Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“I’ll try.”
“No, you won’t try.” I grabbed my water bottle and climbed down from my little perch until I was standing in front of him, holding his gaze with mine, trying desperately to ignore the way my heart skipped a beat at the intensity in his eyes. “You’ll do it, Noah. Whatever happened between us was nothing more than a series of teenage summer romances that ended ten years ago. We’ve both moved on. You made that perfectly clear back then, so tell your girlfriend to keep me out of your relationship, or I will. And I won’t be half as bloody nice as you are. You can make a start on the process by leaving me the hell alone, because trust me when I say that you’re the last person I want to talk to.”
I held his gaze for a heartbeat before I turned away and walked back up the beach. It took everything in me to resist the urge to turn around and look at him, because I knew he was watching me go.
If I looked at him, I might just stomp back over there and let loose on him.
Tell him exactly how he hurt me, how I’d never truly moved on because I’d never had closure.
How, for weeks on end, I’d wondered what I’d done wrong to make him ghost me.
How I’d cried night after night until I finally realised that he was never texting me back, he was never answering my calls, he was never going to give me the answer I truly wanted and needed.
How I’d wondered why he’d taken my first everything, been the first person to tell me he loved me, made me fall crazily in love with him, only to break my heart in the most brutal way possible.
No. He hadn’t broken my heart; he’d shattered it.
All of that was exactly why I needed him to leave me the hell alone.
If he didn’t, I might just end up saying something I couldn’t take back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Okay, I heard some things.” Ash slid into the booth opposite me. “Very interesting things.”
I raised my eyebrows and pushed one of the lemonades I’d ordered towards her. She’d wanted to meet for dinner after her last ceramics session for the day, and we’d ended up in the American-style diner that the tourists loved.
It was a stereotypical one—booming music from the likes of Elvis and swing bands rang out over a black and white tiled floor, red leather seats, a long bar with bright lighting, and walls covered with records and old number plates and God knows what other replicas of relevant memorabilia.
There was even a motorcycle hanging from the ceiling.
I doubted if it was real or just a model, but either way, I’d gotten here before the tourists rushed in and snagged a table that was not situated under the bike.
The last thing I wanted was a motorbike dropping on my head when I was halfway through my burger, thank you very much.
“What did you find out?” I asked.
Ash undid the zip of her jumper and shrugged out of it, then put it on the seat beside her. “Michael Swann is out of town. It couldn’t have been him.”
“How did you find that out?”
“His wife dabbles in watercolour painting and came into the store today. She mentioned that she’s been loving having some quiet time at the farm to paint because he’s been at his sister’s. She just had a baby, apparently. He’s been out of town since the day before Declan was killed, so it couldn’t have been him.”
I sighed. “Balls. Although I suppose that’s one person off the list.”
“Yup.” She shifted until she was comfortable. “So who does that leave us with? Stephanie, Guy, and Alan?”
I quickly told her what Stan had shared with us over the fence last night, since she already knew about my conversation with Steph. Naturally, I’d texted her as soon as Steph and I had parted ways, and so she already knew everything we’d spoken about on the beach.
“Wow,” Ash said. “So, they had a really volatile working relationship, didn’t they?”
“It certainly wasn’t a happy one recently. Not to mention the whole accident thing. I just can’t get over that there were two of them on Declan’s work sites. Especially ones where he’d benefit from the person’s death. It’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it?”
“Definitely suspect,” she agreed. “Honestly, how did that vile creature ever get any business? Surely someone knew how shady he was.”
I shrugged, fidgeting with the edge of the menu. “You’d think, but by all accounts, he seems like a textbook abuser when you peel back the shiny suits. Everything he did to Steph—groomed her to be his wife when she was barely an adult, isolated her from her friends and family, controlled all their finances… If nothing else, abusers are good at covering their tracks and putting on a mask for everyone else. That’s why their tactics are so effective.”