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I looked at her. My fierce friend. A great mother. Someone who had experienced her own rock-bottom, who’d survived being in a stalemate with Kip about love and what it meant. Proof that something akin to a happy ending existed.
“Fine.” I let out a huff of breath. “But does that mean I’ve met my quota on deep and meaningful talks for a decade? I can’t handle it.”
She chuckled. “We’ll see.”
Though I was still playing the hardass bitch, I couldn’t deny that the talk did something. It took the weight off my shoulders. It opened my eyes that I did indeed have a whole bunch of women with arms extended, never expecting or rooting for me to fall but ready to catch me if I did.
It was a strange feeling.
I didn’t hate it.
Not one bit.
ONE MONTH LATER
Shaw Shack was bursting at the seams. Summer was gone. Fall had colored the leaves, but the weather was unseasonably warm, one last breath of it before the bite of winter descended. Touristswere squeezing the last out of their vacations. Drinking, eating, basking in their temporary lack of responsibilities.
My laptop was open in front of me, doing work while listening to people around me laugh and complain about their jobs.
I loved my job. Although I wasn’t getting enough dirt to take down a Russian oligarch to save my life, I was back to doing what I loved: making a fuck load of money and ruining men who deserved it. Just because I had accepted that I was in love with a good man and that I was going to live in a small town in Maine for perhaps the rest of my life, neither meant I had gone soft.
Part of my journey—or whatever one would call it—was discovering that I could feel and be soft. But that didn’t mean I stopped loving control. Luxury. Making money. Those were all still parts of my identity. Just not cornerstones of them. I now managed Rowan and Kip’s construction company, the fishing business and the restaurant.
I’d expected a huge battle from Beau about that, considering he wasn’t my biggest fan, and he was the kind of man who would’ve hated even the idea of being bailed out by a woman. There had been plenty of grumbling, but he hadn’t explicitly argued over my investment or my management of the business. A pleasant surprise.
My eyes flickered over to the wall of photos. A new one hung. From a couple of weeks ago. Dinner at Nora’s. Elliot’s father had been there. Beau. Clara. The blended family of our Jupiter crew.
Tiffany had managed to snap an image of Elliot and me after he’d tugged me onto his lap, against my protests of PDA, kissing my neck. I was smiling, my hair down. I looked extraordinarily happy.
She must’ve sent it to Elliot, and he hadn’t told me about having it printed, framed and mounted on the wall. He’d just done it.
My first instinct was to rip it off, protest that I didn’t deserve to be on the wall. But looking at it closer, seeing the relaxation in Elliot’s posture… I’d been so focused on what this relationship was doing to me that I didn’t see what it was doing to Elliot. The good things. I made him happy. It seemed impossible, yet I was tentatively allowing myself to accept it.
I sipped my water. Elliot made great martinis, but I’d stopped at one. I didn’t want to be fuzzy from booze when I gave him his reward for the photo. Not that he’d done it for any kind of reward, which was why he was getting a world class blow job.
I’d whispered this to him when he whisked forward to grab my glass. He’d smiled darkly, kissing my neck amidst the chaos of the bar, lighting up my synapses.
Though I had been working, my head throbbing from the noise and from craning my head at the wrong angle, I’d shut my laptop to watch Elliot work.
He had Blondie—I refused to refer to her by name because I was a petty bitch—helping him behind the bar. My pulse spiked each time she got close to him when she didn’t need to, laughing too loudly at whatever jokes he was telling—he wasn’tthatfunny—and shooting death glares in my direction.
We were not going to be fast friends. I smiled back at her wordlessly saying‘get used to me, girlfriend, I’m here to stay.’
I’d been content to sit and watch Elliot while taunting Blondie for the entire night, but my headache slowly got worse, so I rustled through my purse for a painkiller. I didn’t have a single Advil. There was a time when my purse rattled from the amount of pill bottles I’d stashed in there. Uppers. Downers. Muscle relaxers. Yet I was sober-ish. And an aunt whose niece loved toting my Birkin around with sticky hands, so my purse was free of mood-altering substances.
Rain poured against the ceiling of the bar, coming in out of nowhere, harsh and loud. I rubbed my temples as I peered outat the setting sun, the waves moody and angry as water poured from the previously blue sky.
My head was spinning.
I shifted my attention back to Elliot who was at the bar, busier due to tourists seeking refuge from the rain.
When my phone buzzed, I squinted at the text on my screen, my heart dropping at the message from an unknown number.
Wharf. Now. Tell no one. Or she goes into the ocean.
The picture attached was of a familiar set of combat boots and stuffed spider. Clara. Even with a blinding headache, I felt it. The other shoe dropping that I’d almost convinced myself wasn’t going to happen. I’d chastised myself for never fully relaxing, despite having technically gotten rid of the monsters in the night.
If I’d had more sense, I might’ve registered how stupid the text was, would’ve alerted Elliot or Beau or someone. It was the plot of a bad horror movie, obviously baiting me. But my brain felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, my mouth dry and my heart a jackrabbit in my chest. All I knew was that Clara was in danger, the clamor of the rain, the throbbing of my head and the urgency in the pit of my stomach forcing me off my barstool.