Will’s back straightened, and his hands went to his hips. “Excuse me?”
“Tristan Cole. Ring a bell? He told me everything.”
“Tristan?” He looked genuinely shocked. “What the hell does he have to do with this?”
“He’s working to get a music festival in East Hampton off the ground. Unless you decide to sabotage that, too?” She leaned forward, poking a finger at his chest. “Well, you might think all your money means you get to play with people like Tristan, butI’m not fucking disposable, Will. Neither is my sister. And we’re not interested in being tools used by people like you to work out your shit.”
He gently pushed her finger down to her lap. “I think that’s enough.” His eyes were cold again, his expression blank. Whatever fire had been burning there only a few minutes before was gone. “Apologies for my lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again.”
She slid off the table and stood in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest. Her lips were raw, her mind was enraged, and there were tears ready to explode, but she refused to let him see it. “Good. Now get the hell out of my bakery.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again, his jaw tightening. Then he turned and disappeared through the kitchen door. Lizzy stared at the empty space in front of her, listening to his footsteps, to the bell ring as the front door slammed shut behind him. Then she sank to the floor.
CHAPTER 20
The rain had finally stopped and it was almost dark by the time Will turned onto Old Montauk Highway. His car flew past the low trees and brush silhouetted against the darkening sky, weaving its way down to the cracked asphalt as the road’s two lanes became an ambiguous one. He rolled down the windows, letting in the cold evening air. The sterile smell of the leather interior was lost in the overwhelming scent of ocean salt. God, he had missed this. He took a deep breath, and for the first time in an hour, felt his pulse begin to slow.
After leaving the bakery—and Elizabeth Bennet—behind, Will had debated going back to the city. But then his mind filled with a thousand obligations waiting for him there, and he could think of only one place he could go to get away from all of them.
The road ended abruptly and he turned right, down the private drive almost completely hidden by overgrown sumac trees and switchgrass. Despite knowing this journey by heart, he still turned on his headlights, dissolving the shadows left by the low branches on either side.
A slight curve to the left, a hard right, and then, there it was.
The scaffold that had surrounded the house for months had finally been dismantled last week, so the shingle siding, gray and weathered from years of exposure to sea air, made the house glow against the purple-and-orange sky. Two stories, with a sloped roof interrupted by a number of windows peeking out in all directions—one of which he’d broken when he tried to sneak out in eighth grade. Slate floors in the kitchen, with one loose tile in the far corner where his dad used to hide messages for him to find. A porch that wrapped around the back, facing the cliffside and the ocean beyond. It was a view he had loved since childhood, a permanent thing he assumed would be there forever.
It will be. Just not for you, a voice inside his head murmured.
He cut the engine and went inside.
The house was large—probably bigger than Charlie’s rental—but deceptively so thanks to low ceilings and a maze of cozy rooms spread across both floors. Will dropped his keys on the small table by the front door and passed the beadboard-paneled walls lined with family photos on his way to the living room. It was spacious, with a hulking stone fireplace along the far wall and a piano in the opposite corner. In the center there was a worn leather sofa flanked by two armchairs. They had been red once, but thanks to years of use and sun, they had faded to a muted pink. Behind them was a bookcase, his destination. His father had kept his liquor on the top shelf—a joke that he repeated to anyone who would listen—but Will had never been a fan of whiskey or gin, so it had been neglected over the past few years.
But not now. Right now, Will needed scotch.
He reached up and grabbed the first bottle he could find and poured himself a glass, then took a deep sip.
The taste of smoke and peat filled his mouth, and he swallowed before he could think to spit it out. Jesus, how the hell did peopledrink this shit? Then a vision of Elizabeth flashed through his head again, the look she gave him right before she kicked him out of the bakery.
He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another before taking the glass and the bottle outside to the back porch.
Red cedar trees crowded the yard, but there was still a clear view of the cliff’s edge and the ocean below. It was dark now, too dark to see the waves, but he could hear them crashing along the beach. He was tempted to take his whiskey down the old wooden staircase to the water, but he could already feel the alcohol taking hold. If he went down now, he’d never find his way back up tonight, especially after the rain. So instead, he landed in one of the chairs situated on the porch and watched the branches of the trees sway against the dark sky.
He would miss this house. Birdie had been talking about selling it and the surrounding land for years, but suddenly the thought felt new and raw. He had always tried to control every element of life, to mitigate its ups and downs for everyone he loved. After his parents died, the desire had become all-consuming, so much so that it sometimes felt like pieces of himself were being broken off, limb by limb. But this house was more than a limb. It was the beating heart. The center of a life he had built himself around, that had built him. The last bits of his father, the last memories with his mother. All of it was here. Maybe that’s why he had insisted on renovating it this summer, a way to delay the inevitable.
Do you want to sell it?Elizabeth’s voice filled his head again.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. How could she do that? With one question, one look, everything else in his tightly controlled world fell away. She understood the core of this. She understood him.
No. She hated him. He had to remind himself of that before he let his mind wander.
And yet…
She had still kissed him back today. She had wanted him, and for a moment, a single fleeting moment, it had been perfect.
But then her voice rang through his head again.
Being honest doesn’t excuse you for being a self-serving asshole, Will.
He took another sip of his drink and winced.
