Page 21 of Entangled

My mouth pops open in disbelief. He cannot be serious right now.

“Never mind. You’re right. Not the point.” He eyes me nervously as if he’s mildly concerned for his well-being before he leans in a little closer to me. “I didn’t tell her your name. Tiff’s my cousin and after the show we put on last night at the bar, then you running out like that…. Well, on a normal day she’s at a ten so last night was about a twenty.” He heaves a breath and tips his head a bare inch closer, voice coming out soft when he speaks. “All I told her was that I was pretty sure I had just met the girl who was going to turn my world upside down.”

His words hit me like a Mack truck, causing my eyes to widen and a sharp exhale of breath to leave me in a puff. The honesty in his eyes leaves me rudderless and floundering. Whatever he sees on my face must encourage him enough that he plants his hands on either side of me and leans in close. Invading my space and bringing us eye to eye, surrounding me with his sea-spring scent.

“Come to the beach tonight, Blondie.”

I open my mouth to respond by telling him this is not a good idea but he cuts me off again.

“Don’t answer now. Just come,” he whispers, eyes running the length of my face and making me feel entirely too exposed.

Those dimples flash across his face when I remain silent and he reaches up, plucking my sunglasses off the top of my head and popping them on for me. A weirdly endearing gesture that soothes the already fading feeling of betrayal in me.

He starts to lean back and the lingering question at the back of my mind pops out. “Did you really have to go grocery shopping today?”

His eyes flare wide and he stills for a second before a careless shrug rolls off of him. “I didn’t not have to go.”

“So that’s a no?”

“Let’s just say…” Eyeing me playfully, he drags his bottom lip through his teeth. “I might have been driving home when I saw this badass Rover in the parking lot that practically screamed LA.” That blinding smile spreads right before he dips his head to my ear. “And Blondie, I wasn’t going to miss taking my shot.”

He rises and gives me a searching look before nodding to himself in satisfaction and stepping back. Closing my door, he gives Franny’s roof a gentle pat before pushing his cart back toward the other side of the parking lot. I track his progress in my rearview mirror, watching as he stops beside an older model white Jeep Wrangler and begins to load his groceries inside.

I shake my head to clear the daze and quickly start my car, not wanting to be caught sitting here when he leaves. Trepidation and attraction fight for dominance inside of me as I pull out of the parking lot, running everything he said through my mind and trying to find some clarity.

I’ll give it to him though, he’s a clever bastard.

And trouble, so much damn trouble. For me.

Chapter 6

Present Day

I look out at the bonfire on the beach and don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.

By the time I had gotten home from the store today I was determined to ignore Jace’s invitation and get down to the business of why I had come to Landing Point. I had unloaded my meager groceries, rolling my eyes when I picked up the cabbage. Still didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with that. Then I had slapped together a peanut butter sandwich, made another, decidedly less delicious cup of coffee, and sat down on Gram’s couch to come up with a plan of action.

And then I had hit my wall, because I knew what my next step should be and it caused nerves to flood through my body. If I wanted to figure out where my parents’ relationship had gone so horribly wrong, what had caused them to reach that breaking point, the most obvious place to start was their home. Yvie had let me know that after the incident, as she liked to refer to it, the house had been cleaned and abandoned. She had someone check once a year to make sure everything was still in order but that was it. The only reason we still owned the house was because it was in my trust and I had never felt like dealing with the headache of selling it.

Not like a lot of people were going to jump at the chance to buy a house where a murder-suicide took place anyway.

So I had marched outside and gotten in my car, all hot air and determination… and then I had run back inside, locking the door as if the hounds of hell were chasing me.

Definitely not my finest moment.

In hindsight, it was undoubtedly stupid on my part not to expect how the reality of going back to their house would shake me. I thought I’d be fine because I barely remembered anything about the place, about them… but it seemed my subconscious remembered enough to send me running at the prospect. Trauma was finicky that way. Right when you thought you had beat it, it reared its head.

So I had compromised with myself in an attempt to salvage some of my dignity. Maybe starting at the beginning, before my parents had met, would give me some answers. So I had gone into my father’s childhood room to see if I could unearth anything. Any signs of the person he would become. And then I would conquer my parents’ house tomorrow.

But four hours later I sat in the center of his bed feeling as if I had been royally mindfucked.

There was nothing. Well, there was plenty, but nothing to indicate that he’d even had an anger management issue. The people in his yearbooks had adored him, going on at length about what a good person he was. He had awards for debate club and acts of community service. He had been student body president and even the freaking prom king. I had never asked Yvie about him at length growing up, so my cumulative knowledge about him up to this point had pretty much consisted of that he had been a lawyer who had killed my mother and then himself.

So learning all these new aspects of him… it left me feeling like I was on an alien planet. Trying desperately to grasp onto what I knew was real as it slipped through my fingers in light of a harsh new reality.

How the hell did the smiling guy with trophies on the wall go on to commit such a horrendous act one day?

I had still been blankly staring around the room when a sharp knock at the door sounded around seven. When I opened the door it was the big-haired, smiling face of Doreen, my gram’s longtime neighbor, waiting to greet me. Doreen was exceedingly nice at first, even at the sight of my open suitcase in the entry. Apparently she had gone to school with Yvie and with the casserole she brought I felt obligated to at least invite her in. But thirty minutes later I was deeply regretting that decision, knowing that if I had to put up with one more probing look out of the corner of her eye while she covered it up with a “bless your heart” pat on my hand… Well, I might very well give her something to report to the town about.

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