“Well, seems to me like the love of your life is back in town, so it’s time for the spare to go on his way. Right?”
“Fuck.” The word comes out on an exhalation. As if what he said wasn’t bad enough, the look on his face is so disinterested, one would think we were talking about the weather. It makes me want to shake him, see what other emotions I might be able to jar loose. “Why would you say that?”
He smirks. “Loh, come on. Just because I wasn’t born here doesn’t mean I didn’t do the onboarding once I arrived. I was barely here a day before someone whispered in my ear aboutShiloh Lepage and Ewan Fate. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“We are—were friends, Roy. He has nothing to do with us.”
“You know”—he cuts across me, tone losing that playful edge and sharpening into something mean—“there’s a fine line between being clueless and being stupid.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means every single person in this town knows what’s going on but you. It means I know about all those emails you send him. It means I knew I didn’t have to try, that I’d never match up to that man’s ghost, and there was never a possibility of you loving anyone else while he was around. Hell, even while he wasn’t around, because when you do a thing, you do it right, don’t you?”
The words are like a knife wrapped up in silk—a barb disguised as a compliment. The look on his face is so pitying, it makes me feel physically sick. This version of Roy is one I don’t know, one I’d suspected was living below the surface but hadn’t had the chance to meet yet. I wish I wasn’t meeting it now.
“Let’s go back to your place and talk,” I suggest, voice coming out strangled. I don’t know how this evening got out of control so fast. The only thing I can think of to bring it back on track is to continue on with the plan we’d made earlier. What I don’t want to do is continue making a public spectacle of myself.
“No,” he replies succinctly, without so much as a pause. “I think we’ve taken this as far as it was meant to go. Why settle for the placeholder when the real thing is right there?”
He’s not yelling. In fact, his voice is eerily calm, almostflippant, like we’re two friends having a laugh. It somehow makes the words hurt worse, hearing them delivered in that careless tone. It makes it hard to pay attention to the meaning behind them as he fires them like bullets into my chest.
“Stop it,” I tell him when he opens his mouth to continue. I’m not yelling either, but my voice is hard in a way that even I’m not used to. I don’tlikebeing this person—the person who gets into public arguments and fights with others. I repeat, “Stop it.”
He smirks at me, the expression cutting instead of its usual teasing. I don’t know what to do with this version of Roy. There’s always been something sharp about him, but the barbed wire hadn’t been stretched between us up until now. I can see it in his eyes—the desire for me to rise to the occasion, yell at him, argue a little bit. Disturbingly, the worst part of this situation isn’t even the fact that he’s breaking up with me; it’s that he’s doing it in public. Did it in front of Ewan, of all people. Right alongside the embarrassment and annoyance, though, is the relief. Relief that it’s over and I don’t have to pretend anymore. Looking at his face in the dim light, lit by the artificial glow of the streetlamps, I wonder if maybe I wasn’t the only one pretending.
“I’ll see you on the water,” Roy says, turning away from me.
I don’t call him back, feeling, more than anything, grateful that at least the shit show is over. I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning, before we go to haul. Privacy and the cool dawn air might help leveler heads prevail. Waiting until I see him disappear around the corner, I turn to walk to my own truck. My hands are slightly shaky, and my chest feels weird, like I suddenly have access to twenty percent more oxygen than I didbefore. Ihateshit like this.
My eyes immediately catch on Ewan when I turn around, standing under the awning in the shadows. Every single emotion Roy stirred up burns away, leaving only anger behind. Ewan looks timid and small there, standing by the entrance to the Temptress, expression sad and a little worried. He has no right. No fucking right.
“Do not,” I warn him, walking off down the street. Why the hell did I have to park so far away? I can feel Ewan behind me, every cell in my body attuned to him like I have echolocation for him and him alone. I clench my teeth, suddenly feeling incredibly exhausted. I wish he’d never come home. Whatever was between Roy and me had been fragile from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to see it shatter.
“Shiloh,” he says quietly. I whirl around, startling him. He takes a step back.
“I never fucking held it against you that you left,” I tell him, anger and hurt turning the words into sandpaper on my tongue. “I didn’t even mind that you never called. You always hated talking on the phone, and hell, I do, too. But you know what, Ewan? I’m sick of making excuses for you, sick of keeping you one way in my head, only to find out that this is the person you really are. You could have sent a return emailonetime. Just once, even if it was to tell me you wanted to be left alone.”
Ewan’s throat bobs as he swallows, eyes shiny with what I suspect might be tears. He stands quietly, listening, looking for all the world like a man being sentenced to death. Usually, the sight of that hurt look on his face would shut me right up, but Icouldn’t stem the flow of words even if I tried.
“I don’t know why you came back. I really don’t.” Shaking my head, I lift my arms in the air as though to encompass the empty street. “Unless you’re here to burn the bridges you left intact last time, I guess. You’re off to a hell of a start.”
He chews on his lip, the shine gone from his eyes as he blinks it away. There’s a slight curl to his shoulders, his body deflating by degrees as I talk. Even as I go silent, he doesn’t say anything in return. I suppose there isn’t much left to say.
Turning around, I leave him on the sidewalk and stride the last handful of paces to my truck. As I leave, I glance up in the rearview, locking eyes with him as he stands unmoved, watching as I’m the one who drives away.
Chapter Nine
EWAN
Eventually, I convince my feet to move. Instead of going back inside the bar, I cross the street and slip into the alley between shops. The moment I’m in the dark, outside of the light provided by the streetlamps, my hands start shaking, and I break out into a sweat.
I hadn’t expected any of that to happen when I approached them. I’d wanted to say hi, and sure, I was jealous that Shiloh was out with someone else. I wanted to force him to look at me, talk to me. I’d gone up to them with the express purpose of getting close enough to see the darker ring of blue around the outside of Shiloh’s irises, to hear that rough voice and catch the smell of the sea on his hair.
I did not approach them intending to drop a bomb on their relationship. Hell, I didn’t expect Shiloh to be in a relationshipat all.
“Shit,” I mutter, voice wavering as though I wasn’t as successful in fighting the tears back as I thought I was. I walk faster, wanting to get back to the cottage, and feeling like I’m minutes away from a breakdown.
After my mom died, I felt like I lost control over my emotions. My hormones and feelings were already wild, being only eighteen, but her death snapped that thin string of control and left me stranded. I’d be walking down the street or sitting and eating an ice cream, and all of a sudden, I’d be crying. There were mornings when I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t bring myself to shower or eat or care about anything at all. Twice, I went up to the lighthouse, stood on the cliffs, and screamed until my throat burned.
