Chapter 14

EMILIA

The summer before college, Zane got his driver’s license and drove us up to Maine to visit his extended family.

My parents had never approved of our relationship. They saw Zane as a country bumpkin—someone beneath our family’s status who was only with me for the connections my last name carried. They would have preferred I married our rival’s son and secured a business merger to expand the family profits.

When I put my foot down and insisted that what we had wasn’t some fleeting childhood infatuation—that I loved him—they weren’t happy about it.

My sister was too young to understand the weight of my family’s expectations, so she stayed out of it.

But my brother? He was always on my side.

At least, he was—until I snuck out for that road trip to Maine without telling a soul.

Zane and I got into a huge fight somewhere along the way. He pulled over fifteen miles from his grandparents’ house, dropped me off on the side of the road, sent me