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“Well, dear, it was great to catch up.” Tilly inhaled sharply, then grimaced.
I watched after her as she sauntered off, heading toward the counter where her coffee order was ready and awaiting collection. Once she had picked up the to-go cup, both women stared at me, a smile tugging at the corner of the barista’s mouth.
I looked away, staring straight ahead again as the familiar feeling of tears stinging my eyes returned. There was no way in hell I’d give them the satisfaction of seeing how they affected me.
Hastily, I collected my belongings, leaving my cup of coffee to go cold on the table before scurrying out the coffee shop door. If this is what Tilly wanted, then mission accomplished. The fact I would never fit into this town was again firmly cemented in my mind. I’d made a horrible mistake coming back. One my heart would never forgive me for.
Anger boiled my blood when I arrived at the hardware store. It had taken only a split second to realize as I peeled out of the parking lot that I needed to confront Callum over what Tilly had implied.“No more secrets,”he’d insisted, but instead, he had played me for a fool and was hiding the biggest secret I could’ve imagined.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the past echoed that placing your trust in someone was begging for it be betrayed.
After everything we’d worked through, after all the dragons from our past we’d slayed together, how could I have been so naïve to believe his sweet words and the loving touches?
He lied and manipulated me, spun the words so artfully, it broke my resolve so well I believed he had changed. This town had changed enough even for me to believe my façade of being stronger, smarter, and wiser, but all I did was fall for my own lies, and that time could heal the wounds this town had created.
I was in the exact situation I had been when I left.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I was a gullible fool. A whisper of a future I thought I’d once felt entitled to crumbled the walls I had built around myself.
My stomach turned at thought of the power Callum had over me then, and how he still wielded the same power now.
Had the past mistakes taught me nothing?
Whether the words Tilly spewed were truth or lies, she had confirmed without a doubt that this town hadn’t changed. The people in it hadn’t changed, their attitude remained spiteful and narrow minded. Tilly’s whispered taunts had proven my decision to not come back had been the right one.
The toxic tendrils had reached me, and I had stupidly allowed it. Now I needed to unbind myself, reclaim myself, and retreat to lick my wounds in the privacy of my apartment in the city.
Simone’s face greeted me in the aisle as I made my way toward the back of the store. “Alina, hey.” The smile died on her lips when she got her first read on my expression.
“Is he here?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head gently. “He’s out on a job, but he’ll be back in an hour or so. Want me to get him to call you?” she offered as a suggestion.
“No, have you got a piece of paper? Maybe I could leave him anote,” I spat out the last word before Simone rushed away to find something for me to write on.
I shook out my hands while exhaling a ragged breath, preparing myself for when Simone returned. The anxious energy burned to my fingertips. I just couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking.
There was no satisfaction in scribbling our final words on that piece of paper. The eight letters did nothing to ease the hurt or anger that continued to boil away inside of me. The ink on the page was like the poison from a snake, ending the life of the future that had been like a glimmer of possibility and now would never be.
ChapterForty
Callum
“Alina was here,” Simone called to me as soon as I stepped inside the store.
Just hearing her name was like my own piece of sunshine.
Alina.
I had spent the night concocting a plan on how to break through to her. We would leave here, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. She meant more to me than anything that was left here in this small town. She was my future, and she had to know that. Wherever she wanted to be, I had to be there too.
I loved her.
She was it for me.
My forever.
I dug my phone from my pocket, expecting a message or missed call, to find nothing. Service had been terrible at the Atkin’s property, but being back in town usually registered the stream of messages and any missed calls caught in the telephonic limbo.
