Page 138 of The Love Haters

“She…”

“Even as I was climbing out, she was calling to me. ‘Get Cole! Hutch, go get Cole!’ I was so dazed right then, but Mom made her voice so loud and certain that it cut through everything. When I hesitated, she said, ‘Take Cole first, and then come back for me.’ And so I just… did it. I climbed back into the car, and I unbuckled you. You were dazed, too. And I said, ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’ You took my hand, and followed me, and I led you off to where the crowd was standing. To safety.”

“You took me away because Mom told you to?”

Hutch nodded. “Cole, I remember her face. I think about it all the time. She knew there wasn’t time for me to come back.”

Now Hutch wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. “I didn’t save you, Cole. Mom did.”

There were tears on Cole’s face now, too.

But Hutch went on. “You weren’t thereason she died. You were her last wish.”

Twenty-Three

I NEVER GOTa chance to talk to Hutch that night.

Instead, just at the height of everything, Sullivan, who had been both sulking all night about not getting included in the family dinner and self-medicating with prosecco, started throwing up.

She threw up on the lawn right next to me, but as The Gals swooped in to help take her back to her cottage, she stopped them.

“No,” she said, drunkenly. “I want Tracy.”

We all looked around, trying to figure out who Tracy might be, until Sullivan pointed at me.

I put my hand on my chest. “I’mKatie,” I said.

“Whatever,” Sullivan said.

Every single one of The Gals offered to take charge of that moment, but Sullivan wasn’t having it. “Tracy only,” she declared.

What could I do? She was my boss.

As I helped her across the lawn toward her cabin, I said, “Should you be drinking like this? You’ve barely recovered from sun poisoning.”

“My plan was to drink every single night,” Sullivan said. “So I’m behind schedule.”

Too little, too late anyway.

I hoped to drop her off, set her up with a glass of water and some Tylenol, and get back to the far more interesting spectacle of the brothers duking out their long-held resentments at last. But as soon as we got inside, Sullivan started crying—those big, earth-shaking, all-is-lost tears that you only have when way too much prosecco has removed all your inhibitions.

“I hate my life,” Sullivan sobbed as I helped her wash her face and brush her teeth. “How did it wind up like this?”

“Things will get better,” I said, finding her baby-doll PJs in her suitcase and helping her into them. “Life isn’t a straight line. It’s always ups and downs. That’s just how it goes.”

“I don’t want the downs!” Sullivan protested, sounding much more sober. “I only want the ups!”

“Nobody wants the downs,” I told her. “But they’re good for you.”

Sullivan squinted at me, all skeptical, as I hitched up under her shoulder and walked her toward the bed. “Easy for you to say—over there, doing fine.”

“Are you kidding?” I said, handing her a glass of water and two Tylenol. “I’m doing theoppositeof fine.”

She looked at me like she was expecting proof.

So I said, “My fiancé cheated on me with a pop star, I might be about to lose my job, I got ridiculed online for being frumpy, I’m a terrible swimmer, I’m in love with someone who hates me, and I’ve gotten trapped in a web of lies—none of which I told. Not lately, anyway. But all of which I’ll be punished for!”

“Wow,” she said, starting to look tired. “Your lifeisworse than mine.”

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