Thief (A Bad Boy Romance)(28)

A cleaning one.

“Is there another girl?”

“I don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

I almost want to scream again, right there in the office. I want to smash the glass in my hand against the wall, or break something important just to feel.

And I want to hurt. I want to feel sadness, and heartbreak, like I know I should in this situation. Because at the moment, I don’t. At the moment, stewing there in that bar office, all I feel is anger.

I down the rest of the glass, and I’m reaching for the bottle to pour another splash when something across the room catches my eye.

The lacy, delicate purple bra draped over the armrest of the ratty couch.

I wrinkle my nose and roll my eyes.

Jesus, Rowan.

Or Silas.

I quickly stuff the idea of him in here with some girl right out of my head.

But then the anger comes bubbling right back. Because suddenly I’m thinking of Blaine’s other girl, whoever the fuck she is. I don’t own a bra like that.

Maybe I should have. Maybe he wouldn’t have looked somewhere else if I did.

The thought is so fucking ridiculous that I cringe at myself, finishing the drink in my hand and quickly refilling it yet again.

There haven’t been many since Silas, and it’s one of the reasons I hate him. Because there can’t be others, not after that and what that was.

It’s having the stars and the moon and then being taken to a cheap planetarium.

And it’s the insecurities too. It’s stupid fucking thoughts like wondering if my fucking bra color would have kept my shitty boyfriend from cheating. It’s the insecurities that come with the man you love leaving without a word, and spending years - literally years - wondering what you did. Wondering why you weren’t worth a phone call or a letter.

The third glass goes down even easier, and I sink into Rowan’s chair.

I’ve been in this room before, long ago, when it used to be a storage room. Silas and I broke in through that same back door, swiping two warm beers each out of an open case and giggling like maniacs as we dashed outside and up to the roof to drink our spoils.

I’m up before I know it, slugging back the drink and feeling the scotch burn through me like a whirlwind. Outside, I climb the old metal stairs to the roof, breathing in the salt air with each step back up to this place of memories.

You can see the whole town from up here, with O’Donnell’s being up the hill from the harbor. The lights of Main Street - still choked with tourists milling around tourist bars and souvenir shops, or eating ice-cream cones and frozen lemonade down by the park.

The knick-knack shops.

The lobster roll places.

The harbor.

I can’t actually see it, but I know that his stupid houseboat is down there somewhere.

This is a bad idea.

Just…just a really bad one.

I somehow make my way back down the metal stairs without tripping, and then I’m off.

Because bad idea or not, I need some damn answers, and I need them right now.





Chapter Fifteen





Silas




Cold beer, sea air, the water rocking against the side of the boat.

“The boat” being that rental I’d been trying to see Doug Conlin about before Ivy elbowed me in the face that day on the docks. Can’t say I was expecting a houseboat, but I’ve gotta say, it suits me just fine. It’s quiet, it’s cheap, you can’t beat the views, and my closest neighbor is old Mr. Conlin himself - five slips down the docks on a forty-footer he’s apparently decided to live on and restore since retiring from his drug store.

So this is home now, apparently. Home sweet fucking home, where everyone’s either forgotten who I was or wishes they had.

And yet, as glib as I want to be, and as much as I want to roll my eyes at even the idea of calling this damn town “home”….

Well, it kind of is, whether I want it to be or not. You don’t get to pick where you’re from, unfortunately, only where you go. And somehow where I went took me right fucking back here. To the same town, and the same girl I left behind.

I shake my head, sitting with one knee bent up on the roof of the houseboat, looking out over the harbor growing quiet for the night.

In a funny way, the boat and the beer and the ocean air make me think of Dublin. Well, the same, and yet totally different. It was never this nice out over there, that’s for sure. It was dreary, and cold, and I never really had a moment like this just to be alone in my own head. I was too busy stealing, or pulling jobs, or drowning myself in whiskey, women, and the madness of my own head to let myself take a moment and just be.

I spent eight years wondering what I’d do if and when I saw her again. And every single smooth, heartfelt, or thought-out thing I ever thought about saying went right out of my head the second I actually did.