Page 99 of The Exit Strategy

I stand there, holding the love knot tote and thinking about my pain versus the story I told myself about it. Is six years of “fine” enough of a down payment on something I’ve always wanted, or is it just a very long way of standing on a curb and waiting for someone to find me?

With no clear answer, I drift through the market, knowing Nana Mae or Katie will find me eventually.

But it’s Hudson I run into at the lemonade stand sometime later.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I nod toward the little girl counting money behind the counter. I’ve been standing here for ten minutes while she explains how she created the recipe for the raspberry mint flavor and has been iterating it for three weeks.

But it’s the girl’s mother, who stands quietly in the background, allowing her daughter to shine, that really makes it hard for me to organize my thoughts. The mother’s not doing anything remarkable. She’s just there, watching, ready—and something about the ordinary ease of it lodges a complaint like a muscle cramp.

I look away before I figure out why.

“Supporting the girl,” I say eventually.

Hudson pulls out his wallet and hands the girl ten dollars. “Two please.”

We drink the delicious raspberry mint lemonade in silence, watching the market go by.

“You’re…different than you were a few weeks ago,” he says when the silence finally irritates him into action.

“Good different or bad different?”

“Just…different-different. Less like you’re planning your escape route with a spite-fueled exit strategy.”

I consider denying it. The problem with Hudson is that he was born to be a litigator and can tell the moment a witness—or friend—decides to lie, and he’s never once allowed me to get away with it.

“I’m still working on the books,” I say with a shrug. “Probably another couple of weeks minimum before I have Cole cleared, ah, of the mess.”

Hudson takes a slow drink of his lemonade, puckering his face at the sweet concoction. “Okay.”

I stop walking and gawk at him. “That’s it? Okay?”

“Junie.” He flashes a sideways glance in my direction. “I’ve known you your entire life. I was there when you put blue dye into Cole’s shampoo because you knew Natalie was waiting to shower. I drove you to every campus tour you went on because Nolan was in clinical rotations and Cole had just—” He stops mid-sentence and releases a long breath. “I know what it looks like when you’re plotting someone’s demise, and I recognize when you want something you don’t think you deserve. I’m just saying, you don’t look as though you’re plotting someone’s demiseat the moment.”

My chest pulls tight with a pinch of nerves no breathing exercise will release.

“That terrifies me,” I say because there’s no use masking my thoughts with Hudson.

“Yeah,” he says. “Asking for something you’ve always wanted usually does. But you’re still here.” He crumples up his paper cup, drops it in the bin, and walks away before I can figure out where his line of questioning was leading.

I’ve had enough of the market, so I walk home. Except when I arrive at The Haven, it isn’t my temporary home I head to.

It’s Cole’s.

I sit on the top of his stairs. The marsh salt drifts in from the ocean while the noises of The Haven are washed away with the ocean breeze, and I think about what Bea said.

The actual pain versus the story I’ve told myself about it. It could fit so many situations in my life, going as far back as kindergarten.

But if I relate it to the here and now, the reason I’m sitting on Cole’s porch and not hightailing it back to Boston, it all comes down to one truth.

I’ve been here for six weeks, and I haven’t self-destructed.

I’ve made friends I didn’t ask for, didn’t think I deserved, and cannot seem to get rid of. I’m single-handedly stopping a fiscal bleed. I sat on the porch until sunrise with a man who still smells like home, and this morning, I stood in his kitchen and allowed myself to have a normal morning with the family who chose me.

The story is I’m only here until I’ve solved Cole’s financial crisis.

My thumb covers the diamond on my ring finger. It’s hard to decipher where the lies are now.