Chapter 33
I WAKE TO a ping. A few seconds of silence pass, punctured only by the faint whistle of the wind outside the window.
Another ping follows. I rub my eyes against the pale sunlight filtering through the curtains.
Adam is already up. He must be out on his morning run.
It might’ve been too much to expect him to skip two days in a row.
Rolling over, my hand hits the cool screen of his phone, jolting it to life, its brightness harsh in the dim room.
Jill: Adam, these pages are fantastic! The opening with the main character meeting the love interest right before she throws up—
The screen goes black. A blanket of unease wraps around me, all tight and itchy.
I stare at the phone, the shiny black screen, begging to be looked at.
Curling my fingers into tight fists, I fight the urge to snoop.
An all too familiar feeling worms its way through me and settles in the pit of my stomach.
There’s no way that text isn’t about me.
I grab the phone and the lock screen lights up again, displaying the message in its entirety.
Jill: Adam, these pages are fantastic! The opening with the main character meeting the love interest right before she throws up on him had me in stitches. Let’s get this rom-com happening. Call me when you’re free.
A prickly plant stabs at my insides. It’s a coincidence. The story he’s working on just happens to have a character who vomits.
My eyes dart to the coffee table where his laptop sits closed with his notebook on top.
I’ve ignored a lot of warnings in past relationships. Didn’t see the red flags that waved frantically in front of me. After my last relationship blew up in my face, red flags turning to blazing flames, I swore to never ignore them again. No matter how much I liked the guy.
Tossing the blanket off, I cross the room and sit on the edge of the sofa, the leather cold against my legs. I run a trembling finger over the cover of his notebook. It practically screams OPEN ME.
I do.
And I read his notes, his descriptions of our every encounter, his thoughts on my family, and on me. My heart splinters.
Gabi is unhappy with her life. She tries to hide it but the tense smile on Reese’s face is a sign that their marriage is in trouble.
When she insults Sabrina is that a deflection?
Have they only stayed together for the kids?
Or because of Dianne? Is this the root of Riley’s unhappiness?
Is she shielding Amelia from it? Are the rest of the family so wrapped up in their own worlds that they don’t see what is going on?
Gabi is laser focused on success and winning. Her career is all she’s passionate about.
Does Reese want to go back to work? Does she resent that she gave up her career to raise the kids? She seems fed up with Gabi.
What would Dianne do if she knew they were unhappy?
Paul loves gardening but has a real obsession with trees. He inspects the bark, branches, leaves. It’s a bit weird. He is the peacekeeper of the family. He’s always quick with a kind word to balance out Dianne’s directness. He coddles Sabrina—is that to make up for how the others treat her?
Tommy and Natalia are an odd match. Is she using him to get exposure? Or is it the other way around? Tommy almost seems oblivious to how she flirts with me. Or he doesn’t care? They seem more like friends than anything else.
The rivalry between Dianne and Carol is entertaining to watch but not fun to be caught in the middle of. I’m not sure any of them can outwit or outmatch Dianne. She really knows how to get what she wants.
Are they aware of how much Dianne manipulates them?
Nausea swells in my stomach as images of Adam hunched over on the bus scribbling these notes flash through my mind.
This whole time he was observing us, watching every interaction, listening to every conversation.
While I thought he sat quietly because he was shy or uncomfortable, he was doing research. On us!
I lift the lid on his laptop and the screen flashes to life. It’s filled with words. Scrolling up to the top, I bite down on my lip and read. Half a page in and I’ve reached the moment when the girl bursts into the elevator with an umbrella dripping with water.
The door to the cottage opens.
Adam walks in, balancing a plate of pastries. ‘I skipped my run so we could eat…what are you doing?’
‘Reading your story. It’s very…eye-opening.’
He pales. ‘Sabrina.’
‘She burst into the elevator in a frenzied state, her wild eyes throwing daggers at the man standing in the corner,’ I say, reading from his laptop.
‘Her silver heels click on the floor. Droplets of water glisten in her eyelashes, her emerald blouse clings to her like a second skin. She stabs her finger against the number 4 and pushes her wet auburn hair away from her forehead. She smells of lilies, tinged with the sweetness of the rain. That sweet smell of rain stirs—’
‘Sabrina,’ he says, putting the pastries on the coffee table. His eyes dart to the notebook open beside me.
I reach for it before he can take it away and turn to one of the pages he’s filled with his thoughts on me. ‘Your notes are even more eye-opening. Sabrina lets her family steamroll her. Especially Dianne. The whole family lets Dianne run the show, but Sabrina more so than the others.’
‘Sabrina.’
‘She has this need to please everyone. Except me, of course. There’s a spark in her eye that only appears when she’s waging war with me.’
I flick back a couple of pages to where his notes on me began and keep reading aloud.
‘My new neighbour seems like the type of person who doesn’t take responsibility for her actions.
Or thinks she can charm them away with a smile and a cake.
She is persistent. Whether she’s trying to convince me to buy another coffee or force her cakes on me, she keeps at it.
I can’t decide if it’s endearing or irritating.
I’m leaning towards irritating. She has a unique gift in aggravating me.
I’m not someone who lets others get to him, but she gets under my skin like no other. ’
‘Sabrina,’ he says again. He hasn’t moved while I’ve spouted his words back to him, his pale face flashing a thousand different emotions.
‘Jill loves your pages, by the way.’ My knuckles are white as they grip the notebook. ‘You should be really proud.’
He blinks in that agonisingly slow way of his. ‘You looked at my phone?’
‘It woke me up,’ I say like it excuses the snooping.
‘And this?’ he asks, with a jerk of his chin at the notebook clutched tightly in my fists and at the laptop open in front of me. ‘Did they wake you up too?’ he asks, his tone clipped.
He’s annoyed? Yes, snooping is bad and if I hadn’t unearthed anything I would’ve felt horrible for reading his work, but I did uncover something and this something is a bigger invasion of privacy than my snooping.
‘You’re writing about me,’ I say, flinching at the tremble in my words. I hate being the type of person whose anger induces tears. Why can’t I be like Gabi, who stays cool when something makes her furious?
‘I’m writing about me,’ he says, his jaw ticking.
I flap my hand at the screen. ‘That’s me. Unless some other girl has thrown up on you in an elevator?’
‘There is a character inspired by you’—his eyes are fixed on me as he speaks—‘and by your family, but they’re fictional characters.’
‘Then what are these?’ I shake the notebook.
‘This is your research. This is what you’ve been scribbling down when we’re on the bus.
Pages upon pages of notes on us. This tour.
This place,’ I say, glancing around the cottage.
‘Our place.’ Being in this cottage with Adam has been everything.
A little home. But it’s all been a lie. While I’ve been getting to know him and falling for him, he’s been observing.
Watching. Judging. Turning me and my family into characters in his book.
And lying to me about it. When I asked about the notebook, he said it was a writing exercise.
I took him at his word because he seemed like a decent guy so why would I doubt him?
God, I never learn. This cycle of mine where my trust is won easily and then shattered into a million pieces is getting old and tired.
I thought this time I’d found someone who is different, someone good.
Adam reaches for the notebook, regarding me silently when I pull it close to my chest. Deep lines crease his forehead. His lips are drawn into a line so thin they almost disappear.
‘This is why you came here? The research you were doing isn’t because your book is set in England. It’s because we’re your research.’
‘The sequel to The Sleeping Bones is set in England and the reasons I gave you for coming here are true,’ he says.
The floor creaks under his foot as he takes a step towards me, his eyes searching my face.
‘But there was another reason. No,’ he says when I shake the notebook.
‘I came here, Sabrina, because from the moment I met you, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. ’
I scoff.
‘It’s true.’ He moves forward again. It’s a small step and it puts him almost within arm’s reach. ‘You burst into my life and something switched in me.’
I shake my head, pressing my thighs deeper into the cool leather, reminding myself of the cycle. A lie, pretty words to wipe it away, forgiveness, another lie. I hold up the notebook. ‘This says otherwise.’
‘That,’ he says, pointing at the notebook. ‘Is proof that I was intrigued by you. Didn’t you ever wonder why I turned up at your cafe every day?’
‘To torture me,’ I mumble.
He shakes his head. ‘I knew there was something special about you and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stay away. And that night we went to dinner with your parents I…something changed that night for me, Sabrina.’
‘You’re rewriting history. You were miserable that night.’