Page 2 of Married with Mayhem

On and on it goes, until the end of time.

I press my lips to her forehead. My chest caves in with terror at the clammy chill.

“Everything I am and everything I have is yours forever,” I whisper in her ear. “You win, my beautiful girl.”

No goodbyes will be said. This isn’t the end. The fucking world isn’t allowed to keep spinning without her in it.

She struggles to keep her smile. “I love you more than anything, Monte,” she breathes out, as faint as the softest sigh.

“Stay awake,” I beg.

But her eyes have already drifted closed. Her head rolls back. Her body relaxes, given no other choice.

And even when I yell her name over and over with miserable anguish, she doesn’t hear a sound.

THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER….

1

SABRINA

“Declined.”

The card is flicked back in my general direction. It lands on my backpack, which is lying open on the counter while I rummage through pocket after pocket in search of more resources. Humiliation turns my face as hot as the planet Mercury.

“Try this one.” I hand another card over. “Please.”

I flash a smile. This usually gets me somewhere. But not today.

The guy on the other side of the counter is about my age and immune to smiles. He rolls his eyes and purses a set of thin, wrinkled lips that have probably never seen a stick of moisturizer.

“Also declined.” His voice is like a symphony of honking geese.

At least he doesn’t throw my card this time. He pushes it across the counter with a spindly forefinger and plucks the paper bag out of my hand with a smirk.

Maybe I wronged him in a past life and he’s discovered his chance at revenge. I don’t know. I don’t care. All I want is my freaking pretzel.

Ineedthat pretzel. It’s now been eighteen hours since I’ve eaten. This morning I was so anxious about my escape plan that I couldn’t deal with breakfast. And forget airplane food. My last encounter with airplane food included three days of puking my guts out into a mop bucket. The little cellophane bags of oyster crackers passed out by the flight attendants probably would have been okay but why take chances?

Grabbing a bite to eat as soon as I landed in New York seemed like a much better plan. New York food has never made me puke. But I didn’t count on my bank cards being useless and I’m not carrying any cash that would be accepted on this side of the Atlantic.

“You need to get away from the counter now,” honks the terrible man who stole my pretzel bag. The red and white tag pinned to his shirt says BOLTON. The name doesn’t fit him. He doesn’t seem like a Bolton at all. I would have guessed his name to be something like Peter. Or Dick.

“You’re blocking the other customers,” he complains when I don’t move fast enough. He sniffs some wet snot back into his ill-mannered skull and glares.

Maybe I should just grab the pretzel bag and run. I’ll come back when my card situation is fixed and shower him with enough money for fifty pretzels. It could work. Bolton doesn’t seem especially spry. There are no security guards or cops in sight at the moment. Everyone who isn’t lined up here for a pretzel is busy getting hysterical about some massive cyberattack, which I haven’t had the time to worry about yet.

There are two problems with my plan.

The first is that I’m not a fast runner. Even in the best of circumstances, all I can do is caper along at a pathetic trot andright now I can’t even manage a trot. The small ankle fracture I suffered when I slipped in a puddle aboard my uncle’s yacht on Easter Sunday has healed but I’m still limping. A toddler could outrun me.

Also, no matter how hungry and grumpy I might get, I like to think I’m still above stealing an airport pretzel.

“If you could just hold onto my pretzel,” I say to Bolton. “I need a minute to call the bank and sort this out. I’ll be right back.”

Bolton stares at me with dull eyes the color of rotting avocados. The heady scent of baking dough is torture. My empty stomach clenches.

But Bolton, the overlord of the JFK Airport pretzel kiosk, knows no mercy. He stuffs the bag into an overflowing garbage can and motions to the customer behind me.

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