Page 17 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

“I was fourteen when they died. Normally, my parents didn’t travel without me.

But it was their twentieth anniversary and I didn’t want to hang around, watching them being all googly-eyed at each other.

I wanted them to go have fun. They were driving around Monaco in a convertible, took a turn too quickly.

I want to think they were happy in those last moments, Mom looking all glamorous with a scarf tied around her hair and Dad in those aviator sunglasses that he swore once belonged to Paul Newman.

I like to think they weren’t in pain at the end, and that it was good, that they were together. ” Collin let out a slow breath.

She took his hand and while he felt that same low hum of electricity along his skin, the moment the sapphire ring brushed against his knuckle, he felt a sort of punch to his chest that made his feet stop mid-step.

It was the familiar strike against the heart he always felt when talking about his parents—regret, loss, grief.

And now it felt so much worse. Was it being home?

Being touched while his heart was so exposed?

Alice simply squeezed his hand, and he found the air to say, “My Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Lawrence stepped in and declared they were taking custody of me. It wasn’t what my parents had outlined in their will, but everybody in the extended family was too shell-shocked to say anything, I think.

Dad had never let Lawrence near his business dealings and the board was far less sentimental when Lawrence tried to ‘insist’ he take Dad’s place.

The pair of them had their own interests, none of which were particularly profitable.

I believe my uncle tried to start his own smooth-jazz record label, and Cynthia bought a vineyard in New Jersey.

Which is probably why they wanted custody of me: the money that came along with me.

“Anyway, Lawrence and Cynthia had always ‘meant well,’ so what was left of my extended family just went along with it for about a year,” Collin told her.

“It became very uncomfortable, very quickly. They spent a lot of time trying to get me to sign papers regarding control of my parents’ estate, my dad’s shares of various companies.

Lawrence had all the same advantages my dad had growing up, but he just didn’t have my dad’s gifts of choosing the right idea at the right time.

He’d run through most of his inheritance by the time my parents died.

Hell, my dad bought him out of his share of the manor house when I was nine to keep him from losing a house.

The estate papers wouldn’t have held up in court as I was a minor—a grieving minor who couldn’t function.

It took my Aunt Christine’s lawyer threatening them to get them to back off. ”

“Aunt Christine?” she said, tilting her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Christine Bancroft.”

“She was a VanWyck, my mother’s sister,” he told her as they started to walk again.

“She removed me from their custody, which was what my parents wanted, moved me back to her farm in Vermont. She actually did mean well, but she didn’t know how to handle a kid who was angry and confused and sort of drowning in unprocessed rage at the world in general.

She tried to get me help. She thought about pulling me from my prep school, but I think she was afraid that would take away what little familiarity I had.

I’d almost had enough therapy to make a little dent by the time I went away to college.

I didn’t want to go to school, but I did because that was what my parents wanted.

I had a healthy college fund and Bancrofts had attended Dartmouth for generations.

I shouldn’t have struck out on my own. I wasn’t ready.

And I was still just so angry at…everything.

My girlfriend at the time, Paige, decided she would go there too.

And by then, I was as dependent on her as anything else. ”

“I’m sorry to ask an obvious and intrusive question but…

Are you alluding to drugs?” There was no judgment in her voice, just a need to know him.

And as much as it pained him to tell her this, he felt the stone settled on his chest wiggle a little.

He wanted her to know him, even if it scared her away.

“I’m not going to lie. I dabbled,” he admitted.

“A little weed, some pills here and there, but I never really fell in too deep because that would have disappointed my parents. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but in my head, I made the emotional math work.

I would get just inebriated enough to do something stupid and give the most pointless middle finger possible to the universe.

It was like I was daring it to take me too.

You know that story about the frat bro who tried to ride a Jet Ski down the stairs at Gray Fern Cottage? ”

He paused and pointed a finger at his own chest.

She stopped walking and stared at him, mouth agape. “Really?”

He nodded. “Cost me fifteen thousand dollars out of my own pocket to fix it, which I deserved. I was in a lot of pain and I just couldn’t figure out a way to live without my parents.

I was completely reckless. The riskier the behavior, the better.

I was destructive and stupid, and I was trying to prove to God or the universe or whatever that I didn’t need this life.

And if I put people around me in danger, well, I could only hope that they figured out to stay clear of me.

Eventually they learned to stay away. Paige never did. ”

He swallowed heavily. His history with Paige LaGravenesse was so tangled and toxic, he didn’t know how to explain it.

Paige had seen him at his worst, and she wasn’t above reminding him of that.

Her version of a fun lunch out was reminiscing about the “good old days”: retelling long-winded stories of his humiliating antics from their youth, only to conclude with something like, “I’m so glad no one knows that story but me” or “I’m so glad your parents didn’t see you doing something like that.

” She left out the fact that most of their travels were based on some whim of hers, where they would meet friends of her friends, end up at a club where they had no business going, where she would order round after round of shots for a huge group on his credit card, cheering him on while he did increasingly risky stupid shit, making suggestions for even more stupid shit.

And while he was a willing, if drunken, participant, the worst part was waking up to Paige’s complaints the next morning, how she couldn’t believe he’d done those things in front of all her friends, and what would his family think if they found out?

Then she’d list the ways she’d protected him from himself: taking him out of clubs before it was “too late,” preventing people from taking photos, getting him in and out of the ER quietly.

And what would his poor parents think if they’d lived to see this?

The shame of it would make him repeat the cycle harder.

Hell, she’d none-too-subtly reminded him of all that in the recent string of texts he’d been ignoring; how she was “just checking in” and “wanted to make sure he wasn’t regretting his choice” to live in Starfall Point, because she knew how “self-destructive” he could become when he was bored.

It was bait. And he wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Is that when your guardians threatened to disown you? The Jet Ski thing?” she asked. When he frowned, she added, “Small town, Nana Grapevine. And Edison.”

He shook his head. “No, Aunt Christine would never do that. At one point, my Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Cynthia threatened to take conservatorship of my assets until I was sober, which was more than the wake-up call that I needed, because Christine’s lawyers informed me that they might actually have a case.

The idea of either of them having control of something my father loved was enough to get me to pull my head out of my ass.

I got into treatment—well, I took treatment more seriously—got sober, went to work. ”

She nodded. “Wait, why were you renting Gray Fern Cottage? You have a house right here on the island.”

He burst out laughing. “Really? That was your question?”

“Oh, no, I have plenty of questions,” she countered. “But you just shared a whole lot and it wouldn’t be kind to poke at you for more details.”

“I wasn’t renting Gray Fern. I was there for a party, looking for the guy I usually bought weed from.” He paused and frowned. “Also, I don’t know if Ben is aware I’m the Jet Ski guy who half-destroyed his house.”

“Ben’s not the type to hold that against you,” Alice assured him. “And the repairmen did a great job.”

They walked again, their hands still joined, though he was careful to avoid contact with the ring. They made it to the front door of Superior Antiques.

“To be clear, you are not obligated to buy anything from our stock,” she told him. “I have set aside a few pieces that might work, but the whole point is finding what will work. And I don’t care where that comes from, as long as you’re happy with the outcome.”

“I don’t know if that makes you a bad salesperson or an excellent consultant,” he told her, leaning so close that he could smell the faintly peach-scented lip gloss that made her lips so shiny and tempting.

“Either way…” She grinned at him as she moved to unlock the front door. The knob twisted freely and the door popped open. The smile evaporated from her face. “I know I locked that before I left.”

Collin nodded, pushing Alice gently behind him. The lights were on and the showroom seemed to be undisturbed in the seconds they had to process before someone shouted, “Alice Penelope Seastairs!”