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As Toby reached out to touch the handlebars, Bree understood what Toby couldn’t. The bike wasn’t being offered out of affection but as a way for Mike to horn in where he didn’t belong. He’d done the same thing when they were kids. Shown up with bag
s of Skittles and Lemonheads—entrance tickets to the group that wanted to exclude him.
“Brand-new,” Mike said. “I saw it when I was on the mainland yesterday and thought to myself, now who could use a great bike like that? Only one name came to mind.”
“Me,” Toby said on a long, soft breath. His lips were parted, his eyes so focused on the bike that nothing else existed. He looked exactly as David used to look when something he regarded as amazing happened. She ached with the pain of remembrance.
Mike pulled some tools from the truck bed and they worked together—man to man—to adjust the seat height. She was so angry she felt sick. She wanted to be the one giving David’s son a bicycle. She wanted to be the one who made Toby’s world brighter, not this master manipulator with his overpowering cologne, designer logos, and oily charm.
Toby mounted the bike. As his spindly legs found the pedals, Mike pointed down the drive. “It’s too dark to ride on the road tonight. Give it a spin in the driveway, then try it out on the path in the woods.”
“Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot!” Toby took off.
Mike still hadn’t acknowledged her. Only after he’d slammed the tailgate did he look in her direction. She turned away and stacked the last of the honey into a carton.
“I brought you something, too, Bree,” he said from behind her. “To help with your business.”
“I don’t want anything.” She grabbed the wheelbarrow and began pushing it through the scrubby grass. She needed to fix the doors on the storage shed behind the farm stand so she didn’t have to keep hauling everything back and forth twice a day.
“You don’t know what it is.”
“And I don’t care.” The front wheel caught in a rut, the honey jars rattled, and she barely prevented it all from overturning.
“You don’t believe in second chances, do you, Bree?”
As a kid, he’d always been whiny when anyone challenged him, but now his voice had a calmness she didn’t like. “What I believe is that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.” She struggled to get the wheel out of the rut. “I want you to stop using Toby to try to get to me.”
He pushed her aside, took the handles, and steered the wheelbarrow toward the driveway. “Myra said your ex-husband left you for an eighteen-year-old.”
Scott’s supposed soul mate was nineteen, but correcting him wouldn’t exactly help her save face. “That’s what happens when you marry the wrong man,” she said.
He stopped the wheelbarrow. “You don’t still believe David was the right one, do you?”
He was a lot more perceptive than he used to be, and anger coursed through her. “I won’t talk to you about David.”
“He never would have married you. You intimidated him.”
Despite Mike’s surface changes, he was as clueless as ever. David, with his blazing intellect and boundless self-confidence, had never been intimidated by anyone, let alone an ordinary girl like herself.
“The WASP princess and the kid from the ghetto …” He slipped his thumb under the gold bracelet on his wrist. Either he’d forgotten to put on his cologne or he’d taken her criticism seriously because he smelled like peppermint gum. “David was fascinated by you, but that’s all it ever was.”
Her hand itched to slap him. “Stop acting like you knew him.”
“Who do you think he talked to after he married Star and settled on the island?”
“You want me to believe you were David’s confidant? After what you did?”
“Living in the past is never a great idea,” he said, with an air of compassion she didn’t believe for a moment. “It makes things harder than they need to be. I can help you.”
“The only way you can do that is to leave me alone.” She abandoned the wheelbarrow and strode toward the house.
“You’re barely hanging on,” he said, not raising his voice. “What are you going to do when the tourists leave?”
“Get off the island like everybody else.”
“And go where?”
Nowhere. Her brothers loved her, but they didn’t want her living with them—not by herself and definitely not with a twelve-year-old boy tagging along. She had no place to go, something Mike seemed to know.
