Them.
Everybody.
“You could take me away from this place,” I offered quietly, a new itch clawing at my skin, telling me to run, run, run, run,run. “Please, Bailey. I can't be here anymore.”
“Away?” I imagined her frown—somehow heard it in her tone of voice. “To where?”
“I don't care. As long as men like Rob don't exist there. As long as men don’t exist there at all.”
Chapter One
Phoebe
Two Months Later…
“Cabin crew, prepare for landing.”
I glanced at Bailey on my left, then turned to look at my other best friend Rhea on my right, who flashed me one of her signature winks. These two constants of mine were all I needed as we flew through the sky toward the holiday of our dreams just two months after being betrayed by the man I’d wasted too many of my youthful years on.
For eight weeks, I’d had to endure his ridiculous attempts to get me to talk. Despite his threats, it turned out that being the first person to ever walk away from Rob O’Connor had had the opposite effect he said it would. He hadn’t let me leave and forget about him. He’d seen my rejection as a new challenge—one far bigger than before—and Rob loved nothing more than a challenge.
You were always so busy working, one text had read.Three jobs take up a lot of your time, Phoebe. What’s a man supposed to do? Wait around?
It didn’t matter that one of those ‘jobs’ happened to be voluntary at my grandfather’s care home for a few hours a week to give the residents some company. To Rob, that ‘job’ took up time where I could have been worshipping at his altar.
Maybe if you’d been more attentive, said another.Put your crappy books down once in a while. Paid a bit more attention to us. Been a bit more spontaneous.
Telling him I read those books to lose myself in the kind of love Ireallywanted seemed pointless when Rob only ever heard what he wanted to hear when anyone else talked.
You were always so worried about your parents’ relationship, I think you forgot to worry about ours. Shit like that takes its toll, babe.
I didn’t even have a response for that.
I’m just asking you to see it from my point of view, you know?
The more he tried to gaslight me, the more I turned against him. Against all men. I may have been Derbyshire’s biggest people pleaser before finding that photograph, but now I wanted none of it.
Rob O’Connor could go to hell.
For the next two weeks, it was goodbye to my old reality, hello paradise, and that had to be my focus from now on. So, when the plane finally began to descend, I reached out to take my best friends’ hands, and I gave them a squeeze as I faced forward, wearing a smile that hadn’t been there for far too long.
“You ready for this?” Bailey asked.
I gave her a small nod. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this.”
Rhea squeezed my hand tighter, drawing my attention her way. “Well, believe it. You’ve got two weeks to really let your hair down, Bee. You can be anyone you want to be out here.”
My heart soared at the possibilities of it all.
Lazy mornings.
Sunshine.
The sand between my feet.
Pina coladas for breakfast.
My books ready to whisk me away to other worlds. Ready to make me forget Rob ever existed, because that’s why I was really doing this, wasn’t it? To prove to myself I was strong. To prove he’d meant nothing all along. To reset my factory settings and remember how to be myself again for a while.
