Page 96 of Whisking It All

“Go where?”

“Italy. Argentina. Moscow. Anywhere. Let’s just go,” she said, her voice thready with adrenaline.

“And what about our lives here?” he asked.

“I don’t have a life here!” she shouted, the panic rising and choking her from within. “I don’t—Just come with me. Jamie, we could disappear. Just the two of us.”

“He’s my family, Tessa. He’s your family.” She winced at the recrimination in his voice.

“He won’t let us be together. He won’t—”

“You don’t know that.”

“We could just go,” she said, her voice small, pleading for something she knew would never be.

“I have to fix this. This is my home. Ethan is my family. I’m not going anywhere.”

She swallowed down the sob she wouldn’t let herself cry. She’d almost believed they could figure it out. When she was lying in his arms in that Boston hotel room, it had all seemed so simple—Jamie wanted her to stay with him, and so she would. She should have known better.

He was choosing Ethan. He was choosing Aster Bay. Because how could she ever hope to measure up? How could she compete with twenty years of memories, of friendship that amounted to family? She couldn’t. And she wouldn’t stay and wait for him to leave her.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I have to go.”

She hung up, sliding the phone back into her purse. Something inside her snapped then as she pushed inside the house, past the place where Jamie had fucked her on the kitchen counter, place the drafty windows he’d fixed and the couch where they’d curled up together to watch Brilliant British Bakes. In the guest room once again—because that’s all you ever were: a guest, a temporary visitor in a place that wasn’t yours to keep—she threw open the too-full closet and stuffed clothing haphazardly into the empty suitcase that she’d kept beneath the bed. It only took a few minutes to tear apart the room, shoving the most important of her accumulated belongings into the bag until it was so full it was difficult to zipper shut.

Then, without looking back, she left her father’s house.

Her hands shook as she gripped the steering wheel of her rental car, turning out onto the main road that would lead her out of Aster Bay, retracing the route she and Jamie had driven earlier that day. Only this time she didn’t know where to go.

Chapter 31

Earlier that day

8:50 am

Missed call: Gavin West

8:51 am

Missed call: Gavin West

Missed call: Sebastian Graham

8:52 am

Gavin: Why is your phone off? Call me.

Gavin: Jamie, it’s important.

Baz: What the fuck is going on? Did you just say what I think you said? On fucking television?

8:55 am

Missed call: Gavin West

Missed call: Ethan Hart

8:58 am

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