“Jessica, please. Just let me explain?—”
“I can’t.” She wraps her arms around herself, small and broken in the golden morning light. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, backing toward the beach path. “I don’t know anything right now except that I need to be alone.”
She turns and walks away.
I watch her go—her silhouette climbing the dune path, her cardigan slipping off her shoulder, her hair catching the wind.
The sunrise is still blazing. The ocean is still beautiful. Somewhere up the beach, Scout is probably terrorizing another seagull.
And I’m standing here with sand in my hair and the taste of her still on my lips and the absolute certainty that I just destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me.
Sigmund lands on the driftwood log and stares at me.
“Don’t,” I tell him.
He shrieks anyway.
He’s right, of course.
I’ve made a complete mess of everything.
But at least I finally told her the truth.
Now I just have to figure out how to prove I’m worth trusting.
One honest day at a time.
Starting now.
THIRTEEN
JESSICA
Iwalk off the beach, up the dune path, through the quiet morning streets of Twin Waves, my breathing even and steps measured.
The Fiction Nook is dark when I let myself in through the back door. Caroline won’t be here for another hour. I head upstairs to my apartment, shower off the sand and the memory of his hands in my hair, and change into something that doesn’t smell like salt and reek of poor decisions.
By the time I come back down, I’ve had enough coffee to function.
I turn on the lights. Check the register tape. Rearrange the new releases display. All the typical opening tasks, performed in order, because this is a regular day.
A completely normal day where nothing significant occurred.
Austen finds me reorganizing the new releases display for the third time.
He meows.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
He stares.
“I am. I’m completely fine. Nothing happened.”
He jumps onto the counter and continues staring with that unnerving cat intensity.
