“Please don’t argue with me when I’m solving our problems with a masterstroke.” Beau didn’t look up from his research. “Okay,” he said, his thumbs moving quickly across the keys of his phone. “We’re officially signed up for a sunset Segway tour of Santa Monica this weekend. Maybe our new personalities include helmets and liability waivers.”
I smiled before I could stop myself.
Beau Walker is going to save me with side quests?
I doubted it. But I couldn’t deny the way he eased the loneliness that had been gnawing at me for weeks.
Chapter 22
Two Days Before the Hurricane
From the second Beau and I connected, I never looked back. It was the first time I felt like I was half of a whole. In the most formative relationships of my life, I was always something other than an equal partner. A project for my parents—someone to mold and shape into their likeness. A babysitting gig to Delia. And to Simon, I had been a shadow. But as soon as I was Beau’s, he treated me like I was integral to his being. Our lives braided together so quickly that the sensation of loneliness—something that had felt woven into my very constitution until that point—stopped being familiar to me.
But now, I feel the edges of isolation creeping back in.
When I got home from the pro-am tournament three days ago, Beau was gone, driving around for hours, he said.
“I hired a lawyer,” he announced when he finally walked through the door, his voice thin with defeat. “Not because I did anything, but because I don’t like how this is shaking out. I can’t let them—”
“You’re right.” I nodded.
Hiring a lawyer is the right move. The adult move. And I hateit.
Suddenly, my house looks more like a war room than the cozy custom masterpiece Beau and I had made it when we movedin.
There are his and hers offices in our house, which is hilarious, considering neither of us actually works anymore. But when youbuy a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion in a tax-friendly state, you’ve got space to fill. There’s a home gym and a theater room. We’re one renovation away from a humidity-controlled cigar room.
But after years of never setting foot in his office, Beau has been spending all his time at his desk, on the phone with lawyers. Nora keeps calling, but I don’t know what to tell her.
All morning, I’ve been standing in my kitchen, staring into the middle distance like there might be some magical solution hidden in the dust particles.
The TV hums in the background as a woman talks through potential storm paths in that stern but bright tone they seem to reserve for disasters.
I’m not really listening. I’m watching Beau. He’s emerged from his office to pace the pool deck, on the phone with a fleet of attorneys.
And somehow, I miss him like we’re in different time zones. Or parallel universes.
And with Kristy rerunning the surveillance footage of him and Gemma like it’s the final touchdown of the Super Bowl, we’ve been lying low.
I find myself checking the doors and watching the street, half expecting my past to come rolling up our driveway. I should tell Beau about the texts, but I can’t. He already has too much on his plate. I can’t add the resurgence of my past.
I pause to watch the latest spaghetti models unfurl on the TV as the woman explains the system has officially been upgraded to a tropical storm with a name. Tropical Storm Gavin is bearing down on Florida in a hurry, seemingly determined to show me things can always get worse.
The last time Winter Park was in a hurricane’s path like this, Beau and I fled to higher ground, making an impulsive escape to Blackberry Farm. We packed a single bag and a bottle of Blanton’s, and spent two nights tucked into a luxury cottage in the Smoky Mountain foothills.
We played cards by the fire, sipping bourbon until we had drunk below the handwritten label. And I remember thinkingwe would always feel like that—insulated, free. That as long as we had each other, we’d only ever be one side quest away from safety.
We can’t go anywhere now, though. Ardell wants Beau to come down to the station today to answer questions about his connection to Gemma.
If Beau is under suspicion, leaving town would only make things worse. It might force the police’s hands in an arrest.
I have no choice left. I have to talk to the last person I’d ever willingly let back into my life.
I’m standing in the kitchen when Beau comes in to pour himself another cup of coffee. He crosses right in front of me. And I stand there, homesick for the people we were at Blackberry Farm.
“Este,” Beau says as he puts his mug down on the counter. His voice is low, but it sounds like a plea. He looks lost, and it makes every part of my heart ache.
For a second, I let myself pretend. That we’re the people we were in that cottage. That we’re only waiting out another storm. It feels good to imagine that’s true.
