Page 95 of Level With Me
It just hadn’t yet.
Even though nothing about that last night with Blake should have surprised me, I’d still woken up in tatters. I’d told him I loved him, and he’d been silent.
Before I met him, if I’d said that to someone else, opened up like that and been responded to with nothing, I think it might have broken me. Now it hurt. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before besides grief—but I knew one day I’d be okay.
I’d meant what I said to him, that I just needed to say it. And it was better than having not done it.
Now, as I pounded along the path behind Chelsea, who’d stretched out to a few yards ahead of me, I thought about Blake once more. Because that’s what Eli had wanted me to see. He’d forwarded me the article, and then he’d come over to my door and waited while I opened it.
“What are you doing?” I’d said as he stood in my doorway.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are—”
“Just read the damn article, Cass.”
When I pulled it up, I’d sucked in a breath. It was the front page of the business section; a photo of Blake and Lila—that same one from their website where they stood back-to-back.
HARRINGTON CONSULTING SPLITS
I’d read the article so fast I’d had to read it again to make sure I was getting it right.
“Wild, huh?” Eli asked, leaning into the doorframe now. He was waiting for my reaction.
Oh my God. It hit me then that Eli knew about me and Blake.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“Told me what?”
I’d scowled, gone up to him, and slammed the door. I’d heard him laughing on the other side.
There was nothing to laugh about—Blake and Lila splitting—both the business and the marriage, was sad. Wasn’t it? But in another article I’d found the other day, I saw something the first hadn’t said, that Lila was planning on forming a new company with her partner, Brynn. That article had been calledIntroducingMr. Mrs. and Mrs. Shark.There was mention of Harrington Consulting carrying on in some other iteration, but with no further details.
I’d grinned, my heart blooming for them.
But my happiness hadn’t lasted.
The split—and the new company—had to have been in the works for a while, and it wasn’t like Blake had reached out to me. What he’d said at the golf course that time had to have been facts—that he just wasn’t the kind of guy who settled down. Not because he was some kind of rake, but because he didn’t know how.
I knew he felt at least some of what I felt for him. But I couldn’t change who he was.
I took in a fresh breath of air, reminding myself that everything else was good. I was doing well, the Rolling Hills was on its way to doing well, Chelsea was doing well… ish. Even Dad was planning on coming home next month for his grandson’s fourth birthday.
It was all just fine.
Then I noticed I was on the path alone.
“Chels?” I called.
Something was off. I knew it right away. Not bad off, I didn’t think, but something weird. That’s when I noticed where I was—the point in the trail where I’d fallen that day. Where I’d slipped in and been pulled out of the river a few short seconds later, by…
I slowed. There was a dingy parked on the riverbank up ahead, close to the place I’d found Blake’s fishing rod. I’d recognize that boat—and the auburn-headed lug standing next to it any day. It was my brother, Griffin.
Chelsea was standing next to him, hands on her hips.
What the—?
