Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
The mayor glances between us awkwardly, and I feel as though my body has been cut open for the world to see. The invasion of privacy. The outright disregard for me. It makes me feel like I’m days-old trash that raccoons rummage around in.
How could you have forgotten such a simple detail?
Lillian was the only person who knew where I was and where I was going. She was the only person I wanted to know. But evidently, I was too wrapped up in trying to pull myself together and keep my distance—and eventually get out of New York without having to face Thomas or my mother—that I forgot to cover all of my tracks.
Rookie mistake.
“What in the hell is going on, Norah?” he questions with a sharp tongue. “I have a hard time believing you left me, left our perfect life together, to come slum it in this shit town.”
Our perfect life? The only thing perfect about our life was what we showed the rest of the world. On the inside, only dirty, disgusting, appalling lies were left to fester and rot.
The mayor clears his throat, and I realize that I am in the middle of my sister’s coffee shop and what is happening right now is not even close to appropriate for a business.
“Thomas, I can’t do this right now. This isn’t the time or place,” I tell him as calmly as I can.
He laughs, but it’s devoid of humor. “If you think I dropped everything, had my assistant move important meetings and rearrange my schedule, to travel all the way to the middle of fucking nowhere to not talk to you, you’re wrong.” His eyes narrow with anger, and his jaw ticks with a tightness I’ve never seen before. His carefully crafted façade is slipping. “I’m not leaving, Norah. Not until you explain what in the hell is going on with you.”
The bell above the door jingles lightly with the mayor’s unexpected exit, and the panic of being completely on my own fills me with crippling dread. My fingers squeeze around the mayor’s forgotten cup of coffee, still in my hand. It collapses under the pressure, and Thomas steps back from the spray of hot liquid with a look of derision.
And I’m too terrified to feel it burn my skin as it spills from the busted cup. Somehow, I manage to drop the cup into the small trash can near my feet and wipe my hand on my apron, but the entire time, Thomas’s steely gaze continues to bore holes into my skull.
There’s still a counter between us, thank God, but I am frighteningly, hopelessly, alone with my aggressor.
“I have replayed that day over and over again in my mind, thought about the weeks leading up to our wedding, and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what in the hell happened,” Thomas states and runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. “At the very least, you owe me an explanation.”
What I should say right now, I can’t say. His lawyers made sure the truth was covered with a private settlement and an ironclad NDA, and I won’t give him the ammunition to use his own despicable actions to his advantage.
“Thomas, I…I have nothing to say to you. I can’t do this right now.”
“Are you kidding me?” He slams two fists down on the counter so hard that it makes me jump back a step. “You walked out on our wedding day, and then you just disappeared! And you don’t have anything to say? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You embarrassed yourself, me, your mother, my family! You ruined everything! Do you even know what it was like for me when you left like that? Everyone was there! Everyone witnessed me looking like a fucking schmuck!”
How does it always seem to go back to him and what he feels and what he’s going through?
I should tell him that this isn’t about me or what I’ve done; it’s about what he did. What he kept from me. What he lied about. The fact that he’s not the man I thought he was. But I refuse to bring this trouble to someone else’s door. Someone who pushed past their fear and told me the truth. Someone everyone else in the world has failed to protect.
“Fine, you don’t want to talk here? Then, we’ll go to my rental car.” Thomas strides around the counter until he’s all up in my personal space. “Let’s go,” he says in a stern tone of voice. “Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You—”
“Yes, you fucking are!” he shouts and grabs my forearm so hard I nearly slip on the spilled coffee in Lillian’s black Chanel flats.
“Thomas, what are you doing?” I implore as evenly as I can manage, hoping he’ll fall back on decorum and stop scaring me so much. “Have you lost your mind?”