Page 15 of Three Days of Holiday

“As a first-time competitor, and regional winner, I’m super happy to see them here. We have Oceanview Orchards representing the east side of the state.”

I threw my hand into the air and waved, smiling brightly as people clapped. I turned to Will, but found he’d taken a few steps away from me during the announcement process. Also, the blood had drained from his face and his angry expression had turned to one of sickness, like he was about to be ill.

“Are you okay?” I tried to whisper to him while still waving.

He didn’t respond before the announcer began again. “And our final competitor. Our five-time champion, Causebay Family Farms, represented by William Causebay.”

I imagined the announcer pointed at Will as he said his name because he’d done that for the other competitors, but I wasn’t looking in his direction. I was looking at Will because when they said Causebay Family Farms he threw his hand in the air and waved with a tight smile on his face.

But that couldn’t be.

It didn’t make sense.

My stomach flopped for the five-hundredth time thatmorning, but this time wasn’t a good flip-flop. I lowered my hand at the same time my smile fell into a frown. For a moment I thought I’d be the sick one as people around me clapped for Will the five-time winner of the event.

I considered throwing up, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

William Causebay was a dirty old man. He hit on young women and tried to steal family farms. Will wasn’t old or dirty.

My brain shuffled through everything I’d learned in the last day, trying to put the pieces together because my heart didn’t accept the truth. His name was Will, and he was at a cider competition. How could I have been so stupid?

Except he wasn’t the old man William Causebay who acted as the main face of their family farm. I’d never seen this Will before. Granted I’d been in college for the last four years, and it’s not like we interacted with his family often, but I definitely knew the face.

And it wasn’t Will.

But how was I so dumb? Humiliation drowned my positivity as I walked away from the crowd, getting ready for our first meeting with the competition officials. If not for needing to learn the theme of the year’s competition, I would have left right then.

The crowd parted for me as I made my way into the hall. I needed to leave the room and hide. The stale air made me feel like I was suffocating.

“Holly, wait,” Will called, coming after me. He slipped through the crowd as small groups chatted animatedly together, each person guessing what the theme of the event might be.

I walked faster, hoping to find privacy, and then turned on him. Tears threatened, but I refused to cry, not in front of Will in this public place and definitely not over a Causebay.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t give him a piece of my mind. “You lied,” I said, as he got too close.

“Technically, I didn’t.”

My skin tingled in anger as he moved closer, and I took a step away, needing to keep space between us. “You told me your last name was Davis.”

Will shook his head, his eyes pleading for me to be willing to hear him out. “It’s my middle name, not my last. You assumed.”

“It was implied!” I yelled and then quickly searched the hallway to make sure no one else heard. The last thing we needed to do was draw a crowd. “You used me.”

Will chuckled. “For what?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “To get information about the event.”

He stepped toward me again, and I rested my hand against a tall fake plant in the corner. “Holly, we never discussed the event.”

Surely we did. I ruffled through my memories of the evening. We talked about everything from our college experiences to our families. He was always sure never to mention names, but we didn’t talk about the event. The one time I brought it up, Will changed the subject.

That didn’t absolve him from his crime. “It’s still dirty and wrong.”

William Causebay made a fool of me. My skin bristled, no longer in happiness but in pain. I felt dirty, like Ihad an extra hundred pounds of weight holding me down.

Everything was so wrong.

Will was the enemy.

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