Chapter 2Trapped in the Mudslide with Him

We were stuck in that parking lot well past midnight.

Just as my eyelids grew impossibly heavy, my phone vibrated in my palm with a sharp buzz.

I jolted awake, slamming my thumb against the screen. One trembling bar of service had miraculously appeared.

A split second later, my phone practically detonated.

Ding.

Ding.

Buzz.

A terrifying cascade of missed calls, voicemails, and iMessages jammed my lock screen, coming in so fast the phone began to freeze.

Every single one was from Chad.

I rushed to open the chat.

Where the hell are you? Pick up the phone.

Who are you whoring around with? You can't even send a text?

Cara, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

Are you dead?

Fucking someone else on company time?

You're unbelievable. Don't bother coming back to my place.

The messages grew progressively more aggressive, each one uglier than the last. As I read them, a freezing numbness spread from my chest out to my fingertips. My hands were shaking so badly I kept hitting the wrong keys.

Terrified the signal would drop again, I swallowed the massive lump of humiliation in my throat and started typing.

The road was blocked by a mudslide. We're trapped at a rest stop. There was no service until just now...

Before I could even hit send, an incoming FaceTime call overtook the screen.

Chad.

Fumbling, I hit accept.

"Hey, Chady, I—"

His eyes were wild, dark with fury, and he immediately cut me off with a vicious shout.

"Oh, so you finally pick up?! Where the fuck have you been?!"

I rushed to explain, the words tumbling out of me. "There was a massive storm. A mudslide took out the highway, and the cell towers went down, I had no signal..."

"A mudslide?" Chad let out a harsh, cruel laugh. "Could you come up with a more pathetic excuse? Do you think I'm a fucking idiot?"

His eyes darted to the corner of his screen, catching the silhouette of Bowen sitting in the driver's seat next to me.

His face darkened into something truly ugly.

"Oh. Well, that explains why you weren't answering." The corner of his mouth curled into a sneer. "You've got company."

"No, it's not like that! Just listen to me, he's my director, we're on a work—"

"Director?" Chad barked, cutting me off again. "Trapped in a car in the middle of the night with your male boss? No power, no service? You guys having a good time, Cara?"

"I'm not! We are literally trapped by a natural disaster!" Hot tears were pricking the corners of my eyes, born of sheer, desperate frustration.

"Right. Keep acting." He scoffed.

And then he hung up.

When I tried to call him right back, it went straight to an automated message. He had blocked me.

The car fell deathly silent once more.

I sat there, my arm still suspended in mid-air holding the phone, feeling as though I had been encased in ice.

The illusion of peace I had worked so hard to maintain had just been violently dismantled in front of my boss.

In that moment, a profound, heavy wave of defeat washed over me. If he had just asked if I was okay—just a single question about my safety—I could have found a way to forgive his paranoia. But he didn't.