Page 2 of Twilight Tides
So, okay … he’d punched me when I tried to break up with him a few months ago, but he promised he wouldn’t do it again, and he hadn’t since. He excused the assault by telling me he was just so afraid of losing me.
I’d thought of our first meeting and the kindness I’d seen in him then, all those years ago. I’d thought of the way his father treated him, controlling and constantly critical, and convinced myself he needed me. He needed someone who understood. I’d been too critical of him when he said something pompous. You didn’t break up with someone over something as silly as disliking a comment they made. At least that’s what he told me before he’d pressed a kiss to my bruised face.
It was easier to tell myself that the attack was my fault, that it would never happen again if I was who he needed me to be, than to think about the fact that I’d allowed this abuse to happen to me. That I’d become someone I didn’t recognize.
My fingers trembled across the screen at the memory.
I’d lost me.
But I hadn’t truly realized just how much until I tapped on that alert notification.
HOTEL HEIRESS TIERNEY SILVER STABBED IN SCOTLAND
The room spun at the headline, my breathing shallow and panicked as I quickly scrolled through the article. Tears flooded down my cheeks at the realization that this had happened several days ago.
Then I was scrolling through my phone notifications because surely someone would have contacted me. Tierney and I had been best friends since ninth grade. We’d both attended a private New York high school and bonded because despite our privilege, neither of us was ostentatious nor pretentious. While Tierney’s parents were loving and supportive, my parents were too busy being acclaimed surgeons to have any time for me. Nee had become my family, my support system. She was like mysister. I was the one who held her hand at her parents’ funeral and slept beside her on the nights she’d cried herself to sleep.
But there was no contact. Nothing on my phone to suggest someone had tried to inform me that my so-called family had been brutally attacked.
I searched her name, trying to find a more recent update, and there was a post on the island’s social media informing everyone Nee had been discharged yesterday. She couldn’t be too bad if she’d been discharged already, right?
While relieved, I was selfishly furious and hurt as I hit her name in my contacts.
“Spoon!” Nee answered, sounding worried. “Where have you been?”
In the back of my mind, I acknowledged my relief at hearing her voice. In the front of my mind, I was pissed. “Where have I been?” I snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been stabbed? I had to find out on a fucking Google Alert!”
There was stunned silence on the other end, and all I could hear was my harsh breathing.
“London … Cammie called you the day it happened, and Nick picked up. She told him what had happened.”
Wait? What? “He … he … no … he didn’t tell me.” What the hell? I tapped on my call list. “No, there’s no incoming call listed from a UK number on that day.”
“What about the voicemail I left you yesterday?”
My heart hammered hard in my chest as I checked my voicemail. There were no messages. “What? No. I don’t have any recorded calls or voicemails from you or Cammie.”
“I’m not lying, Spoon,” she told me gently, sounding concerned.
Even as my mind reeled with what that meant, I wanted to know if she was okay.
We talked about what happened, and the fear that I’d come so close to losing her overrode everything else. I wanted to see her. Not just to make sure she was all right, but to feel like myself again. When I suggested I fly over there, she told me I didn’t need to. That she was well looked after. That she knew how hard it was for me to get the time off work.
I wasn’t even crushed by her lack of needing me because I felt so guilty and ashamed instead. I hadn’t told her I’d quit my job after the day I’d gone into work with a black eye from Nick’s fist.
We hung up, and the self-directed disgust grew into a monstrous shadow towering over me in that beautiful, cold penthouse.
My best friend in the whole world had been stabbed because she refused to give up on fighting for justice for her parents. Even now she refused to back down. Tierney was brave. The bravest person I knew.
And what was I?
Weak and cowardly, giving in to Nick’s demands.
A kernel of fire lit in my gut, and it began to grow and grow as that shame turned outward into fury toward my boyfriend. Whyhadn’tI gotten Cammie’s or Tierney’s calls?
Before I could talk myself out of it, I called Nick.
He answered after five rings. “Busy, baby. Let me call you back.”
