Chapter Twenty-Two Derek #2
Her lips parted in a soft laugh as she shook her head. “It hasn’t actually been thirty years. It’s been seventeen, with a thirteen-year break, followed by one very tumultuous month.”
“Psssh!” I waved her off with a grin. “Details.” She threw her head back, her laughter ringing out like music, and I felt my heart swell. “So, what’s up, Jasmine? You want to stretch this month into a tumultuous lifetime?” I raised my eyebrows playfully, waiting for her answer.
She stared at me, her smile growing until it blossomed into a full-blown grin. “Yes.” Her voice was steady and sure. “Yes, I do.”
Before she could say another word, I lifted her off her feet and spun her around, laughter bubbling from both of us. I kissed her—long and deep—until the surrounding crowd erupted into cheers and applause.
We stayed on the dance floor for a few more songs, wrapped up in our own little world, before the band announced the children’s play was about to begin. Slipping my fiancée’s hand into mine, I led her across the field, feeling like the luckiest man alive.
Monday morning came too quickly. Jasmine and I agreed to tell David and Eleanor the truth at dinner tonight, so I had to rip the Band-Aid at work before breakfast. My morning walk with Tora seemed like the best time.
When I turned on my phone, I had three alerts from Marty Aldridge and six from my assistant.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I dispensed with formal greetings as soon as he answered the call.
“Tell me about Miller’s Cove.” His voice was low and even. It made me nervous.
“There’s nothing to tell.” I cleared my throat. “I was optimistic that there would be something here, but after spending time here and crunching the numbers, it’s not worth it. There was probably a reason this project has been dead for thirty years.”
“Hmm…” he mused. “Well, that’s interesting, because Edward Mason doesn’t agree.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Edward Mason is moving forward with a Miller’s Cove project. Jasmine Morgan’s.”
My entire body froze.
“What?” I stammered. “That’s not possible.”
“Oh, it’s very possible,” he spit into the phone, “because it’s happening. Mason stamped the deal last week. I just found out this morning.”
“Last week?”
“Last week,” he confirmed. “You still think taking that extra time was a good idea? Fucking berries, Derek? Berries?”
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 and your 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 gone from 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?
I looked over at Tora, who was now staring at me with big, questioning eyes, as if he was waiting for me to fix this. I let out a bitter laugh, though there was no humor in it.
“I don’t know what to do, buddy,” I muttered, my voice hoarse.
He let out another soft whine and stretched his paws out before closing his eyes, clearly deciding that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t his problem to solve.
I leaned back into the couch cushions, staring at the ceiling, hoping that maybe the answers I needed would be written up there. They weren’t. Just the same cracked paint I’d stared at countless times before.
The truth was, I wanted to hate Jasmine.
I wanted to feel nothing but anger and betrayal when I thought about her, but that wasn’t what was happening.
My chest ached in a way that felt foreign and all too familiar at the same time.
I wanted to stop loving her, to sever the connection entirely, but my heart refused to cooperate.
I closed my eyes, her image burning behind my lids—her smile, the way her nose crinkled when she laughed, the way she always managed to throw my life into chaos and somehow make it feel like home. Damn it.
The tears came then, hot and unwelcome, and I scrubbed at my face with the heels of my palms as if that might stop them. But they kept coming, spilling over in a way that felt equal parts humiliating and cathartic.
Because the truth was, no matter how angry I was, no matter how deeply I felt betrayed, a part of me still hoped—against all logic, against all reason—that there was an explanation.
Something, anything, that would make this all make sense.
Something that would give me a reason to believe in her again.
But right now, all I had was silence, anger, and the suffocating realization that the person I’d thought I could finally trust had let me down in the worst possible way.