“Whatever,” I said, sighing.
I didn’t care that Doug was around. I was ready to address this situation. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t listen to my nagging. It was the fact that I was scared. I was anxious and fearful, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even acknowledge the fact that it bothered him in the slightest. I’d ridden in that car gripping onto the emergency handle and shaking in the passenger’s seat, and he didn’t give a damn about it. He didn’t care that I was scared and he did nothing to try to make it better. He wanted me to trust him, but only if that meant keeping my mouth shut.
“You two hungry?” Doug asked. “There’s a giant truck stop with a restaurant not too far up the road. Figured we could all use a stretch.”
“Sounds perfect,” Colin said.
“What about you, Miss Abby?” Doug asked.
“Whatever makes the man happy,” I said, defeated.
I could feel Colin’s eyes on me, but I didn’t care. Whatever excitement I’d possessed at seeing Colin on the airplane had completely dissipated. Whatever fantastical reality I had built up for us in my head had come crashing down around me. The kind, sweet, laid back man who tossed his luggage into the back of the car at the airport didn’t exist any longer, and I was just as ready to get to Kansas City as he was.
If I could get there safely.
The weather was still disgusting. No snow anywhere in sight, but the freezing rain was pouring down. It was icing the bridges and creating low-hanging icicles that shattered against the top of the truck. The temperatures were plummeting to below freezing and the snow that was still on the roads was beginning to harden into ice. I could feel the truck sliding around as we pulled into the rest stop, and my hands were already trembling with fear.
I was just glad we were pulling over.
I shoved Colin out of the truck just to plant my feet onto solid ground. I scurried my way into the restaurant, anxious to sit down and get a cup of coffee in me. Even though it was three in the afternoon, it looked like it was almost midnight outside. The gray clouds that were heavy with angry weather seemed to be taunting me.
Like they used to do when I was a little girl.
I don’t know why the weather frightened me so much, but it did. There was this one snowstorm I could remember, and it kept popping up to the forefront of my mind whenever I chanced to look outside. It was the largest snow storm Minnesota had ever received. It snowed for five entire days before coating us in a sheet of ice. My father was trying to get home from a business convention on the other side of the state, and my mother kept telling him to just stay put until the snow and ice could melt.
But my father was anxious to be home and I was anxious to see him.
He had been gone for two weeks and I missed him. I missed our nighttime rituals and I missed cuddling with him on the couch. And I knew my mother missed him, though she was trying to be strong for me.
I wanted him home and I was excited when Mom told me he would be driving through.
But, what should’ve been a six-hour drive ended up in a three-day manhunt to figure out what had happened to him. His car had skidded on a massive patch of ice and ended up in a ditch. But because his car was white and buried in the shadows of the snow, the police just kept buzzing by him.
He almost froze to death because he didn’t want to wait until the weather cleared.
“Here ya go,” Doug said, grunting. “Got you a cup of coffee.”
“Did the waitress come by?” I asked.
“You looked a little lost in thought. I caught her before she bothered you.”
“You’re so considerate,” I said. “Your wife is very lucky.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t always this way. She taught me how to be. All this? Courtesy of her training.”
I grinned as I wrapped my hands around the warm mug.
“A word of advice?” Doug asked.
“I’ll take anything right now,” I said, sighing.
“Communicate. Even if he’s just your boss. But I don’t really think that’s the case.”
“Trust me. He’s only the owner of the company I work for,” I said.
“Either way, communicate with him. He only knows what you tell him. Us men aren’t mind readers.”
“I just want out of this weather. It’s terrible, and someone is going to get hurt. Hell, we almost got hurt,” I said.
“Then tell him that.”
“I did! He won’t listen.”
“No. You have to tell him why,” Doug said.
I looked up into his eyes and held his gaze until Colin sat down next to me in the booth.
“How far out from Kansas City are we?” Colin asked.
“About an hour out,” Doug said.
“Wonderful. We can get to Kansas City, get another rental, and make it into Wichita tonight.”
Doug shot me a look, so I cleared my throat and spoke.
“Colin, I really think we should get a hotel in Kansas City,” I said.
“No way. Not when we’re so close,” Colin said.
“At this rate, we won’t get into Wichita until close to midnight. And the nighttime is going to make this driving worse. The clouds don’t look like they’re going to let up anytime soon, and I just think it’s safer,” I said.
“Then you can stay behind in Kansas City and I’ll head on. But I need to make it into Wichita tonight,” Colin said.
“Colin, that’s not safe for you and you know it. No preparation you need to do requires you
