Page 99 of Summer People
What the fuck? One after another, the nasty comments pummel her.
“Finally over the coke problem?”
I don’t understand. How are these rumors still floating around? And why the fuck has she not done anything about it? Especially if she knows people like Zara Price.
I move to stand up, but Libby grasps my thigh, her nails biting into my flesh through my jeans. “Go inside.”
In one quick move, I pull her to her feet and rush her through the door. Once safely inside the box, I pull her into my arms.
“I want to leave.” She blinks back tears, her body trembling.
“I’ll get you out of here, but then we have to talk.” Because I want to know exactly what happened to her before she showed up in Monhegan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
libby
A high-rise in Boston.The man lives in a high-rise in Boston. As we pull into the underground parking garage my thoughts are a jumbled mess and my heart is racing. I have to tell him everything tonight, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around all that he hasn’t told me.
He has a freaking apartment—a whole life here—that he just walked away from.
He went to Harvard. He knows Beckett Langfield and Zara Price. Cal was his college roommate. The stoic man beside me is best freaking friends with the least serious person I’ve ever met. Honestly, he makes Wilder look settled.
He’s a hacker. A genius hacker. Not a grumpy small-town sheriff.
None of it makes sense.
He’s frozen in this life. Maybe we’re similar that way, both unwilling to completely let go of the past. Though for completely different reasons.
I think he’s holding on to this old life, scared to let go because maybe then he’ll have to admit that he’s taken over his brother’s existence. Keeping his apartment, his car here, means this facetof who he is still exists. It allows him to believe he’s just doing the right thing rather than giving up everything.
But who the hell am I to talk?
Because I’ve spent months hiding from my problems.
We’re silent as Fisher gets our bags from the back seat and leads me to the elevator.
If I speak now, anything I say will come out wrong. A jumble of thoughts that could sound judgmental. And that’s the last thing I want. I’m struck by the differences between this Fisher Jones, the one who lives in a high-rise in Boston, and the Fisher Jones who drives a beat-up truck with no doors around a tiny island and wrangles a stubborn goat at least once a week.
I can see what his life used to look like. I can see him hanging out with Cal, flirting with women at an upscale bar. Laughing. Smiling.
Was that who he was?
Did he smile more before?
A painful jealousy floods me. I’m jealous of nameless, faceless women, of the people in his old life. I want to think I’m the one who makes him smile. Even still, I’d rather imagine that his life was full before Hunter’s and Marissa’s deaths.
There’s a whole other side of Fisher I don’t know, and that’s throwing me for a loop.
I thank my lucky stars when the elevator stops on the eighth floor rather than going straight to the penthouse. The hallway is nondescript. Gray walls decorated with unremarkable images of Boston. Neutral carpet and four identical black doors. It’s not homey like his house on the island. I’m trying to rectify the two versions of Fisher when he stops in front of one door and types in a code.
“Fancy,” I mumble as I step into the apartment.
Instantly, I’m hit with the smell of Lysol and…is that a vanilla Glade air freshener?
Yup, I clock one in the wall in the corner.
Fisher says “lights on,” and the living room is illuminated. The space is mostly taken up by black leather couches and a fancy La-Z-Boy. The only decorations are generic, as if the place was staged by a designer.
