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CLICK-CRACK! He bent back the ring pull on his lager.
Evie glanced sidelong as his Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow, then another and another as he greedily guzzled the amber liquid.
She couldn’t leave it to chance. Stuart needed to hear about Nick’s innocence and about Sam and Sunita’s meddling from her. Left to spread on the island’s grapevine, gossip had a habit of becoming rancid and damaging. She inhaled deeply. No time like the present.
Fishing for Stuart’s free hand, she weaved her fingers between his. “Sun and I had a fight.”
He lowered the can and stifled a burp. “I gathered.”
Studying his cropped haircut, buzzed to oblivion on the sides with only a short layer of length on top, Evie waited for something more, but nothing came. Typical Stuart. If words were currency, he’d have accrued a fortune. She tried again. “Want to know what happened?”
“Not really. You’ll work it out.” He quaffed another prolonged sip.
“Right.” Evie sighed. Their conversation was drying up faster than the seaweed strewn on the beach. She blinked downward, the cool sand shifting beneath her bare feet.
“Unlike this,” he mumbled. “This isn’t working.”
A rift tore through her chest. “What?” She stopped and looked up, but Stuart skirted her bewildered gawp and dropped her hand.
“I wanna break up.”
Evie froze. “You?! But…last night, you—we…”
His hardened gaze fled to his beer can. “What do you want me to say?”
All the anger and frustration swirling in Evie’s belly surged to the surface, stinging her nose and breaching her lashes. “Th-that you didn’t use me!” She shivered.
“As if,” he scoffed under his breath.
She lunged forward, her shove dislodging the beer from his grip. “You asshole! I shouldn’t have wasted my virginity on YOU!”
Stuart grimaced over his shoulder. Evie’s blurry squint followed.
Down the beach, Sunita, Puggie, her brother—everyone—rubbernecked, their curious whispers bathed in the bonfire’s golden flicker.
They all know. Even Sam. Evie gasped, wishing the sand would swallow her whole.
Turning back, Stuart lowered his voice. “Sorry you feel that way, but the timing isn’t intentional.”
Tears spilled down Evie’s cheeks. “Isn’t it?” Her voice cracked as Stuart mumbled something about “wanting different things,” but his excuses were lost amid the rumble of the tide and Evie’s careening thoughts.
Stupid girl. You should’ve waited.
FOURTEEN
NICK
Now, Wednesday, June 28
Salty gusts and a pelting horizontal deluge on the Mainland had postponed outdoor filming at the Standing Stones of Stenness, arguably Britain’s oldest henge monument. They would’ve normally pushed through, erecting a canopy over the actors and dressing the crew in rain attire, but this storm was an unrelenting beast and the risk of injury from fallen equipment or electrical shock was too much of a gamble. Best to be safe and behind schedule than sorry and in litigation.
Nick grasped the unexpected day off for some much-needed self-care, driving his rental car out to Inganess Beach where he could be alone with the choppy waves and his turbulent thoughts. He had joined the Tomlinson production in the hopes he and Evie could find a path back to friendship—for everyone’s benefit—but so far the terse words they’d shared over catered meals and burnt hands, while better than nothing, were doing more harm than good, acting as stand-ins for what they both really wanted to say.
Is it too late, though? Have we left it too long?
He stared through his rain-spattered windshield at The Juniata, remembering the last time they were together on this beach and how he hated himself for walking away, leaving Evie near tears.
After an hour mulling things over, rereading her old texts, and listening with only one AirPod to a playlist of musicals she’d created years earlier, he drove off toward the center of Kirkwall hoping to find a replacement pair. Construction meant he had to park farther than he would’ve liked, but like a true Londoner, he always packed an umbrella in his messenger bag. However, what works in London doesn’t always translate to Orkney, and within minutes, the soggy gales had decapitated his umbrella and waterlogged his leather jacket. With each hurried step, Nick’s drenched socks rubbed mercilessly against the heel of his stiff (and probably ruined) leather Oxfords.
