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“Yeah, you did,” she says, just as the waitress comes over with our food.
I almost die at the pile of food on the plate as she puts it in front of me.
“There’s no way I can eat all this, Everly. Tell me you can’t either?”
She laughs. “Oh, I have once or twice.” She picks up her knife and fork and begins tucking into the giant stack of pancakes with everything from bacon and maple sauce to strawberries and blueberries.
Twenty minutes later, I place my knife and fork down on the edge of my plate and rest back in my chair holding my stomach as it cries out in agony at the amount of food I just ate.
“Holy mother of god,” I groan as Everly pushes her plate away with a similar groan. “I don’t think I’ll need to eat again for a week.”
“Me neither.”
A shadow falls over the table, and Everly looks over my shoulder, then gets to her feet to greet whoever it is.
“Hey, babe. Perfect timing.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Got stuck on the phone with a customer. This must be—” He pauses as I turn in my chair to get a look at the voice that is familiar and not giving me happy vibes.
“Kennedy, and you must be…” I pause, waiting for one of them to fill in the blank. But I don’t need to be introduced to this guy—he’s the drunk ass hitting on me and Penn last night at The Boulevard.
“Darryl, meet Kennedy. Kennedy, meet Darryl,” she finishes off the introductions, cuddling into Darryl’s side, smiling brightly. However, he’s tense with a forced smile on his face, and I can feel the nerves vibrating from him at the prospect of me spilling my guts about last night.
“Have you got time to join us for a coffee?” Everly asks looking hopeful but checking her watch at the same time.
“No, unfortunately not. I need to head to the diner and pick up the lunch orders and then get back to the repair shop. I’ll be late tonight too. Got a big job on that needs to be done by tomorrow.”
Everly’s smile drops a little, but she brushes it off. “That’s a shame. But there’s plenty of time for you two to get to know each other.” Darryl nods, then leans down and kisses her. It’s a quick kiss indicating how much he wants to make an escape. “I’ll sort out a night when she’s not working at the casino to come over for dinner. How does that sound?” She looks between the two of us, and I nod and grin like a good friend. Darryl’s hands clench tightly into fists at his sides at the mention of the casino, and it makes me smile internally. Wicked I know, but he deserves it. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but if he messes up again, I’ll be telling Everly all about the incident at The Boulevard. Darryl gives me a pointed look before rushing off to collect lunch. I just give him a wink when Everly isn’t looking. He’ll spend the rest of the day and best part of the evening wondering if I’ve snitched on him.
We split the bill and leave with me promising to find out when I’ve got a night off to have dinner with her and Darryl. She walks off toward Main Street and I decide to try and walk off those pancakes with a stroll around the lake.
It’s not until I get halfway round that I realize that I’m about to come up to Asher and Nolan’s house. Well, just Asher’s now, if he’s still living there. Maybe he sold it.
But as I round the end of the lake I see his car, once my brother’s pride and joy, parked in the driveway. I contemplate turning back around but it’s too far to go back the way I came. I keep going, praying that I can pass without bumping into him.
I should have known better.
ChapterNine
The last twenty-four hours have been a damn nightmare. Ever since dinner at Maria’s and my conversation with Kenzie in the kitchen at her mom’s, I’ve not been able to think of anything but her. Not to mention the ever-growing case of blue balls I’ve now got going on.
Her blaming me for Nolan and her dad’s death isn’t news to me, not even a little bit. She made it perfectly clear before she left that she blames me. And it’s not like I think she’s wrong, at least not a hundred percent. I left them behind. I should never have listened to Nolan. There’s not a day that passes that I don’t regret my decision. Living in this house, driving Nolan’s car and seeing his mom in town are constant reminders of the friend I lost. More than Kennedy blaming me, it’s the fact she never allowed me my side of the story, never gave me a chance to explain after what happened between us. Having just told her that I was ready to give us a try, to tell Nolan about us after weeks of constant back and forth, pushing her away yet never truly being able to stay away, for her to then think I would deliberately do anything to harm Nolan, harm her, infuriated me and hurt me more than anything else ever had.
And just like I left Nolan and his dad that night, I left her too. I let her run.
But not anymore. She came back and I sure as hell am not letting her run again.
Whatever her reasons for returning are, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jackson received that picture with her, Stu and Maria in.
Kennedy upset a lot of people with her accusations about Titan Industries. But her complete one-eighty about them two days before she left has never sat right with me. You don’t shout about your distrust and accuse a company like Titan Industries for weeks then go silent and backtrack without reason. To then up and leave too? Yeah, something definitely wasn’t right.
I tried to look into it, even searched Archie’s desk under the pretense of looking for some paperwork that he was working on for me. But I couldn’t find anything. There was no physical evidence of foul play, and the coroner ruled that both Archie and Nolan died of smoke inhalation. Other than the threat Archie received a couple of weeks before he died, which he dismissed as nothing more than a disgruntled resident against the development, there didn’t seem to be any reason someone would want to harm him, let alone Titan Industries as he was working for them.
My guess is that if there was any evidence to back up Kenzie’s claim, she has it or, like me, never found it in the first place. After a few months, I let it go. There seemed no point in pursuing it when I couldn’t find a damn thing to link Titan Industries to Archie and Nolan’s deaths.
Now though, I’m thinking I should have been more persistent.
Which is why instead of being at the station where I should be, I’m at home trawling through a box of paperwork I kept of Nolan’s while I wait for an email from Tripp.
