Driving Mr. Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

with someone, accepting all of his quirks and differences, seemed like the ultimate epic adventure. And I’d worked hard to make myself into the woman I thought he deserved. I honestly tried to make the best of my job at the law firm. I let my mother select a work wardrobe for me at the Elegant Professional Boutique, which specialized in pantsuits in a dazzling array of taupe. I stopped dyeing neon streaks into my hair. Eventually, the most exciting part of my day was choosing which flavor of yogurt to take with me for lunch.
    Little by little, I’d given up so much of myself, and the painfully embarrassing thing was that Jason hadn’t even asked me to. I’d done it willingly, because I thought it was what he wanted. It turned out, of course, that what he wanted was Lisa. After all of that, he still didn’t want me. The life I thought we would share didn’t mean anything to him. If it had, he would have been honest with me. He wouldn’t have been able to tell another woman that he loved her.
    Jason was torn—and not in the way I wanted him to be. When he realized that I was going to call off the wedding because of whathe insisted was just an emotional affair, he promised me that it was over. The wedding plans had scared him, he insisted, and he’d panicked. That was something I could understand. Mom’s daily quizzes on napkin colors and floral preferences nearly drove me to the brink, and I was supposed to be interested in that stuff. I felt terrible, listening to his voice, that I hadn’t noticed how stressed he was. Maybe if I’d picked up on it, we could have avoided this whole mess.
    I wanted to believe him. I wanted to forgive him. I wasn’t ready to give up what I thought we’d had together or my parents’ tacit approval. But my anger kept getting the better of me. Every once in a while, I would be overwhelmed with the urge to punch Jason in the throat. I couldn’t seem to stop checking his texts whenever he left the room. I wanted to trust him, but after reading the sweet, loving messages he’d sent his supposedly platonic best friend, I felt this weird need to assure myself of his fidelity. I was starting to feel like that crazy girl you saw on episodes of Cheaters, and I hated every moment of it, so I broke it off with him. And even though part of me still loved him, I canceled all of the reservations and wedding plans. The ring relay cycle began. I gave it back. He returned it. I gave it back. He returned it.
    On our scheduled wedding day, when Jason said he had something to ask me, I said I had something to tell him. He went first and proposed all over again. I responded that I would be leaving in two days to take a vampire-transport job from Iris and needed the time to think about whether I’d ever be ready to trust him again. I was determined to make a final decision on the road. When I got back, I told him, I was either going to commit to Jason or give back his ring permanently.
    I was pretty sure he wished that I’d gone first.
    These were heavy thoughts, unwelcome distractions, as I made my way across an empty parking lot, also known as the lonely serial killer’s playground. As I crossed the battered concrete partition that separated the motel lot from the restaurant, I heard the faint plinks of gravel skittering across blacktop behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled up. I was being watched. I could feel eyes sliding over my skin like some icky radar system. I squared my shoulders and listened attentively as I moved.
    I was about thirty paces from the motel office, twice that to my room. I could break out at a run, but that could provoke the nasty “chase” instinct common in parking-lot predators. And there was a good chance that I could trip and smash my face on a speed bump.
    When I’d worked at Bite, a vampire bar just outside Chicago, the bouncer trained the waitresses on basic self-defense. The owner didn’t want us walking to our cars after closing without some idea