I cut her short. “Stay out of this, Shannon. I’m not returning to Waterfront Shore.”
No matter what. It would be stupid to believe his lies.
“You’ve always been too stubborn for your own good.” Clint heaved an exasperated sigh. “Just like your mother. We’ll talk about this later.”
“Great, but nothing you could possibly say will change my mind.” I bit my tongue hard to keep back a snarky remark.
Chase squeezed my hand under the table, his warm touch coloring my mood a darker shade of grim. I yanked my hand away and waved the waiter to bring another bottle of wine. By the time we finished dinner, I was a giggly mess and hanging onto Chase’s arm.
“Laurie,” a deep, sexy voice rumbled in my ear. “I’ll take you home, okay?”
“But I don’t want to go home,” I slurred, my head spinning, and not in a good way. “I want to get away. Far, far away.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I giggled. No, he didn’t know what he was talking about, which was why he didn’t know that we both had to run.
No turning back. Just keep on running…until we’re safe.
I giggled again and flinched at the pangs of pain shooting through my head, traveling right into my stomach. The night around us spun faster and faster as I was tucked into the back seat of a car and driven away.
“Get some sleep, and you’ll be okay tomorrow.”
I opened my eyes to regard the sexy stranger whose beautiful voice kept caressing my most secret spots, and I smiled up at him. His fingers gently brushed my hair out of my face and settled on my cheek. I leaned into his soft touch, wondering why he couldn’t see the truth the way I did. Why couldn’t he just see past the shadows of the human soul?
“Go away,” I whispered. “Go away as quickly as you can.”
Before it’s too late, I added in my mind, but the words died on my lips as I closed my eyes and fell into oblivion. The last thing I remembered was the soft touch of his hand on my cheek.
Chapter 11
The catchy pop tune blared through the room, penetrating my head like a sharp blade. Groaning, I turned and flinched as a hard throb began to pound against the walls of my brain, making me want to hide under the sheets and never come out again. Only, at some point, the pounding became so unbearable, I was forced to leave the safety of my cocoon and venture into the late morning sun.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Jude sang from her kitchen stool, looking up from her computer screen. She clapped the screen shut, bathing the kitchen in heaven-sent silence, and pushed a warm cup of black coffee across the counter toward me. I wrapped my hand around it and downed it in three big gulps.
Only then did I manage a husky, “Thanks.”
“You look like shit.” Jude pointed at my crumpled, oversized shirt.
“You’ve just summed up the way I feel.” I slumped onto a stool and placed my elbows on the table, my gaze already searching for my next caffeine fix.
Jude chuckled and refilled my cup, then went on to make me an egg omelette, because she was a firm believer in the importance of eating breakfast, which had always been one of the few things she and I kept arguing about.
“What a night, huh?” She placed a plate with some yellowish pulp in front of me and pushed a slice of toast into my hand, silently commanding me to eat up. Just looking at the yellow mush made my stomach turn. I began moving chunks around my plate, but didn’t dare take a bite in case my nausea flared up.
Great night…if only I could remember more than a few blurry pictures and pieces of broken conversation.
“Eat up,” she said, “or would you rather I fed you?”
“Yes, Mom.” I pushed a chunk of egg white into my mouth and forced myself to chew slowly, realizing it was quite nice.
“It wasn’t as bad as I had expected,” I said, referring to the evening before.
“I was being sarcastic, Laurie,” she exclaimed. “It was horrendous. One of the most cringe-worthy evenings of my life.” She shook her head and let out a huff of air. “I was counting the seconds until we could get out of there. I’ll tell you up front—I’ll never ever do that again.”
Trust Jude to tell it as it was. No sparing my feelings.
“You were embarrassed,” I said, faintly remembering thinking something along those lines.
“Are you kidding me? I was embarrassed for you. If my stepfather talked to me like that in front of my so-called fiancé, I would have spewed fire at him.”
I had no idea what Clint had said, but I could only imagine it must have been awful if Jude felt that way. She had always been on my team.