overnight.

For the first time since leaving New York, I didn't immediately feel compelled to keep driving.

Maybe this was far enough.

The thought came quietly.

I didn't trust it. But I didn't dismiss it either.

Another sign appeared ahead.

WELCOME TO PLEASANT VALLEY

I exhaled slowly.

“All right, Pleasant Valley. Let's see what you have in store for me.”

The stupid sign had welcomed me to Pleasant Valley, yet I could have sworn I'd driven another mile without seeing a single house.

No businesses.

No people.

Nothing.

Just trees, mountains, and an increasingly narrow road stretching ahead of me.

“Was that sign wrong?” I muttered.

I reached for the map.

Wrong move.

As I leaned toward the passenger seat, I inadvertently pulled the steering wheel with me.

The Mustang veered sharply to the right.

“Shit!”

I jerked the wheel in the opposite direction, but it was already too late.

The car left the pavement.

Everything happened at once.

Gravel.

Grass.

A violent jolt.

And then—

CRASH.

The car slammed directly into an old wooden fence.

My forehead struck the steering wheel hard enough to send a sharp burst of pain through my skull, while everything on the passenger seat went flying onto the floor.

My brushes.

The map.

My wallet.

Everything.

“Ssss—” I hissed through my teeth and pressed a hand against my forehead.

For several seconds, I didn't move.

Then I saw smoke curling from beneath the hood.

My heart lurched.

“Oh, no.”

More smoke followed.

“No, no, no.”

Panic surged through me, yet somehow I remained sitting there.

I didn't unfasten my seat belt.

I didn't climb out.

I didn't even reach for the door.

Instead, I simply closed my eyes.

Pressed them tightly shut.

As though refusing to look at what I'd done might somehow reverse it.

Mia Sterling, what have you done?

I was lost.

I had no phone to call someone to come save me.

No GPS.

No idea where I was beyond a red Sharpie mark on a paper map I apparently couldn't retrieve without driving myself off the road.

And now I'd destroyed the only form of escape I had. The only thing carrying me away from everything I was desperately trying to leave behind.

Something inside me finally gave.

Not gracefully.

Not quietly.

It simply shattered.

A laugh escaped me.

One small, ridiculous sound.

Then another.

Before I knew it, I was laughing so hard my shoulders began to shake.

“Oh, this is marvelous.”

Another laugh tore from my chest.

“Absolutely marvelous.”

A paper map.

A wrecked Mustang.

A cheating husband.

A brother who had apparently been sleeping with said husband.

And somewhere in New York, an entire collection of people was undoubtedly losing their minds trying to find me.

I laughed harder.

Then, without warning, the laughter broke.

A sob came out instead.

I covered my mouth.

Another followed.

And suddenly, hot tears were pouring down my face.

Every emotion I'd managed to outrun for hundreds of miles finally caught up with me at once.

William.

Malcolm.

The bedroom.

Bella screaming.

William reaching for me.

My brother hiding beneath my sheets.

My marriage.

My family.

My life.

Everything crashed into me with such force that I folded forward against the steering wheel and sobbed.

There was nowhere left to run. I couldn't drive another hundred miles and pretend I wasn't devastated.

I couldn't turn the music louder.

I couldn't stare at another road sign and tell myself that all I needed was more distance.

Because now the car wasn't moving.

And neither was I.

For the first time since I'd opened that bedroom door, I had no choice but to sit still.

So I felt everything.

And it was devastatingly painful.

I was drowning in my own emotions, ugly crying without the slightest concern for dignity, when something changed.

I didn't hear footsteps approaching.

I didn't hear anyone call out.

I was so completely consumed by my own devastation that I remained oblivious until two enormous arms reached through the open driver's-side window.

I froze.

A man.

A very large, very muscular man.

And before my exhausted brain could formulate a single coherent question, he was already moving.

Precisely.

Purposefully.

As though finding hysterical women inside smoking Mustangs was simply another item on his daily agenda.

His hand reached across me and released my seat belt.

The buckle snapped free.

“Easy,” he said.

One word.

Deep voice.

Calm.

Then one arm slid behind my back while the other went beneath my legs.

And suddenly—

I was airborne.

He pulled me from the vehicle as though I weighed absolutely nothing.

My crying stopped instantly.

Not gradually.

Instantly.

I stared at him.

He was carrying me.

Actually carrying me.

Like some absurdly masculine hero rescuing a damsel in distress.

Except I was no damsel. And judging by the condition of my Mustang, I was apparently the danger.

“What—”

That was all my sophisticated Yale education managed to produce.

Excellent.

His attention remained on me as he carried me several feet away from the smoking car.

I should have demanded that he put me down.

I should have asked who he was.

I should have been alarmed that a complete stranger had just reached into my vehicle and removed me from it without so much as an introduction.

Instead, I stared.

Because...

Good God.

Whoever had assembled this man had been unnecessarily generous with the materials.

He was tall.

Broad.

The kind of broad that made his shoulders seem almost unreasonable.

Dark-blond hair.

A beard that should have made him look rugged but somehow only made an already handsome face considerably more distracting.

And brown eyes.

Warm, intensely focused brown eyes that were currently studying my face as though I were the only thing in his immediate universe requiring attention.

“Are you hurt?”

Another perfectly reasonable question.

I blinked at him.

Then glanced toward the Mustang.

Then back at him.

Where had he come from?

There hadn't been a house.

There hadn't been another car.

There hadn't been another person anywhere in sight.

Yet somehow, in the precise moment my entire life had finally collapsed around me, this man had appeared out of nowhere and pulled me from the wreckage.

Literally.

He lowered me carefully onto my feet but kept one enormous hand around my arm until he seemed satisfied I wasn't going to collapse.

I looked down at his hand.

Then slowly back up at him.

For several seconds, neither of us said anything. And I had the strangest sensation.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing I could explain.

Just a quiet, inexplicable awareness that something had shifted.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I had known exactly what my life looked like.

Now I had twenty-four dollars, a destroyed Mustang, a bump on my forehead, tears all over my face...

and a complete stranger holding me upright on the side of a road in Pleasant Valley, West Virginia.

I swallowed.

“Who are you?”

His brown eyes held mine.

And somehow, before he even answered, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

I was going to remember his face.

“I should be asking you the same thing,” he said. “You just destroyed my fence.”

My eyes immediately darted toward the Mustang.

Oh.

The old wooden fence hadn't merely suffered minor damage.

Several broken pieces of lumber were scattered across the grass, while another section leaned precariously to one side.

“But I'm considerably more concerned about you than the fence,” he added. “Do we need an ambulance?”

An ambulance?

Yeah, right.

If I needed an ambulance in this place, judging by how little civilization I'd encountered so far, it would probably arrive after someone had already planned my funeral.

I was not particularly impressed with Pleasant Valley.

Assuming I'd even made it to the town.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I'll pay for the damage.”

“Let's not worry about that right now.”

Oh, but I absolutely needed to worry about that right now.

Because paying for his fence required money.

Fixing the car required money.

Existing, I had recently discovered, required an astonishing amount of money when one couldn't access any of hers.

And I needed that vehicle.

Desperately.

“I'm Sawyer,” he said. “I own this land.”

Hello, Sawyer.

Thankfully, I only said that in my head.

Because apparently, I had become mute.

Again.

What the hell was wrong with my brain?

Why did it abandon language every time life presented me with a situation for which I had not adequately prepared?

Sawyer studied me for another second.

“I think you hit your head.”

My hand immediately flew to my forehead.

Sure enough, a painful bump was already forming beneath my bangs.

“Yes,” I murmured. “I believe I did.”

“Sit down for a minute.”

And, inexplicably, I obeyed him.

No objection.

No questions.

No reminder that I was perfectly capable of deciding whether I needed to sit.

I simply lowered myself onto the soft pasture like an obedient child while this enormous stranger watched me carefully.

Wonderful.

Apparently, a concussion had stripped me of my personality.

Sawyer crouched a few feet away.

“Where were you headed?”

And that—

That was apparently the funniest question anyone had ever asked me.

I burst out laughing.

Loudly.

Sawyer stared at me.

I laughed harder.

“I'm sorry,” I managed, although nothing about my behavior suggested genuine remorse.

His eyebrows pulled together.

Poor man.

He had walked onto his property that morning and discovered a smoking Mustang embedded in his fence and a hysterical woman dressed in paint-covered overalls who alternated between crying, laughing, and staring at him without speaking.

He undoubtedly thought I'd escaped from somewhere considerably more secure than New York.

But then he did something I wasn't expecting.

Sawyer lowered himself onto one knee in front of me.

Such a simple gesture.

Nothing extraordinary.

He merely brought himself down to my level instead of towering over me. And somehow, that tiny act of consideration undid me.

The laughter disappeared.

Instantly.

My face crumpled.

A sob escaped me before I could stop it.

Sawyer's expression changed.

“Oh, no,” he murmured.

That only made it worse.

Tears flooded my eyes again.

“I don't know,” I whispered.

He remained perfectly still.

“I don't know where I was going.”

There.

The truth.

Perhaps the first honest thing I'd said to another human being since I'd driven away from my home.

“I was just driving.”

My voice broke.

“I don't know where I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do next.”

Sawyer didn't interrupt me.

He didn't ask why.

Didn't demand an explanation.

Didn't tell me everything would be fine when he couldn't possibly know that.

He simply stayed there.

One knee pressed into the grass.

Those warm brown eyes fixed on mine.

And somehow, his silence felt kinder than anything anyone could have said.

I wiped furiously at my cheeks.

“This is humiliating.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

“Running into my fence?”

A startled laugh escaped through my tears.

“No.”

I looked at the wrecked Mustang.

Then at my paint-covered clothes.

Then back at him.

“All of it.”

His gaze lingered on me for another moment.

“Well,” he said calmly, “the fence was old anyway.”

I stared at him.

Then I laughed.

A real one this time.

Small.

Wet.

Completely inappropriate.

But real.

And Sawyer smiled.

Good God.

That was unfortunate.

He was devastatingly handsome when he smiled, too.