“Hey, hey. Break it up, guys, c’mon.”
A hand was placed on my arm. It was Tracie, her face scared and exhilarated.
“Carter! What’s going on?”
I looked from one of them to the other, the words I should say all slamming against each other in my head. My gaze stopped on Donna. My mind went blank. Then, sweeping Donna up in my arms, I ran.
Footsteps and shouts followed me. Carrying a full-grown woman in my arms, I wasn’t fast, though I was fast enough. I ran until the footsteps and shouts diminished to the quiet buzz of the night, of passing cars and far-off strangers’ voices and my own harried breath.
I surveyed Donna’s half-conscious form incredulously. What had I just done? What was I doing now?
Seeing just how out-of-it Donna really was answered the second part: I had to get her somewhere safe. Now.
I stared at her oblivious face. No, I couldn’t take her to my place. If she hated me already, what would she think when she woke up there with no memory of tonight? Would she even believe me when I tried telling her the truth, tried convincing her that I’d had nothing to do with what Skylar had slipped her?
I brushed a stray hair out of her face. No, it would be better to take her home.
Luckily, her bag was slung over her shoulder. A quick look through her cards revealed the address of her family’s old ranch, which was no help to me now. I was about to move on to scanning her phone when, wedged between her driver’s license and library card, a small sheet of paper fell out: 324 Cherry Tree Lane, it read.
Getting out my phone and plugging it into my maps app revealed an address on the outskirts of town—a dumpy-looking house. It had a purple door, just like the one Donna had mentioned to me. That had to be it.
The cab ride there was depressing, to say the least. Gradually, the city high-rises and swanky apartments gave way to squat structures with neon signs until these too were replaced by medium-sized houses and then, finally, little dirty boxes of homes, and 324 Cherry Tree Lane. The house was unmistakable. It was the most ramshackle looking of all of them, with a lawn of garbage-flecked dirt and that sad, deep purple door.
The cab pulled over; I paid the driver, then picked up Donna and got out.
Unsurprisingly, the door was open, as if the house were resigned to any guest, well intentioned or otherwise. Inside, the floor was a battleground of dust and garbage, and I stepped over it gingerly as I made my way down the hallway, searching for her room.
At the end, the pale sliver of light from the hallway illuminated a Monet poster on the far wall, and I knew I’d hit gold. I flicked on the light and, for a minute, took in the room I’d often wondered about.
It was a small oasis from the wretchedness outside, the peeling tulip wallpaper covered with Monet water lilies, Renoir dogs, and Van Gogh cherry blossoms. Her bed had a velour comforter that was the same light blue as her eyes. I moved it out of the way before setting her down on the white and pink striped sheets underneath. Then, I took off her shoes and tucked her in.
I took one last look at her, at the girl I’d failed today, the woman I’d betrayed. The girl who I wasn’t good enough for, who’d finally figured it out an hour or so ago. Then, with a kiss on her forehead, I left.
In the cab home, shame crept over me. The horrible images of Donna’s house slid through my head—the house that my company had consigned them to, these wretched circumstances I’d forced them into.
That alternated with Skylar’s snarling face, a face I now couldn’t picture any other way. He was supposed to be my friend. My friend, the guy who just tried to roofie someone. Just what kind of company was I keeping, anyway? What was I doing with my life?
As the cab rolled down city blocks, waited at red lights and sped through greens, the question returned to me as a twist in the gut: What was I doing with my life?
It was only once I finally got home and collapsed in bed that the reply came to me: nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Donna
I awoke aching. My whole body felt like I’d jumped off the Empire State Building and had unfortunately survived. I stared up at my water-stained ceiling, trying to make out the shapes they formed, as if that would help me piece together what had happened last night.
The final thing I could remember was the drink Carter’s friend had given me. Then, nothing, black space, gone. Although, whatever had happened, it couldn’t have been that bad if I’d ended up at home in bed, right?
When I sat up, I remembered Carter and his redheaded woman at the bar. My replacement. I flopped back into bed.
I was still wearing my clothes, while my purse was beside my bed. Reaching out, I picked it up and took out my phone. Turning it on gave me a symphony of beeping notifications: ten missed messages, four missed calls. They were all from Helen.
Right away, I called her.
There was one ring, and then Helen yelled, “Donna!”
“Hey. What’s up?” I asked.
There was a pause, and then her furious voice came back. “What’s up? Are you kidding me? After you disappeared last night?”
My gaze flicked down. I was under my bed’s comforter. I never slept under the comforter, only the sheets; I found it too hot.
“What happened last night?” I asked Helen softly, and she let out a soft “Oh.”
“Oh shit, Donna. I…”
“I thought you took me home,” I said.
“So, you’re at home?”
“Yeah. I just don’t remember anything after that drink Carter’s friend gave me.”
Another pause, then, “Oh shit. Shit, Donna. I’m so sorry. We were idiots for leaving you. I mean, I came right back, like, ten minutes later, but you were gone. I think I saw Carter’s friend outside, but Carter wasn’t there. I thought you’d just upped and left, ignored my calls on purpose.”
“No. I…I think I have to go, Helen.”
A whole crumple of my wallpaper had fallen to the floor.
“Wait. Donna, just hold on a sec.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a protest this afternoon—the biggest one yet. RayGen’s got their biggest pipeline project planned. A huge part of the Arapaho National Forest is slated to go. Everyone’s meeting at Byers Peak. I’m going there at four. You should come.”
Halfway through my automatic “No,” I paused. My wallpaper was falling off my walls, my body was dead tired from who knew what, and I couldn’t stand to be in this room another second.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
Then, I hung up and started moving. Getting out of bed was easy now that I knew what would catch up with me if I lay there, if I let it. I was in no mood to consider the hazy conclusions produced by my phone conversation with Helen.
No, there was no point in sitting here feeling sorry for myself. I had a protest to go to.
I slipped off last night’s red dress and slipped on today’s ‘fuck-you’ skull T-shirt and ripped-up shorts. After adding a bandana and my cowboy boots, I was ready to go.
The roads were empty, just one long, bare line of pavement between me and my destination. I drove unthinkingly; my mind was already with the trees that lined the road. A few minutes later, after I pulled up onto the shoulder, minutes away from the peak we were to meet at, I walked out of my car and into the trees.
The silent giants shifted as I passed through them. They seemed to know what was on my mind, know better than I what I should do next. Yes, with their broad, hard trunks and extended, well-leaved branches, the trees were exactly as they should have been and nothing more. Not like me. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore, who I was. And, most importantly, what I should do.
Even here, there was no escaping Carter and my feelings for him. Tired already, I stopped to sit on a fallen-down log. Seated there, I gazed out into the green shade of the forest. It was so calm and quiet—just like the forest where Carter and I had had our first official “interaction.”
And to think tha
t I could have believed that man—that renowned womanizer—could have thought I was anything other than a passing amusement. How could I have?
A brown squirrel burst out of a nearby bush, chasing another. It was easy how I had believed him: Carter’s gifts, his words—hell, that look on his face when he’d watched me sometimes. How could I not have thought that he really cared?
Feeling a tingle on my shoulder, I turned around to see a spider. Yelping and leaping up, I brushed it off. Once on the ground, it scurried off.
In any case, it didn’t matter how well-founded my belief in Carter’s care had been; now I knew the truth. Our whole deal had been an amusing way for him to screw me over. It had taken him all of one day to find another woman to replace me with.
I sat back down. Now, all I had to do was forget about him. Sure, it was unfair that something that felt so right could be so wrong, but now that I had seen the truth, there was no doubting what I had to do—forget about him.
“Please,” I whispered to the forest, to the universe, to God, to whoever was listening. “Please, if I’m supposed to forget Carter, help me. Please help me. Show me the way.”
A sweet-scented breeze flowed by me, and I exhaled. Maybe, just maybe, if I did my best, the universe would deal with the rest. Maybe things were going to be all right. Checking my phone revealed that it was 3:50 p.m. I had spent longer in the forest than I’d realized; it was time to get to Byers Peak.
It only took me a few minutes to get to the summit. Halfway there, the trees started to thin out, and all I had to do was follow the sound of the far-off voices. Helen hadn’t been kidding. This wasn’t just the biggest protest against RayGen yet; this was an all-out war, with our side amassing what must have been hundreds. I hardly recognized anyone. I saw Peter with his usual tie-dye shirt, but I was otherwise among strangers. Everyone was chanting already, moving toward the trees.
“RayGen not again! RayGen not again!”
The sky reverberated with our angry roar. Hell, even the clouds were crackling with our anger—dark storm clouds rolled forward to meet our advance.
As the crowd marched ahead, I was brought along with it. There was no way I was going to find Helen here unless she texted me. Already, however, I was swept up in the crowd’s chants and feverish energy. I was pumping my fist to the mantra as I had dozens of times before.
I was marching ahead, the most frenzied of all. I was passing angry, righteous faces, stomping feet, and pumping fists. Then, I was at the front of the pack, my “RayGen not again!” the loudest of all, my tread a stomp, my fist a punch.
As we neared the trees, an all-too-familiar black car pulled up in front of them. I froze. No, it couldn’t be. And yet, it was. Even as I stopped, immobile, and the sea of protestors surged past me, still I saw the man who stepped out of that black car.
Carter Ray himself.
He was striding over to the nearest tree. There, amid the shouts and boos, he chained himself to its thick trunk. Putting a megaphone in front of his mouth, he spoke.
“You can stop chanting—we’re on the same side, now.”
There were more jeers and boos as the crowd continued its advance. But Carter wasn’t finished yet.
“I came here to tell everyone that I’m going to be making some changes. Not changes, really, more like a complete overhaul. I came here to tell you that from now on, RayGen won’t be using pipelines at all, because we’re going to be focusing on renewable energy.”
Now the crowd had reached the line of trees, and it had brought me along with it. It was motionless, silent, listening. Because Carter Ray had just gotten started.
“I’m not sure how to explain it, how to explain how wrong I’ve been. All I know is that it has something to do with my dad, my brother, and a woman named Donna. You probably all know my father, Heston Ray. What you don’t know is that his obsession with this company destroyed our family, a fact that I’ve spent most of my life denying. It hurt too much to admit the truth, that he—and I—have made mistakes. But even my brother’s insistent meddling over the years wasn’t enough to make me see how short I’ve fallen of the man I wanted to be.
“No, Donna did that. She’s the kindest, funniest, most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met, and yes, as you can probably guess, I’ve all but ruined things irreparably with her. She saw the best in me when everyone else could only see the worst, and, despite everything, she believed in that; she believed in my innate goodness, time and time again. She showed me the beauty of life when I’d forgotten that beauty existed at all. She made me feel, when I’d all but forgotten how.
“And I guess that I’m doing this, making these changes, because I can’t do it anymore. I can’t go on lying to myself that I’m doing what I want to do, that I’m being the man I want to be. I don’t want to be a man who mortgages our planet’s present with its future, who cuts down and destroys the very trees and habitats that are giving us the air we breathe. I don’t want to be the man who spends every night with a different woman and yet goes home empty and alone.”
Carter cleared his throat and exhaled.
“I want to be a man I can be proud of. Who does right by his family and his community and himself. Who creates a company that makes life better for everyone, not just for the chosen few who get the profits in their pockets. In short, I want to be the man Donna saw in me, the man I hope I can live to be. And, I guess, you could say this is all for her—the only woman I’ve ever loved and ever will love, the woman I can only hope to win back—one desperate, foolhardy attempt like this at a time.”
Silence. Then, the crowd roared its approval. As cheers surrounded me from all sides, I found my feet moving once more. I was advancing through the crowd, toward the man chained to a tree, the man I thought I had known and did know, the man I now knew that I loved. Carter Ray.
When I reached the front of the crowd, our eyes locked immediately. He stared at me like I was a ghost, and I stared at him like he was the love of my life. Because, now, I knew he was.
It was only a few steps before I reached Carter and his tree. Our lips met before the words spilled out, before Carter murmured, “You’re here. You came. You…”
“Feel the same” I finished for him.
Then, as the crowd cheered on and the sky finally broke out into rain, which was really tears of joy, as Carter’s chained hand clasped mine, with one sly smile at my love, I whispered in his ear, “Though, you’ve given me quite the inspiration for tonight.”
Epilogue
Carter
Tonight would decide everything. As we drove up to her parents’ ranch, I kept glancing over at Donna. Each glance, however, revealed the same serene face as last time. I didn’t get it. How could she be so calm at a time like this? Six months on from that fateful protest, didn’t she realize that tonight would decide everything?
Swiftly, I passed car after car in the left lane. I wanted to get to the ranch as fast as possible, to get this over with. I couldn’t stand not knowing.
Another glance at the glistening diamond ring on Donna’s finger provided no relief. Asking Donna to marry me had been easy. The same theme park, the same Ferris wheel, the ring in the same Monet-decorated cookie had done the trick. But now, asking her parents—the same parents I had forced off their ranch—was another matter entirely.
As if reading my harried thoughts, Donna clasped my hand with a small smile. My Donna.
Sure, I had gotten her parents their ranch back, but what if that wasn’t enough? What if they still saw me as Carter Ray, the sociopathic billionaire who had unfairly forced them off their land? I’d only met them a handful of times, probably not enough to totally extinguish their former bad impression of me.
Before I knew it, however, I was pulling up to the wooden building.
“Here we are,” Donna said.
I nodded but said nothing. Something told me that admitting I was really damn close to turning the car around and rocketing both of us off and away was not a good idea. As we
walked toward the door, Donna squeezed my hand.
“Don’t worry. My parents like you.”
I squeezed her hand back, but once again said nothing. There was no use in pointing out that her parents liking me enough to be okay with dating their daughter and liking me enough to be okay with marrying their daughter were two entirely different things.
Her mother, Grace, answered the door with a big smile. Over her shoulder, she yelled, “Tom! They’re here!”
Down the stairs came Donna’s dad, a short man with a gray beard who hugged both of us.
“Glad you two stopped by; it’s been too long.”
“It has,” I agreed as they led us into the family room.
Tom and I sat down on the navy couch, the small talk beginning, Donna and Grace flitting in and out as they worked on dinner. By the time dinner was ready and we made our way into the rich green velvet and cherry wood dining room, the lump in my throat had developed into a full-on inability to speak.
It happened when Donna’s mom cheerily asked if there was anything new in my life worth talking about. Then, during a minute of stunned, awkward silence, where I considered whether now was the time to pop the question instead of at the end of the meal like I had originally planned, Donna chimed in.
“Actually, Mom, there’s something Carter and I wanted to ask you.”
And, just like that, before we had even sat down, it was time. There would be no avoiding it any longer.
“Mr. and Mrs. Whitburn, Donna and I want to get married, and we’d like your blessing.”
As their eyes widened in shock, I continued.
“Before you give us your answer, I want to say a few words. I want to tell you how much your daughter has changed my life. How she opened my heart to her and, in doing so, the world. How not a day goes by that I don’t thank God that I met this caring, interesting saint of a woman.”
Donna’s parents had tears in their eyes, although I couldn’t tell which kind they were until, seizing both our hands, Tom spoke.
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