The Havens can repair their flower beds. Piper can wash her windows. Dean can go back to running his ferry and tours without drones overhead and strangers on his boat asking about a treasure that was never buried because it was never stolen.
It’s the right thing to do.
It’s a lie, and I know it’s a lie even as I try to convince myself otherwise. I’m not leaving because it’s right. I’m leaving because I’m afraid of what happens when they realize how thoroughly I’ve failed them. Piper already knows. The look she gave me in the square said everything. Shea knows. The set of her shoulders in the ruined garden said more than words ever could.
Dean will figure it out eventually. He’s already halfway there. The man reads water the way other people read books. He’s been reading me since that first morning on the ferry, and sooner or later, he’s going to finish the story and close the cover and decide I’m not worth the shelf space.
Better to leave before he does. Better to be the one who walks away. I’ve had practice.
I pack my toiletries from the bathroom. Toothbrush. Face wash. The scar cream I still use, though the surgeon said I didn’t need to.
In my hurry to pack, my purse has tipped over on the bed, spilling Evangeline’s journal onto the mattress. I pick it up. The leather is soft under my fingers. I open it to the March entry, the one that changed everything, and read the line I’ve memorized:He held me down on my mother’s settee, and he violated me.
I close it. Set it on top of the clothes in the suitcase. I can’t leave it behind. I will get it authenticated, then send it back to Dean. He can do whatever he wants with it from there.
The door opens without a knock.
Dean stands in the frame. His hair is a mess like he’s been dragging his hands through it. His eyes find the suitcase, then my face, and his expression shutters. “What are you doing?”
I zip the side pocket. “Packing.”
“I can see that.” He steps into the room. Closes the door and leans against it with his arms crossed, and the casualness of the pose is such an obvious performance I almost call him on it. “Why?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious, Dean.”
“Humor me.”
I can’t look at him. Shame burns in my cheeks. “Look outside. Look at what’s happening to this town. To your family.” My voice cracks. I steady it. “I did that. I turned your home into a circus, and every time I try to fix it, I make it worse.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches me with those gray-blue eyes that see too much.
“Malcolm manipulated me. He knew about the journal. He’s known the whole time. Charles Fairchild raped Evangeline. Thomas Haven loved her. The treasure was a bride price her father accepted for her body, and she took it back. That’s the truth. Malcolm buried it because the truth doesn’t sell tickets. The truth doesn’t keep the feud alive. The truth doesn’t put the Merricks on morning news segments.”
I’m pacing now. The room is too small, the walls closing in.
“I helped him. I stood on that ferry on day one, and I filmed your island, and I posted it, and I watched the numbers climb, and I told myself it was just a job, just a story, then I’d leave. But it wasn’t just a story. It was people’s lives. It was Piper’s bookstore and Shea’s garden and your boat and your family and I—” My voice breaks. I swallow. “You should be happy I’m leaving. I’m everything you hate, Dean.”
His gaze travels over my face, my hands, the half-packed suitcase on the bed, and he nods.
“Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
The words land. Actually land, like some physical hitting my chest hard enough to knock the air out.
“Right. So.” I turn away and zip up my suitcase. “That’s it.”
Footsteps cross the room behind me, and his hands settle on my shoulders. He turns me around and pulls me against his chest so hard my feet leave the floor.
“But you’re also everything I want,” he says into my hair. “Every single complicated, stubborn, imperfect inch of you.”
I don’t move. Can’t move. His arms lock around my back, and he holds me like he’s afraid I might dissolve.
“What?” I breathe the word against his collar and the salt smell of him fills my lungs.
“I decided you were a shallow influencer before I knew you,” he says. “The day you got on my ferry, I looked at you and saw everything I hate about outsiders, and I made up my mind.”
I can’t help the sad laugh that escapes me. “And I decided you were exactly what I hate about small towns. The closed-off local. The guy who judges people before they open their mouths. Too stubborn to ask questions once he’s made up his mind.”
“We were both wrong.” He sets me down. His hands frame my face. His thumbs trace my cheekbones, and the calluses catch on my skin. “I was wrong about you, Scarlett. You’re brilliant and difficult, and you fight dirty, and you look at me like I’mworth looking at even when I’m being the world’s biggest pain in the ass.”
