Grew, or shifted, or simply beat with a stronger rhythm. She didn’t know, but she loved it. Felt addicted already.
They went on a ghost tour in a carriage, shrieking and clinging to each other the entire time, and when midnight came around, Elena asked April to come back to her apartment.
Yeswas the only possible answer, and they had sex all night in Elena’s huge bed, silk sheets cool under their skin. April felt drunk afterward, even though the effects of her Manhattan had long worn off. Still, she half expected Elena to bid her farewell in the morning, say she had a great time, then turn her eyes to the morning paper as she sipped espresso, a signal for April to see herself out.
But none of that happened.
Elena seemed just as intoxicated as April, and April ended up staying in Boston for the rest of the week, even though her workshop was long over. Mac, her employee at Wonderlust, handled things at the shop, and Ramona kept texting and asking if April was ever going to come home.
And April…well, she didn’t know.
Eventually, though, reality set in. Elena had to work—she was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts—and April knew she needed to face whatever the hell the two of them were doing.
So she asked.
And Elena said she loved April.
Just like that, said so easily, offered so freely. The only person who had ever said those words to April like that was Ramona. Not even her own parents said it that often. And right then, April knew.
She’d found her person.
Her match.
The person who lovedher, every part of her, and happened to know exactly how to make her scream in bed.
Things moved fast after that—she and Elena dated long-distance for a few months, but they both hated it, so they soon worked out a bi-city arrangement where they spent a week or so at a time in Clover Lake or Boston. The commute was only a little over an hour, and both were willing to make it for the sake of sleeping in the same bed and waking up together. Elena wasn’t exactly a small-town gal, but she seemed to enjoy her time in Clover Lake, even helped April with things around her shop, and April always loved how much Elena was willing to do—her commute, living with April’s two cats, eating fried eggs every Saturday at Clover Moon with Ramona—to be with April.
This went on for two years until, one evening in Boston, Elena suggested they take a ghost tour again—the same one, in fact, they’d taken the night they met, except this one was exclusive, a carriage through haunted Boston just for April and Elena. Then, under a full moon near the most notorious cemetery in the city, Elena slipped a black diamond ring onto April’s finger.
April cried.
She never cried, but she cried right then. Before Elena, she trulybelieved she’d never find someone who loved all of her quirks and interests, the fact that she still dressed in an elaborate costume every Halloween even if there was no party to attend. But here was this lovely, elegant, accomplished woman who wanted to marry her.
A few months later, however, things started to shift. Elena started working longer hours, coming home later in the evening. Then she started begging off the weeks they were supposed to spend in Clover Lake, insisting April go on ahead without her, that she’d join her in a few days. The days stretched into weeks, though, and soon it had been months since Elena had even stepped foot in New Hampshire. April grew irritated and sarcastic around her fiancée, which always sparked Elena’s own temper, and things between them bent and stretched, growing more tense by the day, until Elena finally broke up with her, over the phone no less, the words slipping out of her mouth so easily like oil over silk—I’ve met someone else.
Now, three years later, April groaned and knocked her head against the door, pushing back the memories. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d moved beyond this, didn’t need this, but here was Daphne Love in the flesh, who didn’t even know April’s fucking name.
But surely,surely, Daphne had known Elena was with someone when they’d met, even if she’d never learned April’s name. April had even bought Elena her own ring after they’d gotten engaged. Granted, it wasn’t much, as she didn’t want Elena’s help paying for it. But Elena wore the small geo-cut emerald set in a matte gold band on a very important finger. It wasn’t as though April and Elena were just messing around—they wereengaged.
No, Daphne had to have known.
And she’d gone and fucked Elena anyway.
A knock sounded on the door, reverberating against April’s head.
“April?” Daphne called. “Are you okay in there?”
April exhaled heavily and stood up, checking her reflection in the mirror. She sniffed, rolled her shoulders back.
“I’m fucking great,” she said, then swung open the door before she slid past a befuddled Daphne Love holding Bob in her arms and went to finish unpacking.
Chapter
Four
April Evans wasterrifying.
That was all there was to it.
