Page 145 of The Bad Wedding Date

“Yup.”

Talk about stating the obvious.

Wade had tapped in to check on me after my last attempt at finding Matteo had gone wrong. Another false lead. Another empty nest when I’d climbed the tree to tear it down.

“He’s not there, Fraser,” Wade eventually said.

“I know.” I did know, too. I could feel it, the emptiness around me.

Malta should have had me captivated, held in a trance by its beauty. The history, the culture… the fucking colours! They were all there laid out in front of me, begging me to pay them some serious attention. Instead, all I saw and felt was nothing. Even my need for revenge had turned weak.

I’d convinced myself that if I got my hands around Matteo’s neck a second time, I’d end his life for good, and everything would fall into place. My heart would start beating normally again without the weird murmur it had acquired over the last two months. That need for blood would be sated, and all the other stuff would fade away.

But on a night, when I laid in bed by myself and stared up at the ceiling, Matteo didn’t even cross my mind. It wasn’t killing him I dreamed of when I closed my eyes.

The only thing I thought about was her.

Two months.

Two whole months. Over four times the amount of time we’d spent together, and I couldn’t shake her for a minute.

I didn’t want to.

The only thing I needed to rid myself of was the memory of that look in her eyes when she’d pleaded for me to go, showing me that she felt nothing. I’d meant nothing. How could I have when she let me go so easily?

That memory—the doubt—was fucking killing me slowly, eating me alive from the inside out day by day, night by night.

“Let one of us come out to you,” Wade said, pulling me from my thoughts.

“No.”

“Then it’s time to come home.”

Taking my last swig of beer until the bottle was empty, I turned away from the sunset and headed back up the beach. “I don’t have a home, Wade. I can’t return to what I don’t have.”

“He’s not there,” he reminded me.

“Then I’ll find out where he is, and when I find him… I’m killing him. Don’t contact me again. None of you.”

“Fraser, don’t—”

Tearing out my earpiece, I threw it in the ocean, trying to forget the look on Charlotte’s face when she’d floated through water or how happy she might have been to dive into the waves here.

I couldn’t live without her. I couldn’t live with her in my memory, either.

Pulling out my phone, I opened it up to find the picture I’d taken of her asleep in bed, facing me, her body covered with a white sheet, and her arm resting on the bed between us. She’d looked so at peace; I’d wanted to show her the photo and let her see it for herself. To show her how she could be without the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The need to go back to her stabbed at my gut, I almost threw the phone in the sea along with my earpiece, but then my phone pinged, alerting me to a message.

I thought about ignoring it, and I almost did, until I saw Ray’s name staring back at me, along with five words that would have me on a plane within the hour.

Ray: I know where he is.

49

Charlotte

“Couldn’t I have volunteered to help in a prison or something instead?” I asked my father, whose grin couldn’t be contained as he stood beside me, taking in the rest of the room. Henry’s Bar had fast become one of the hottest spots in the city, and of course, it had to have been the spot for tonight’s event.

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