Page 82 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

Because, if I’m being honest, when I found out about the statute of limitations, when I realized I was free, that Connor didn’t have a hold over me anymore, my first reaction was fear.

What was I without him?

I was terrified to find out.

But then I thought about the other fault lines in my life—those hadn’t felt like choices. My parents’ death certainly wasn’t. Even Italy and Connor and the book—those had never felt like choices. Because I didn’t choose to have Connor betray me and break my tender heart. To be blackmailed by him and have him force me to do what he wanted.

But this. This.

I could walk away on my terms. So that’s what I was going to do. It was scary, but it was all going to work out. I was going to manifest it.

I should’ve known you can’t manifest your life. The decisions you make aren’t binding on other people. Proof positive: I’m in a fight with Harper, and Connor’s very much still here.

And then there’s Oliver.

Oliver, whose heart I broke when we were having a rough patch and were on a break.

No. That’s not true.

We weren’t on a break. We’d only fought. And I blew it up into some big dramatic thing because I’m a moron, and then I went on a book tour with Connor and spent too much time drinking and commiserating with him at the bar. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in his bed.

But no, that’s a lie, too.

I’m a liar.

Have you figured that out yet?103

I tell people what they want to hear so they’ll like me.

So here’s the truth—if you want to believe the truth of a liar.

I picked the fight with Oliver on purpose. I was in too deep. I was so in love with him that it made what I felt for Connor seem like a minor crush. It scared me, and I needed a way out. Because I couldn’t let myself get hurt like that again.

I just couldn’t.

So I did the one thing I knew Oliver would never forgive me for. He’d told me more than once how much he hated that Connor and I had been together, how it made him jealous.

I used that. I chose a path with no way out.

Because I’m a liar and a coward and an all-around bad person.

I told you that in the beginning.

And if you think I didn’t, then you weren’t paying attention.

Dinner’s painful, and I can’t hear a word.

It’s on the veranda, which is now full of other patrons, and there’s music being piped in over the speakers. I’m sitting at the head of the table this time, and Oliver’s at the other end. The music’s so loud I couldn’t talk to Allison to the left of me or Shek to the right even if I wanted to, which I don’t.

Instead, I drink. I ask the waiter to bring me my own bottle of wine, and no one notices. I keep trying to make eye contact with Oliver, but he’s talking to Harper, and it feels like he’s studiously avoiding looking my way.

It’s my tour, but I’m not the center of attention. Which is probably what I deserve. It occurs to me that almost everyone around this table has as much reason to hate me as Connor. I’ve betrayed so many of them in big and small ways that my death at one of their hands wouldn’t come as a surprise.

And isn’t that perfect irony—that if I’m the one to die, my suspect list and Connor’s would line up perfectly?

You’d have thought someone planned it that way.104

So I drink, and the only person who seems to notice I’m here is Connor. He’s sitting in the middle of the table, wrapped up in Isabella, but he keeps shooting me looks and, once, his signature fake gun that again has a bigger impact on me than it should.