Page 142 of The One I Hate
I nod, not realizing until right now how much I need to. “He owns the diner.”
“He what? Did I just hear you right?”
“Simon owns the diner. HeisMagnolia Properties.”
“Wow,” Mellie says as she sits back into the chair. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Exactly how I felt.”
I start from the beginning, telling her about how I heard him and Emmett arguing in the office. How I made him come clean to me about what I heard, and all the things I didn’t know.
How he rigged it so I got Mona’s.
How he bought things and helped me get the restaurant ready right under my nose.
How he was fixing things behind the scenes.
How he lied to me for months when I thought we were starting our lives together.
“Wow,” Mellie says.
“Yeah. Wow is an understatement.”
“I feel like an idiot,” I admit. “How could I have missed all the signs?”
“Were there signs? Not that I’m saying there weren’t. I’m just genuinely wondering how there were signs. Because if there were, I missed them too.”
“I don’t know. Little things. A few times he tensed up when Emmett came up in conversation. There was Christmas Eve, when Emmett was acting very strange. And how every time there was a problem here, it was magically fixed somehow. Then there’s the biggest one.”
“Which was?”
“The restaurant in the first place.”
“Charlie…”
“I’m serious. I should have known something was up. It was too good to be true that not only was this place perfect, already named after my mother, and that the rent was so cheap it should have been criminal. And the apartment? I should have trusted my gut more that something was up. Nothing that good happens without something falling from the sky. Especially to me.”
Mellie doesn’t say anything, and suddenly, she looks…sheepish. Yeah. Sheepish.
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking that you know I’m going to hate.”
“It’s kind of romantic…”
I throw my hands in the air. “Romantic? How about manipulative? Or conniving. Or so conceited that you think you can rig the world so you can get your way?”
“Or…and hear me out—” She pauses for dramatic effect. “That he wanted you so much, and wanted you to have this restaurant, that he’d do anything and everything in his power to make it happen.”
“Speaking ofLaw and Orderplots…”
“I mean, he didn’t kill anyone. Or stalk you.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Do you not remember the weeks of him showing up everywhere when I got to town? Or running past the restaurant shirtless each morning?”
Now it’s her turn to give me the questioning eye. “You can say all you want how you hated it, but I remember the stares you gave him. And they were not ones of the mean variety.”
