Candy Crush by Tami Lund Page A

it. He was finally through with me. I
was so happy, because I couldn’t wait to go home to my parents. I
was planning to move back in with them, until I figured out where
to live and find a new job. I had it all planned out in my head. I
was even toying with the idea of going to New Orleans for a week or
two, just to get away and hang out with Emmett. And then he burst
my bubble,” she said bitterly.
    “He always called me queirda which
means darling in Spanish. He said, ‘Mi queirda, I have some
excellent news. We’re going to be married.’ I was, as you can
imagine, not nearly as excited as he expected me to be. I told him
I wasn’t marrying him and he said, ‘Oh yes you are. You don’t have
a choice in this matter.’ It was the first time Miguel had ever
used what I thought of as his scary voice on me. I’d
witnessed him use it before, but he’d never directed it at me, even
when I was trying to annoy him enough to let me go. So I was pretty
scared at that point.
    “I suggested we just continue living
together, and I’d try to be a better girlfriend and he said, ‘well,
there’s a slight problem with that. You see, the government has
become aware of the fact that I did not move to this country using
legal means, and I am not in a position to go back to Mexico at
this moment. So you are going to become my wife, so I can stay in
Texas.’ And you know what I was feeling at that time? I was angry
because he wanted to marry me for a stupid Visa, not because he
loved me. Isn’t that the end all, be all? Here this man was telling
me I was about to be trapped, legally, for the rest of my life, and
all I could think was, ‘he doesn’t even love me.’ I’m such a sap.”
She sounded disgusted with herself.
    “You’re not a sap,” Brandon said quietly.
“You’re human. Everybody wants to be loved, Gabriella. It’s human
nature.” This coming from a guy who, according to his
sister-in-law, had shown the first signs of emotion toward a woman
the day before, when he’d been furious with Gabriella for flirting
with Jared.
    “So you obviously gathered your wits about
you and decided to escape,” Brandon prompted.
    Gabriella nodded. “Yes. Maybe that was the
final straw, but I was determined not to marry him. Maybe if he’d
said, ‘I love you, Gabriella, and I want to spend the rest of my
life with you,’ I might have felt differently, even though I didn’t
want to marry him regardless. But it would have been harder to
leave if I knew he loved me. Stupid, but in the end, it didn’t
matter, because he didn’t.
    “So Miguel announced the engagement, and set
his sisters to planning the wedding. Probably he suspected I would
drag my feet and not do anything about it. The good thing was, the
wedding planning made planning my escape easier. I managed to get
away from Miguel or any of his family a little easier on a regular
basis, because there was always something to do: dress fittings,
cake tastings, registering, shower planning. Miguel insisted on a
big wedding, even though he didn’t want anything to do with the
wedding details. And his sisters couldn’t watch me
twenty-four-seven, especially when they didn’t realize they were
supposed to be babysitting me.
    “I bought a new cell phone with a new,
unlisted number. I kept my laptop and a bag of clothes in my car at
all times, in case I needed to leave quickly. I started hoarding
cash and keeping it in my car, too. God knows, if someone had
stolen my car back then, they would have hit the jackpot. When I
moved in with Miguel, I put most of my stuff in a storage unit. I
began selling it, piece by piece, on eBay, and in the meantime, I
was surfing the Internet, trying to decide what to do with my life.
I knew I couldn’t stay in Dallas. Miguel is a very powerful man
there, and he would have found me. I figure my family is safe as
long as they have no idea where I am. My brother is far enough away
that it would be hard for Miguel to get to him,