Chapter Abscission #2
The moment that stretches between us will be burned into my memory forever. The endless well of hurt behind her fierce glare. The red that rims her eyes. The threat of destruction painted into her furrowed brow. She’s so fucking beautiful. And so fucking broken.
You can’t stop me, I think. But I don’t say those words out loud.
I take a step onto the flagstone. My body is barely clear of the house before the door slams shut and locks behind me.
I wait for just a moment, as though this is a nightmare I can wake from. But when I hear Harper’s desolate sob, I know this is real. Her heart is being torn right out of her chest. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I pick up my backpack and head to my car in a daze.
When I step out of my vehicle at the Capeside Inn, I don’t remember anything about the drive to get there.
I never considered the rest of my clothes, or my toothbrush, or anything else that I left behind in the cottage.
All I have is what’s on my back, and the thought of a tense coordination with Harper in the coming hours or days to retrieve my belongings makes me feel physically sick.
I can’t bear the image of her cold detachment, or the more likely scenario of her packing my things up to leave them on the front step.
The realization that I might never see her smile at me again is a blade digging into my chest, and I stop for a moment with my hand over my heart before I force myself to cross the hotel parking lot.
When I enter the lobby, Irene is bent over a crossword puzzle at the reception desk, a magnifying glass clutched in her crooked fingers.
Irene is rarely awake at the reception desk, especially the times when I’ve come and gone in the evening.
But of course she would be here now, at the lowest point in my fucking life, so she can broadcast the news to the rest of the town that Harper kicked me out of the cottage.
By tomorrow morning, it’ll be a headline in the gossip section of the Capeside Chronicle.
“Harper Starling Rejects Tourist’s Marriage Proposal at Gunpoint. ” Jesus fucking Christ.
I stifle a groan and force a smile her way as I take a few unsteady steps forward.
“Oh hello, Mr. Rhodes. I didn’t expect to be seeing you this evening,” Irene says, pushing her glasses up her nose to regard me.
“Yeah . . . ” My brain seems to have been emptied and filled with cotton fuzz, because that’s all I can come up with. I slow to a stop in the center of the lobby.
Irene’s white brows knit together, deep trenches appearing between them as she surveys my reddened eyes and the despair I struggle to hide. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“Hmm.” She raps her fingernails on the wooden counter. “Everything not okay?”
“Umm . . . ” “Murder Daddy Thrown Out of House by Gardening Star,” I think as the image of another headline flashes through my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut for a beat to force it away. “I just need to sleep.”
The look on Irene’s face is pitying. Which is the worst. “All right, my boy. Breakfast is at—”
“Six to ten,” I interject with a weak salute. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I start making my way to the corridor that leads to my room, but Irene calls out my name and I halt once more.
I take a deep breath to pull myself together, then turn and face her.
“Here, take this, just in case you need it,” she says, and places a travel-sized toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter.
“Oh, and this too.” She reaches down to the shelves behind the counter and deposits a handful of mini bourbon bottles next to her crossword puzzle.
“No Piggly Wiggly in the booze this time. I promise.”
I hesitate before heading to the counter to retrieve her offerings, sliding my bag from my shoulder to place everything inside. When I’m done, she grabs my arm, a kind and gentle smile lifting the corners of her lips. “She’ll come around.”
I don’t even try to hide the pain from my expression this time. It burns so hot in my chest that I swear my heart is turning to ash. “I don’t think so, ma’am.”
“You giving up so fast?”
I meet her eyes. And somehow, I’m shaking my head no. I’m not giving up.
“Good. Then have some drinks. Get some sleep. Let her calm down. And then fix it tomorrow.” She squeezes my wrist with surprising strength. “Love is rarely a walk in the sun, my boy. It’s a battleground. So fight.”
With a final press of her palm, she lets me go.
I know she doesn’t understand just how complex the situation with Harper is, or how deep the damage goes.
But her words still give me the faintest glimmer of hope.
Determination is a quality I’ve honed. Fighting is a skill I’m good at.
Trauma and grief, anger and loss—those are enemies I’ve faced before.
So maybe she’s right. I need to lick the wounds of a battle lost, and come back tomorrow to win the war.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say as I hike the strap of my backpack up my shoulder. “I appreciate it.”
She nods and gives me a reassuring smile, and then I turn and head to my room.
It’s not easy to keep that small flame of hope alive when I get to my hotel suite.
It feels like being trapped in a memory I don’t want to relive.
Those days when I first arrived in Cape Carnage belong to another man, one I don’t want to remember.
But maybe I have to face him one more time before I can truly move forward.
I crack open one of the bottles of bourbon and take a long sip. The burn slides down my throat as I sit on the edge of the bed to stare into the nothingness between me and the floor.
Harper isn’t safe here, she never has been.
And someone is clearly fucking with her.
The first name that comes to mind is Arthur—he has the access, the intelligence.
He knows her true identity. He could be trying to drive me out of her life to ensure she stays subservient to him.
And the cottage is his property. Even though he legitimately seems reluctant to go inside, he still could have faced his fears long enough to install hidden cameras, if he had been motivated enough.
And if he had, maybe he’d seen her put the bone in her freezer and had figured it was the perfect opportunity to fuck with her.
The trouble is, he’d risk his whole plan going sideways.
I take another swig of bourbon, finishing the first mini bottle as I mull over the likelihood of Arthur’s involvement.
Lukas crosses my mind next. He’s a less likely culprit.
He’s been too busy with his work to pull off something so ingenious, unless that’s been part of his cover.
Maybe he wants to take Harper out of the picture completely, particularly if he has concerns about the inheritance of Arthur’s estate once he passes.
Perhaps his hope was that she’d be discovered.
But Harper seems to be confident that he really doesn’t know anything about Arthur’s pastimes.
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. Truthfully, neither Arthur nor Lukas feels quite right.
There’s another piece of the puzzle that I’m missing.
Maybe a Sleuthseeker who hasn’t yet revealed themselves, or someone with a long-standing grudge.
A shadow lurking beyond my view. A ghost in the periphery.
But no matter how many times I look at this problem head-on, I can’t pull a figure from the smoke.
It’s the why that I can’t make sense of.
It feels as though someone is trying to destabilize Harper.
To isolate her. But to what end? Revenge, perhaps? Other motives that I can’t see?
I drink all six mini bottles of bourbon and I’m no closer to figuring that out.
Which tracks, I guess, given booze and thinking don’t always go together.
And the problem is, the more I drink, the more I just see Harper’s face.
The pain and sorrow. The rage. The fury at herself is what scares me the most, because she’s the one person she will never forgive.
That’s my last thought as I finally fall asleep near midnight.
When I wake, the room is dark. I reach for Harper out of instinct. I take a disoriented breath before I realize I’m not in the cottage. And then everything floods back to me, carving fresh wounds across my battered heart.
I groan and look at my watch. Just after three in the morning.
I swing my legs off the side of my bed, cataloging the physical aches that plague my body. My knee. My elbow. I tilt my head from one side to the other and a series of pops radiate down my neck. Then I stand and stretch before padding across the room, already knowing sleep is now a lost cause.
I stand in front of the French doors that face the sea, its surface shimmering in the moonlight.
The sky is still clear, the stars shining in the black blanket of night between tendrils of cloud, but the wind is picking up in advance of the storm that’s due to hit Cape Carnage by sunrise.
It’s churning the water, the waves crashing furiously against the cliff a short distance away.
My thoughts are tied up with Harper, like they always are.
But never more than when I look at the water.
Every time, I hear her calling for me. I feel that burst of panic.
I can’t reach her beneath the waves. And now, I can’t see what it is that’s pulling her away.
If I could just look into the abyss.
I rub my eyes and sigh into my palms.
I need to go back to her cottage. I need to tear it apart.
Something’s not right there. It doesn’t add up.
There must be someone watching—someone listening.
Someone who knows the most intimate and darkest details of her life, and yet, for some reason, isn’t turning her in.
She is someone’s game, and the answer must be in her house.
I blow out a long breath, the fire of determination growing hotter in my veins. She won’t like what I’m about to do. I’ll have to break in. Tie her up. Force her to watch as I find whatever it is that’s hiding in her house. And then we’ll figure this out. We’ll fix it. Together.
With a final, steadying breath, I let my hands fall to my sides and open my eyes.
There’s a subtle movement. I lean a little closer to the glass, my pulse stuttering.
At first, I think it’s something ahead, maybe something I can’t quite make out in the distant dark.
A movement on the growing wind. But it’s not.
It’s a ghost in the reflection of the glass.
I wheel around. Something strikes me in the temple.
And then I see nothing at all.