He tipped his chin, waving once before turning to the next drink order. I crossed the cafe and headed to a private corner near the window. I didn’t dare run back to grab today’s copy of the newspaper, but every fiber of me wanted to.
I’d been waiting for this news.
Would Tav be found dead or alive? And would investigators suspect foul play or a drug overdose?
My entire future depended on the latter.
I didn’t know the details and I didn’t want to. I’d laid awake all of the last five nights wondering who else may have seen me leave Tav’s room that day. I’d covered every angle in my head, praying the secret services agents didn’t search every minute of the security cameras in that hallway to find I’d been the last to see Tav.
Or had I?
I had no details of his death, maybe I hadn’t been the last to see him. I’d left before I’d known the outcome for a reason. He’d still been breathing, he’d still been alive, and the tabloids were already having a field day with Tav’s sordid history. Dipping his toes into small-time scandals was the norm for Tav, or so I’d come to find out.
I didn’t know what he did while he was away all week, he kept me in the dark.Always.
Would the day come that I could get a knock on my door, a friendly looking investigator just wanting to ask a few questions about the last time I’d seen Tav? Maybe, but I wouldn’t be there to get it.
I hadn’t left Maine since the moment I walked off that mountain.
Something warned me off going back to Lancaster, our life there—what we almost had—too real.
Plus, they would come looking for me there.
Whoevertheywere.
I knew they existed. The one that’d stolen my mom’s life by orchestrating a convenient accident. The ones that’d insisted to Tav’s senator father that my family was a problem that required handling.
To them, we are objects.
I inhaled a silent breath of coffee steam, a smile lighting my face when suddenly I caught sight of the broad expanse of shoulders I’d missed so much.
“I missed you.”
I rose to meet him, the way his arms encircled my waist sent a warm thrill through my veins.
“I’ve missed you too.”
Bradley’s lips dusted the shell of my ear. “What took you so long?”
“Something tells me I should have stayed on the mountain,” I hummed.
Bradley settled himself in the seat across from me, but refused to release my hand, holding both in his palms across the table. “I thought you were dead. Jesus, I thought he must have murdered you. He wouldn’t answer any of my phone calls, and right before his dad announced he was running for senate he blocked me. His phone wouldn’t even ring anymore, but I caught him, I called him from a friend’s phone one time and he picked up. I heard a woman’s voice in the background that thought it was you. I told him to let me talk to you but he didn’t say a thing and just hung up on me. I hated him from the beginning, Frey, and I hate him more now.”
“Well, he’s dead, so we shouldn’t talk about him like—”
“I don’t care if he’s dead or not. I hope he rots in Hell, Freya, he deserves it for what he put you through. You were basically his prisoner up there. I never liked him, from the moment I saw him at Steph’s gallery opening I knew he had ulterior motives.”
“The gallery opening? Which one? I don’t remember seeing you at Steph’s gallery.”
“I stopped in once, I wanted to buy you something special for your birthday last year but Steph was sold out of all art. An art gallery, without art, can you imagine that?”
“I miss art galleries, and Steph, and the real world.” I confessed. “Once the Sunday packages began arriving I began to count them off in my head. If I lived another fifty years, that’s two-thousand, six-hundred Sundays. Two-thousand and six-hundred interactions remained with a complete stranger, and none with the one person I’ve spent so many of my Sundays with before now. I thought I'd never see you again, but I think that was the point. Tav put the house in my name. He was brilliant, don’t you see? It’s his finalfuck you,he told me he did it all for me, to save my life. But Tav would never do anything that didn’t look out for Tav first.”
“Geez, this is a crazy story. I had no idea, Frey.”
“Maybe he’s right, though. Maybe I was safer for a while, but he didn’t tell me the risks he was saving me from. In fact, think about it, putting the chalet in my name ensures he’s the hero no matter what happens. If I ever tried to smear his name like he claimed my mother did to his father, he would be covered because he’d gifted me with this beautiful luxury house. And worse...if things between us blew up in his face, well then...as soon as investigators find out he transferred the house to my name, they’re going to want to talk to me. He’s set me up to fail, even with his death, my life isn’t my own.”
“Frey, you can’t keep letting that fear hang over you. Let me take you home to Lancaster, I’ll stay over so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
