Chapter 245

Noah and I started driving by 2 p.m. Our hope was to drive as late into the night as we could and find a motel along the way when we couldn’t stand the drive anymore.

The first leg of our journey began smoothly. We made it out of the city without any stops or other cars around us, a rarity on any given day. Soon, our path morphed into open highway.

As the monotonous drive threatened to lull me to sleep, I decided to strike up a conversation with Noah so that he would not feel compelled to do the same.

“What are you going to do once we get to Crescent Moon Pack territories?” I asked.

“I told you, I have a little apartment set up for the two of us,” Noah began, his eyes never leaving the road. “The first and last months’ rent are already paid for, and that lease that we signed and faxed over is for a year—”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I rolled my eyes and playfully pinched Noah’s arm.

“What are you going to do…you know, a job or a hobby? Are you going to continue your career as a financial lawyer? Or are you going to pursue some other passion?”

Noah’s eyes widened and his mouth formed an “o”.

“I was planning on starting my own firm,” he said.

This time, my eyes widened.

“Wow. That’s ambitious.”

Noah chuckled nervously.

“I know.”

“I didn’t even know that you wanted to start your own practice. I thought that you were happy with the practice that you were at.”

He shrugged.

“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but it wasn’t really feasible in the city. There were already too many well-established firms there to really get your foot in the door, especially if you didn’t have big connections.”

“And you’ll have better luck in the Crescent Moon Pack territories?”

“That’s what I’m hoping.” Noah’s hand left the steering wheel just long enough to run through his hair. “It’s a less densely populated area, so the odds are that there are fewer lawyers, let alone financial lawyers.”

He glanced at me out of the corner of my eye.

“Wouldn’t you think?” he asked, as though looking to me for reassurance.

I smiled and grabbed his hand, prying it off the steering wheel so that I could kiss the knuckles.

“Yes. You just need to believe in yourself.”

Noah nodded as he took his hand back and placed it on the steering wheel.

“You’re right, of course. You’re always right.”

He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.

“So, what are your plans?” he asked. “What are you going to do once we get there?”

“I’m going to handle Ever After Weddings long-distance,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“And?”

My brow furrowed.

“And what?”

“What else are you going to do?”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut. A few minutes passed, and I still didn’t reply.

“Was that really all you had planned to do?” Noah asked, sounding astonished.

“Well, yes,” I said. “As majority shareholder, I’ll make plenty of money from just doing that. We won’t need to worry about anything financially, I assure you.”

Noah’s lips flattened into a straight line.

“I don’t doubt that,” he responded, “but don’t you think it will get awfully lonely, just staying in the apartment and handling Ever After Weddings long-distanced, day in and day out?”

“Well, I will leave the apartment eventually,” I countered, though my heart sank into my stomach at the thought of being stuck with nowhere to go.

“Don’t you have a passion project that you want to start? Something that you’ve always wanted to do but never could? Something that you could only do if you started your life all over?”

I leaned my head against the cool window beside me. Watching the side of the highway pass me by in a blur, I ran the edge of my knuckle along the glass, making circles and other random shapes in its wake.

“Ever After Weddings was my passion project,” I murmured.

“What do you mean? I thought that it was just the job that Lily gave you because no one else would hire you after you got out of prison.”

I cringed at his bluntness.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“No, you’re right,” I said with a sigh. “It was just a job, at first, but it quickly became more than that. I was good at it, and I hadn’t found something that I was so good at since the company that Bob and I ran together before I was thrown in jail.”

I drew a heart on the window, then ran an “X” through it.

“It made me happy. I could put all my talents—my people skills, my organizational skills, my party-planning skills, my eye for flare—into one place. It was stressful, but the adrenaline was glorious.”

I smiled slightly.

“It was where I met and befriended Terri. It was where—”

I almost said, “It was where I met Andrew,” but I thought better of it.

“It was where I became my best self,” I said instead. “I just don’t know what to do with myself without Ever After Weddings.”

“I know how much wedding planning means to you,” Noah said, “but there must be something else that puts a fire in your belly.”

I laughed dryly. I wasn’t sure why, but the phrase “fire in your belly” coming out of Noah’s mouth was bitterly funny to me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just don’t know. I have no idea what I want to do or which direction I want to go in.”

I sighed and pressed my forehead even further into the car window.

“I’m lost.”

Silence fell upon us. It caused me to fidget and mess with my seatbelt. Noah even grew uncomfortable enough to turn on the radio and switch the channel to some light jazz.

After several minutes of this discomfort passed, I looked up towards the windshield. I groaned lightly as I saw us coming up on a traffic jam, and fast.

“Noah, you’re going to want to slow down,” I said.

“I know,” he replied.

The car did not slow down.

“Noah, slow down.”

“I’m trying.”

My heart leapt into my throat.

“What do you mean, you’re trying?”

“I mean that I’m stomping on the break, and nothing is happening!”

My head whipped over to look at Noah. All the color had escaped his face. He was stomping his foot on the brake as hard as he could, panic written all over his body, but the car did not slow down.

My mind raced. My pulse pounded sharply in every inch of my body. I gripped tightly at whatever part of the car interior I could grab on to.

The other cars were coming up fast, and yet they did not move a centimeter, blissfully unaware of the danger that was approaching them from the rear. Noah honked his horn, trying to warn the other drivers of what was about to happen, although we both knew that there was nothing to be done. Some cars honked back, only to be rude.

“Please, Noah, stop!” I screamed.

Noah’s car collided with the SUV in front of us. My head hit the roof, and everything went black.