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About Camila.
About Holland.
He was so right in fact that I was smarting from the truth. Pissed off and wounded. Like he’d just sunk his fist into my face to wake me the fuck up.
It was a reality check.
A bucket of water dumped over my head to wake me up from the dream.
The bitter cold still stung as I sat there with Adam, talking away, shifting seamlessly back into the Iain who could so effortlessly pretend that everything was fine when it wasn’t.
Of course, my muscles tightened when my phone buzzed in my lap with a new text from Holland, and all I could do was be grateful right now that what she sent me wasn’t anything with words.
It was just a single question mark.
32
HOLLAND
I made the crucial mistake of waiting for a coworker who insisted I skip the train and let her drive me home, because she wound up getting caught up in a long heart-to-heart with Freya, and I missed the train I would have taken home, which was why I was now, at nearly 5PM, hustling back to my apartment with the straps of my tote repeatedly falling off my shoulder, and my chest still heavy with the weight of the last text Iain had sent.
IAIN: Adam can’t know
It had come forty-five minutes after my question, despite the fact that we had been texting steadily for a full hour before with barely any wait time between messages.
And it wasn’t technically unreasonable. I wasn’t fully sure myself that I wanted to tell Adam yet anyway. It already felt like I was constantly trying to catch up on telling Mia everything she wanted to understand about my relationship with Iain, so I could only imagine how much more I’d have to talk about if Adam knew, because if Adam knew, A.J knew, and I just wanted to enjoy the peace for a little. So I could understand not telling Adam.
But something about Iain’s text made me nervous.
Enough that I’d texted after if he was okay, and his response to that was quick: I’m okay.
Oddly enough, not comforting.
Because he had never been a man of many words but still—something about it felt so off and all I wanted was to call and hear the sound of his voice. To gauge how he was feeling. But he was with my brother.
So I called my brother.
Of course, timing had it so I caught Adam just as Iain was in the middle of saying hi to all their law school friends who had just come in to meet them at brunch. I could actually hear all they boisterous greetings and fanfare. I had heard bits of conversation, how happy they were to be in New York. I heard Adam tell everyone to say hi to me, and everyone chorused “hiii Holland.”
But then Adam said he had to go and hung up.
And since I didn’t want to come off as a clingy, needy kid sister, I refrained from calling back or texting Iain, realizing that what I needed most was to just see them in person to figure everything out face to face.
Which was why I was now standing in a full train in a sandy beach cover-up with a bag full of towels and sunscreen, eagerly waiting to get home, get showered and get dressed so I could text Adam to send me the location of where he was at that point.
Because I couldn’t help feeling vaguely worried and wishing I could see what Adam and Iain were up to. But Adam had deleted his Instagram since becoming a senior agent.
A.J, however.
I paused, suddenly remembering seeing her Instagram story last night. It was a silly picture of her fiance sitting in her open suitcase with the caption “when he doesn’t want you to leave.”
Thank God, I thought when I realized she’d come on this trip too.
I was a stop from my house at Third Avenue when I went to look at A.J’s story.
Updated twelve minutes ago
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