Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Katy was supposed to be alone. She was supposed to be miserable. She was supposed to be the girl he’d left behind, the fixation he’d corrected, and instead she was standing on a basketball court in a green dress with her hair down and another man’s hand on her waist and she was laughing, and the sound of that laugh, even from forty feet away, even over the bass and the fog and the noise, struck him like a fist to the chest.
“Julian?” Dionne’s hand tightened on his arm. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he bit out.
“Oh.” Dionne had found her, too. “I didn’t know Katy would be here.”
This was her prom. Of course she’d be here. He turned to Dionne, and for the first time in their friendship, her face struck him as wrong. The concern too calibrated. The surprise too smooth.
He moved through the gymnasium with Dionne beside him, nodding at the school board rep who’d arranged the chaperone invitations, shaking a vice principal’s hand, doing the mechanical things a person does in a social setting while the person inside him stood at the edge of a cliff and felt the ground give way.
She’d seen him. He knew because she’d turned, and her face had opened. For one unguarded second, before she’d had time to rebuild her composure, her face had cracked open like a door flung wide, and everything she’d been holding back for four days had been right there on the surface. The hurt. The disbelief. The betrayal so total it didn’t resemble anger. It resembled grief.
Then Reid’s hand had closed around her elbow, and she’d turned away.
Reid. Julian knew the name because the man had introduced himself to the school board rep. Reid Jamieson. Senator Jamieson’s grandson. Twenty-one years old with a handshake that said old money and a face that said good breeding, and he was standing next to Katy at the punch table now, talking to her in a low voice, and his hand was still on her elbow.
Julian observed them from across the room and felt acid spread through his chest.
“I’m going to get some water.” He pulled his arm free of Dionne’s grip and crossed the gymnasium floor and walked past the DJ booth and the photo backdrop and the chocolate fountain and stopped at the punch table, where Reid Jamieson was standing with Katy Gates, who regarded Julian with an expression so blank it made the nothing he’d worn at Table Three seem amateur.
She turned and walked away without a word. Into the crowd. Gone.
Reid followed her exit, then turned to Julian with the assessing calm of a man who’d been raised in politics and knew how to read a room.
“Julian Ventura,” Reid said pleasantly. “I recognize you from Haven.”
“Reid Jamieson.” He didn’t know what he was doing here. He didn’t know why his feet had carried him across the room to a man he’d never met who’d been touching Katy’s elbow. “Chaperoning?”
“My grandfather’s idea. He thinks community involvement builds character.” Reid picked up a cup of punch, examined it, set it back down. “How do you know Katy?”
“Through her sister.”
“Right. Dionne.” Reid’s tone was easy, conversational, the tone of a man who had no idea he was holding a grenade. “Nice woman. I met her at Haven a few times. She’s the one who told me Katy worked there, actually. I asked about her after I spotted her on the terrace.” He paused. “She seemed lonely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Katy. She ate lunch alone every day in the staff area. I’d catch her from the patio. She never talked to the other servers. Dionne mentioned once that she was worried about it, said Katy had trouble making friends, that she kept to herself.” Reid shrugged. “Which is why I was surprised when Dionne also said Katy was stirring up drama with the staff. Seemed like two different people.”
The gymnasium noise faded. The bass, the laughter, the fog machine, all of it receded until there was only Reid’s voice, casual and unhurried, delivering words that hit Julian like blows.
“When did Dionne say that?” Julian heard his own voice from a distance.
“A few weeks back? She called me about a Haven fundraiser and mentioned it in passing. About Katy bragging to coworkers about a member, causing problems.” Reid tilted his head. “Didn’t line up with the girl I’d been observing eat PB&J by herself every afternoon. But I figured I didn’t know the whole story.”
She never talked to the other servers.
She ate lunch alone every day.
Katy bragging to coworkers.
The two narratives sat side by side in Julian’s skull, and the gap between them was a chasm, and at the bottom of the chasm was a question he hadn’t allowed himself to ask because asking it meant dismantling everything he’d built on top of it.