I didn’t hear the rest of what my soon-to-be-former boss said. I didn’t even remember ending the call. Instead, I took off running toward the apartment with Tora struggling to keep up.
I burst into the apartment, calling Jasmine’s name, and received no response. She wasn’t in any of the rooms. Her bag, laptop, and phone were gone. My calls to her went unanswered, and she didn’t respond to my texts.
I sank into the couch, feeling like the biggest fool on the planet. Jasmine had been playing me the entire time, and now I’d lost my job, my heart, and the trust of two people I had grown close to.
The only thing to do was to go to David and tell him everything. I had no idea when MasonCorp planned to break the news,but I would do anything I could to give David any advantage in this situation.
My heart was pounding in my ears when I finally worked up the courage to walk into The Mill.
The café was deserted except for David leaning over behind the counter. The expression on his face when he stood and faced me told me that I was too late. His next words confirmed it.
“Mr. Carter.” He glared at me with a raised eyebrow, daring me to contradict him.
“David, I can explain.”
“Let me see if I can help you with that, Chief.” He crossed his arms over his chest and walked around the counter, leaving nothing between us but a tension so thick you could slice it with a machete. “You and Jasmine Morgan, two MasonCorp employees, came to Miller’s Cove posing as a married couple so you could spy on the town until you could find a way to exploit it and us.”
“Okay, when you lay it out like that, it sounds bad.”
“But it is the truth, right?” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Get out.” He pointed one arm toward the door of the café while keeping the other wrapped around his chest.
“There’s more to it.” I took a deep breath and made no move toward the door. He lowered his arm and crossed his arms over his chest again. “Initially, that was my plan, but things changed once I got here. I fell in love with this place.”And Jasmine, a small angry voice in my chest added. “I realized that MasonCorp has no place in Miller’s Cove. I want to do everything I can to prevent it. I want to help.”
“Well, you’re too late. The genie is already out of the bottle. I got a call from MasonCorp this morning, and I’ve been on the phone with my attorneys all day. If there’s anything that can be done to stop this, they’ll find it. We don’t want or need your help. You andyour wife”—my heart clenched hearing the vitriol in his voice when he referred to Jasmine, not realizing that she’d betrayed us both—“have done enough.”
“David, I’m so sorry, but you have to know—”
“The worst thing about all this,” he mused, cutting off the end of my sentence, “is that Eleanor is heartbroken. When she lost her sister, a light in her went out. When she met Jasmine, that light came back on. She’s the one who first told Jasmine about the berries. She blames herself for all this. One hundred years of peace and prosperity, destroyed for what? A corner office, a couple of extra zeros on a paycheck? Whatever you and Jasmine get out of selling your souls to MasonCorp, I hope it’s worth it.”
He shut the door in my face, and I couldn’t utter a word in my defense.
The walk back to the apartment felt like it took hours, though in reality, it was only a few minutes. Each step was an effort, as though I was trudging through thick, unyielding wet cement. My legs felt heavy, my chest even heavier, weighed down by a mixture of anger, guilt, and heartbreak that I couldn’t shake. The usually crisp evening air now felt stifling, pressing against my skin like a too-tight jacket I couldn’t take off.
David’s words echoed in my head, each repetition a fresh wound that cut deeper and left behind a sting that refused to fade.
Jasmine betrayed me.
She’d betrayed Miller’s Cove, a place that had given us nothing but warmth and trust. She’d betrayed Eleanor and David, two people who had treated her like family, who had shared their stories, their laughter, and their home. She’d betrayed me.
And then there was the other thing—the betrayal I couldn’t let myself dwell on just yet. The one that hurt the most because it wasn’t just about the project or the town. It was personal. It was about the tiny, fragile foundation of trust and love we’d built together over the past few weeks.
No.
I couldn’t go there now. Not yet. Not without feeling like I might break apart entirely.
By the time I reached the apartment, the silence inside felt like a living thing, creeping over me and settling onto my shoulders like a weight I couldn’t shrug off. The normally comforting hum of the fridge seemed deafening in the absence of her voice, her laughter, her presence.
Tora padded over to the bed and let out a small whine before circling three times and curling into a tight ball. Even he seemed to sense the shift in the air.
I collapsed onto the couch, my head falling into my hands, and for the first time in years, I felt utterly and completely lost. What the hell was I supposed to do now?
My mind was a storm, each thought crashing into the next. I tried to make sense of it all, tried to piece together how we’d gonefrom building something beautiful to this wreckage. It didn’t add up. Jasmine wasn’t the person David and Eleanor thought she was, and she wasn’t the person MasonCorp thought she was. And yet the evidence against her was impossible to ignore.
I replayed every moment, every word she’d said, searching for signs I might’ve missed. Had she been lying to me the entire time? Had there been even a shred of truth in anything we’d shared?
