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“I just needed a second.” I pull my cardigan tighter around my body. The air is cool, the water lapping at my feet the same. But there’s something so serene about being out here.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
My eyes lift to hers and I shake my head. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Look, Mia. I know we’re not friends. I know I got out while you…” She releases a thin breath. “But I know a thing or two about Quinctus and their rules and bullshit traditions.”
“Did you love him?”
Hadley winces. “Tim?” Her expression softens. “I did. Or at least, I thought I did. But he’s just like the rest of them.” Silence stretches out before us. Then she adds, “He found me, you know. He found me here.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She nods. “He found out about the baby… thought that I’d done it. That I’d gotten rid of it.”
“What happened?”
“He tried to hurt me, but Cole and his father saved me.”
“How does James figure into all of this?” It’s the one thing I keep asking myself and still don’t really understand.
“Honestly, I still don’t know the whole story.” She offers me a weak smile. “But you can trust him, Mia. Whatever arrangement he has with Q, he’s managed to keep Sterling Bay relatively safe.”
God, I envy her. Although she went through something awful, Hadley got out. She escaped. And now she has a boyfriend who would do anything to protect her, and a family who looks out for her.
“Bexley’s worried about you. Alex too.”
“How are things there?” I ask, knowing that she spent the last hour talking to her brother and really not wanting to keep the focus on me.
“It’s not every day you find out you have a brother you didn’t know about.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Do you talk to them at all? Your parents?”
“My mom reached out over the summer. But there’s a lot to work through. My life is in Colton now, with Cole.” She glances back to the house. “He’s all the family I need.”
“He seems nice.”
“Nice?” Hadley bursts out laughing. “Oh, he’ll love that.”
“What?” My brows knit.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call him nice before. Cole is… complicated.”
“But you love him? You’re happy?”
“I do, and I am. I really, really am. He was exactly what I never knew I needed.”
Her words sink inside me as I glance over at the house again. The guys are sitting around a firepit, drinking beer and shooting the shit. “I don’t know how to let him back in,” I admit.
“Do you love him?”
I nod, swallowing over the lump in my throat. “But I’m not the same girl he fell in love with.”
“You think that matters to him? I can tell you for a fact that it doesn’t. I see the way he watches you, how his eyes track your every movement. Bexley wants to carry your pain as his own, Mia. He wants to be there for you.”
“I want to believe you… part of me does… but it’s like something inside me broke when I woke up in the hospital. And now I’m seeing him wherever I go.”
“Seeing… you mean Cade?” Her lips thin in disapproval.
