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Boone had suggested a picnic tomorrow on his little island, one last outing for us before I left. I hadn’t refused outright, but this message meant I couldn’t spare a single day getting to Florida.
Mom had said they had a two-car garage. That would help me hide the car until my name change was complete. As Kevin had reminded me, the car was titled in his name, so there wasn’t much I could do with it. Eventually I’d dump it in Alabama or somewhere far enough away that it didn’t give Kevin a clue where I was.
I zipped up my duffel bag and looked around the shack one more time. With Grace and Dirk back this afternoon, I would be dropping my things in the big house. Now that I didn’t have the dogs to worry about, I figured I’d spend one last night with Boone, in his room for a change.
Then, it would be a day-long drive to Mom’s and the next chapter of my life. This Clear Lake chapter had turned out pretty great, though, and already I dreaded the goodbye.
After giving up convincing me to stay, Boone had suggested a long-distance relationship. But I’d said no, at first. Well,no waywas closer to my exact response, because I knew the success rate for things like that was pathetic. But in the end I relented and went back to my nicotine-patch analogy. If I was destined to live without Boone in the end, why not make the withdrawal more pleasant in slow stages, instead of the clean break I’d planned? Boone thought distance wouldn’t matter, and we’d last as long as it took. I wasn’t so sure and decided it was safer emotionally to not get my hopes up.
Boone was also convinced that in a short time Kevin would move on and I’d be free to return to Clear Lake. That was another thing I thought he was overly optimistic about. Just thinking of Boone made my insides go mushy again. The boy I’d hated years ago had wormed his way into my heart and become the man I wished I didn’t have to leave.
Somehow karma was righting our previous wrong.
* * *
I loadedthe duffel bag with non-essentials in the car and schlepped the second inside. I’d seen Boone’s bedroom two weeks ago, but only for a second, and we’d never used it for our sexy times.
He’d insisted that because of Grace, the “damned mutts,” as he called them, came first. If the dogs needed company overnight, that’s where we’d be. How thoughtful could a guy get?
Thinking of us together tonight in his bed felt like another step in our relationship, though it shouldn’t have. Topping the stairs, I got tingly just imagining the two of us here.
I opened the door, and it was as if my thoughts had conjured him out of thin air. Boone sat in the chair beside the bed. My knees went weak at the thought of spending the rest of the day in here with him.
“I didn’t expect you until later,” I said dropping the duffel.
When he looked up, the usual light in his eyes was gone. Something was wrong. Had my imminent departure finally hit home?
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I came closer.
He lifted himself out of the chair with a pained look. “You told me you didn’t have anything to do with it.” His voice was stone cold.
“With what?”
“The tractor, the arrest, the Hartford game. Why did you tell the police you saw me drive a tractor into the lake and you…” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “You told them you knew it was me. Why?”
“I didn’t,” I insisted, hands on hips. I’d been accused of this once before and didn’t care to go through it again.
“It’s in black and white.” His voice was cold, firm, and convinced of his own truth.
The accusation sliced my heart in two. My jaw dropped at the assault, the insult. What had been joy a moment before froze to disgust. He was repeating his pattern. He couldn’t let his anger about that day go, and once again, he’d aimed it at me. I didn’t deserve this any more than I’d deserved to be humiliated by him with Mary-Jo Starney.
Now I had to be the one to break my pattern. With Kevin, I would have tried to soothe the hurt and accept the responsibility for our dysfunction, to clarify things. But today I was in control, and I wouldn’t be that woman ever again. No more submitting to humiliation. Without trust, what did we have? Nothing.
I picked up my duffel. “Fine. Don’t believe me.” I ran down the hall and the stairs, threw the duffel in the passenger seat, and started the car.
CHAPTER35
Boone
Just like that,Angela had left without even a single word of protest—a single claim that I’d misunderstood her, a single word that I’d deserved it for some reason. No explanation, and not an ounce of fight at all.
But what could she say? That she’d hoped I would forget?
My chest ached as I watched her leave.
“It’s been fun,” I mumbled after she was gone. I meant it to be funny, but it wasn’t. What we’d had didn’t qualify as mere fun. It had been so much more, or so I’d thought, and now it was nothing—nothing but remorse at being taken in.
She’d seemed like the lifeline to a happier place I hadn’t known I’d been missing. Now the hollowness inside was an awareness of the happiness Icouldhave—maybe sometime in the future.
