Page 74 of This Stays Between Us

And suddenly, everything falls silent.

“Get out!” Randy’s yell alights the room, his face the same shade as Nick’s mere minutes ago. “Ya fucking bitch, get out!” For a second, I think he’s going to lunge towards Adrien.

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that,” Kyan says, his voice cold, inching towards Randy.

Randy instinctively takes a step away from Kyan, which I can tell makes him even angrier. “Get out. Get the fuck out of here. You privileged pieces of shite.”

And then he’s gone, leaving us standing there.

Adrien’s eyes turn once again to mine, but before she can say anything more, I take Randy’s advice and leave the room.

***

I run, past Nick who’s absorbed in his phone call and oblivious to this latest drama, and I keep going, until the sounds coming from the Inn are only whispers.

When I finally stop, I look up, taking in the stars glittering in the night sky. I play Adrien’s words back in my head.

He would never have gone in that water if it wasn’t for you.

And suddenly, I picture Tomas’s face. His round tan cheeks pursed in a smile, his dark eyes wide behind his glasses.

A beautiful, generous man. One whose life I ripped away from him.

And I start to cry. A tear or two at first, until it avalanches into a torrent of emotions, so strong that it drives me to my knees.

“Phoebe?”

There’s a part of me that wants it to be Claire, giving me one last chance to make things right. To get our relationship back to where it once was. To give me a friend again.

But it’s not.

“Are you okay?” Declan asks, his face illuminated by the stars. And then, when he sees my face, “Oh, Phoebe, no. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Idodeserve it. All of this was my fault.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, pulling me into him so that my nose is buried in the wool of his sweater, a shield against the evening chill. I inhale deeply, the woodiness of his scent hitting me like aromatherapy.

And then I pull away, bringing my face up to meet his.

There’s a part of me that knows this is wrong. So wrong. He’s with Claire. Even if we’re not close anymore, I can’t do this to her.

But the thought flees as soon as his lips touch mine.

35

Claire

Now

I don’t know how much time passes as I kneel on the sidewalk, like a victim preparing for execution.

“Hey, you’ve been gone a while; everything okay?” Declan asks, pushing open the front door to the Royal, but as soon as he takes in the sight of me, his casual tone turns serious. “What’s happening?”

I try to speak, but dust clogs my throat. A manifestation of the guilt that’s festered within me for the last decade.

“Come on, let’s get you inside,” Declan says as he helps me up to my feet. I steal a glance in his direction, but looking at him directly, at what could have been if everything was different, is too much.

Once inside, he starts to lead me back toward the bar, where the group remains sitting, their voices blurring into indecipherable conversation. But I stop him.