Page 97 of The Exit Strategy

Nana Mae clucks her tongue as I shove my arms andhead through his hoodie. I only inhale the scent of him once.

Twice.

But who’s really counting?

Nana Mae says nothing at all as she drags me toward the market. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says a million things I don’t want to hear anyway.

The Porchlight CoveFarmer’s Market is exactly what you’d expect from a town whose welcome sign would’ve been rejected by Heartmark. Local honey and sea glass jewelry and a man selling hand-thrown pottery that Katie describes as “spiritually overpriced but aesthetically worth it.”

I’m still not sure why Katie thinks it’s such a good idea for us to be friends. As far as I can tell, we have nothing in common except for our love of rosé.

Flanked on either side by Katie and Nana Mae, I carry the rope-heart tote and try not to look like I’m enjoying myself.

I am, obviously, enjoying myself. That’s the problem with this place. It keeps sneaking up on me in ways I can’t protect myself from.

“You’re not turning it anymore,” Nana Mae says at the flower stall that smells like heaven.

I follow her gaze to my left hand that now feels as though it weighs a hundred pounds.

At some point between contemplating cutting off my finger and now, the ring has migrated from diamond facing inward—my system, my hiding mechanism, my way of pretending the entire freaking situation was temporary andcontained—to just…wearing it. Diamond out. Like someone proudly engaged and happy to show it off.

I don’t know when I stopped turning it, or why I don’t remove it, or what in the fresh hell any of it means—it just feelsimportantthat I wear it. So I do.

“Nana Mae,” I say with a long-suffering groan that she pays no mind to.

She studies me for a moment. “You like sweet peas, if I remember correctly.”

My hand lands on my hip, but I don’t disagree. That detail could’ve only come from Cole.

“We need sweet peas.” She points to a bucket of them. “For the kitchen table. Cole never thinks to buy flowers for the kitchen table. It’s his one design flaw, but I’ll drill it into him eventually.”

She’s changing the subject, and she does it with such grace that I almost miss it. She’s playing chess while I’m stuck on checkers.

Katie and Nana Mae bicker about…something. I zone out after the flower stall. But as I always do, I keep one ear in the conversation while my mind drifts.

So when Nana Mae curses under her breath, I slowly spin toward her.

Paula Van Holten stands with the posture of a woman who’s been winning at life for a very long time and knows it. But when her gaze falls to me, her persona falters for the briefest moment.

Interesting that she would find me, of all people, a threat. But that’s exactly what her body language indicates.

Lola stands beside her and is—I’m furious to have to admit this—gracefully beautiful in the uncomplicated way of someone who has never had to fight very hard for anything.

Paula glares at Nana Mae. The hostility that passes between those two in the space of a single glance has the density of a decades-long grudge that’s still very much alive.

“Mae Belle.” Paula’s tone carries the sickeningly sweet condescension that many Southern women have mastered.

“Paula.” Nana Mae, on the other hand, is pure ice… and it makes me love her a little more.

Lola drifts toward me. She exudes a friendliness that’s somehow more difficult to deal with than the hostility of her grandmother.

“I love your sweatshirt,” she says in a tone that indicates otherwise. She means Cole’s hoodie that’s four sizes too big and has his freaking name embroidered onto the left-hand side.

If Paula’s the assassin, Lola’s the sleeper cell spy who operates in the shadows.

“Thanks.”

Her gaze dips to my hand. Not…rudely—more like someone who has wanted something for a long time and can’t figure out why she wasn’t the one to get it.