Page 96 of The Last Resort
“Why don’t you come back for the hinges, I’m not sure you broke them all,” he bellowed. He proceeded to slam his own door, before marching over to the Jeep’s trunk and grabbing his bags.
Rachel saw red.
She snatched the car keys from out of his hands, and got in the driver’s side, clicking the central locking as soon as the door closed. Matthew bashed his fist against the window, demanding she open it.
“No. I won’t. And if you think anything about your behavior today has been the least bit acceptable, then we are done.”
“My behavior, are you fucking serious?!”
The last thing she saw in the rear vision mirror as she drove out of the parking lot was Matthew shaking his hands in the air and screaming. “That’s my car!”
“And so it is,” said Rachel, as she tapped on the entertainment system and hit her favorite Spotify play list. With the familiar beat of a Dua Lipa tune pumping through the sound system, she headed back to town.
Two hours later, she pulled the Jeep SUV back into the parking lot of the Green Tree Resort and killed the engine. It had taken a lot of driving and a great deal of cursing for her to finally come to the realization that she had nowhere else to go.
Her first thoughts on leaving the lodge had been to drive back into town and go to her sister and brother-in-law’s house, throw herself on their mercy and ask to stay. But as she got closer to their place the red haze of anger slowly cleared and instead, she’d pulled over at a local coffee shop and treated her sore heart to the warm comfort of a large flat white.
I have no right to bring this battle to anyone else’s doorstep.
It was time to face the truth.
She glanced up at the door of the lodge, her heart sinking as Matthew appeared at the top of the steps and made his way down.
On the drive back from town, a cold, hard realization had finally settled in her mind. It wasn’t anger which had seen her refuse to stay and have things out with Matthew. It wasn’t rage that made her flee the resort.
It was fear.
The dread that somehow, someone had finally figured out her awful secret, and Matthew now knew.
This was always going to happen.
Climbing out of the car, she retrieved the rest of her bags, then gently tossed the keys to him. “I stole your car.”
“I was wondering when you would figure that bit out and decide to return it.”
“If the hotels in town didn’t charge a minimum of three hundred bucks a night, I would have checked in to one of them. Believe me I didn’t want to come back. Not with the awful way you’ve treated me all day.”
“The way I’ve treated you. You can talk,” he huffed.
This is just so awful. So unfair. I’m not the one who stole all that money.
“I thought we had something special, but maybe that was just the wedding. Or the moonlight.” She waved a hand in the air. “You know, people think themselves in love when others are. Last night on the beach when we worked on the new design, that moment was amazing. Then this morning, everything had changed.”
She was close to losing it, but she also determined to have her say. To defend her heart which was already cracking.
“I love you, Matt. Maybe that’s not enough in your world.”
He closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “It’s more than enough. I thought we had something real, maybe even a future. That was until I answered your phone this morning.”
Oh god. Here it comes.
He stalked closer. The edges of his dark brown eyes were ringed with black. Anger lurked within them. “Who is Scott Davilla, and why he is calling you from Ware State Prison, Georgia?”
Rachel swayed on her feet, her head feeling light. She could protest. Take him to task over having answered her private call, but he wasn’t a fool. This meant much more than just Matthew not observing the rules of good manners.
This was the end of everything.
That’s why he left the room. He went to check up on me. He knows.
