AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What the hell?” I muttered, getting to my feet.
“I knew I recognized you!” Lars exclaimed, his expression holding something like frenzied glee. “This is incredible. Do you know how many people would love to know where you’ve been all these years?”
My heart, the one I’d just opened up to Kenna, began to pound. I felt Kenna get to her feet and move next to me, as if offering support. Support I didn’t deserve.
Fuck.
Everything was about to unravel. A scenario I’d planned for during those early days of hiding, but not recently. I’d gotten lazy the last few years, settling into a community that would never give up my identity because I’d worked to become part of their family. Until Kenna and her grand plans of turning this quaint boat club into a national destination, overrun by curiosity seekers.
Without much thought other than to flee, I grabbed Kenna’s hand, sidestepped Lars, and began to run to my truck. Kenna came with me, her hair a wild mess in the wind trailing her. Lars shouted behind me, but I didn’t hear anything he said. Except one word. One name, actually. The name that stopped Kenna in her tracks right there in the middle of the parking lot and made her gape at me like I’d lied to her all summer.
Which…I had.
“Debogglan!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kenna
“What?” I snapped, feeling like the skies had opened up over my head.
Despite the heat that still hovered over the Keys this late in the year, my feet felt frozen to the pavement. Dec’s face had gone ashen under his perpetual tan, a dead giveaway that the reporter shouting behind us was not out of his mind like I instantly thought when he called Dec the name of the old country singer that had disappeared off the face of the map.
“Get in the truck,” Dec managed to say between clenched teeth. “I’ll explain.”
“No.” I tugged my hand loose from his grip and stood my ground. Ground I hadn’t stood before my divorce. “What’s your name?”
Dec looked over my shoulder, panic mixing in with the anger in his gaze. When he looked back at me, he looked ready to drop to his knees to beg for my cooperation.
“Kenna, please. Get in the truck so I can explain without reporters listening in.”
It was that please and that reminder that the world would know my business that got my feet to move. My last situation with a man had ended in my own professional humiliation and I wouldn’t allow that again. Dec certainly had things to explain and I didn’t want any of that to become gossip meant for everyone’s entertainment.
He held out his hand to help me into the truck, but I grabbed the handle and got in with my own limbs. I couldn’t touch him right now. Couldn’t even look at him as he got in the driver’s side of the truck and peeled out of the parking lot. As we raced through Sunshine Key, I found my arms folded over my chest as if I was unconsciously trying to hold myself together. When Dec told me he loved me, it was all I could do not to shout it back. To finally give voice to all the feelings that had crept up on me over the summer. To admit out loud with both relief and trepidation that my heart hadn’t been permanently damaged by what Justin had done.
Now my heart felt like it was shattering all over again.
Debogglan?
Dec Boggs?
My chin dropped to my chest. I was an idiot. Yet again. The joke was always on me. My eyes popped open, focused on my charm bracelet, the talisman that was to be a shiny symbol of who I was at my core and who I was becoming again. Now I just wanted to rip the damn thing off my wrist and never see it again.
“Is it true?” I asked quietly, tearing my gaze away from the charms and focusing on the beautiful water that lay before the truck as Dec put it into park on the side of the causeway.
He didn’t reach over to touch me. Didn’t even look at me.
“Yes. My name is Declan Boggan. When I sang, my band and I went by Debogglan.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain lancing through my chest. There it was. Confirmation I was truly an idiot. An idiot to trust again. An idiot to fall in love again. I’d known he was holding himself back from me and I’d fallen anyway. That was on me this time.
I was so fucking sick of being the joke.
Anger rubbed out the hurt spots, giving me energy and a source of power to draw from when all I wanted was to go hide in Aunt Maeve’s house and never come out again.
I held up my wrist, turning my murderous glare on Dec. His gaze met mine for a brief second before he looked away, hurt or shame or anger twisting his features.
“You see this bracelet?” I held out the link that was bent. That little sliver of silver had one time held my favorite charm, the one I fancifully told myself had been my biological father’s favorite too. “It once held a good luck charm. A charm I tried to give to my favorite country singer because he talked about his dead Irish mother in an interview once. Every word of every song you sang somehow tapped into something in me. I was obsessed with Debogglan. I felt…connected somehow. Felt the pain of your loss like my own. Like maybe you needed that charm more than I did.” I huffed, feeling so incredibly stupid. “Turns out you’re a liar just like everyone else.”
