Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

He pinches his lips shut. He’s tired. I can see that. Exhausted, even. Life has not been kind to Noah, and it wasn’t kind to me, and for a long time the only kindness we found was in each other. Maybe if he weren’t being such an asshole, I could muster up more empathy for him. But he came here to leave his anger at my feet, and I can’t carry it right now. My hands are full.

“Are you okay?” This is the question he should have led with. He might have if things weren’t so hard. But things are what they are. I’m not going to be a pushover with Beau, and I’m not going to slip into my old role with Noah. “I’m worried sick about you. I came here because I can’t understand what’s happening to you. You used to be open with me about stuff like that. You came back—” He shakes his head. Looks away. “You came back with your eyes all red like it was the end of the world. And then I find out you’re right back here.”

“How?” I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. “How would you know where I was?”

He sighs. “When you weren’t at home the next day, I called every place I could think of. You haven’t been anywhere but this inn and the airport. The lady at the front desk told me you were here.”

“I’m here, and I’m fine.” I press the back of my hand to my eyes. No tears. Not now. After everything that’s happened, the last thing Paige needs is to see me break down because of a confrontation on the beach.

“Are you staying?” Noah asks.

I don’t know the answer to that question. It depends on the answers to a hundred other questions. All of them are wrapped up in each other. Paige and Emily are a complicated tangle and at the center of it all is Beau Rochester. I might tell myself that I came back here for Emily, but I also came for myself.

“I don’t think it’s a good time to talk about this.”

Noah’s chin comes up. “Then we’ll talk later.”

“You can text me—”

“No. We’ll talk later. I’m not getting on a plane today. I’ve got a motel off the highway.” He takes one last look at the inn and the beach and the blue water rolling in over itself. “The Jane I knew would have split the room with me. Looks like you’ve moved up in the world.”

All the biting things I could say in response to this wither and die. I don’t want them in the air between us, or in our memories. “You should go.”

“Yeah.” Noah shrugs, like it was nothing for him to walk down to this beach in this place. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Let me know when you get back to the motel,” I say automatically. This is what we’ve always done for each other. We check in, and make sure the other person’s still breathing. We remind each other to deadbolt the door. The difference now is that I don’t want to be protected from my life. I want it to belong to me.

“I will,” answers Noah. He’s turned away already. I don’t think he’s telling the truth. I don’t think he’ll text me when he arrives.

I don’t have it in me to watch him until he disappears behind the inn. I don’t want to know if he looks back, or if he doesn’t. My throat feels tight with tears. Sand has collected in the towel, so I gauge the wind and shake it out so it doesn’t get in Paige’s eyes, then sit back down on the edge. She’s crouched down behind her castle, her hands smoothing down the sand. With a brisk brush of her palms, she stands up and puts her hands on her hips.

“You look sad,” she says. “Do you not like that guy?”

“No. I like him a lot.”

She narrows her eyes. “You don’t look at him the way you look at Beau.”

“How do I look at Beau?”

Paige makes her eyes wide and moony and tilts her head. “Like this.”

It makes me laugh in spite of myself. It’s true that I don’t look at Noah like that. I’ve looked at him lots of different ways. As my co-conspirator and friend. Sometimes as my protector. But I’ve never felt the way I feel when I look at Beau.

Noah’s right. I’m different now, but not in the way he says. I haven’t sold out or given in. I’m making my own way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Beau Rochester

Paige dips a fish stick into ketchup and peers across the table at me. In the scheme of things, not much happened today. I met with the prosecutor. I took a statement from Emily and had it printed at the public library. I came home and was generally useless while Jane worked on schoolwork with Paige. I tried to help with a few of the problems, but Paige didn’t want my input. Jane’s is better.