Things We Never Said (Hart's Boardwalk 3)

I didn’t want to see that.

I didn’t want to see any of this.

But we couldn’t stop staring at each other, drinking each other in. Michael’s eyes were the same beautiful dark brown. The kind of eyes a girl could drown in. His blond hair was cut shorter than it had been when we were younger, so it appeared darker, and those broad shoulders of his seemed even wider. The T-shirt he wore clung to his body suggesting he worked out more than he used to. Not that he wasn’t fit back then. There was just more muscle now. I realized it gave the illusion of him being taller than he was. He was five eleven, shorter than the men in my family, but he’d always had such a masculine, commanding presence.

He still had that presence.

Michael, what are you doing here? Please go away.

The blond holding his hand (I refused to really look at her) tugged on it, and he looked away, freeing me from his stare. I sagged, the breath rushing back into my body. But as quickly as he’d looked away, his attention returned to me and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

What was I doing here?

Seriously?

Every part of me trembled, and I tucked my hands underneath the table so he couldn’t see them shake. “What are you doing here?” I rejoined.

Seriously, what are you doing here? Leave

, Michael. Leave, now!

I hoped he’d developed telepathic abilities over the last nine years.

“We’re on vacation,” the blond spoke and pressed into his side like she belonged there. “Mike, who is this?”

Mike? My family called him Mike too, but I hated shortening such a beautiful name to something as ordinary as Mike.

“Uh, Kiersten, this is Dahlia. She’s Dermot’s little sister.”

Dermot’s little sister? Really? What a joke.

The blond replied, “I thought she died.”

Pain lashed through my chest, and Bailey grasped for my hand under the table. The words made me look at the blond now. She was small, slender. Petite. And she would have been pretty if she wasn’t wearing such a pinched expression on her face. My eyes flew to Michael. He’d told this person about Dillon. Who was she that she was important enough to know about Dillon but not important enough to know about me? Or was it that I was no longer important enough?

His grim expression caused the emotion in my throat to tighten. “That was Dillon.”

The name cracked around the room like a gunshot, and I could feel my chest compress with panic. Little black dots covered my eyes, and I knew I was going to freak out in front of him.

No way.

I couldn’t.

I might as well rip open my chest and ask everyone to look at all the little missing pieces of my heart.

“I need to go.” I stood, leaving Bailey no choice but to release my hand. Eyes down, terrified to meet his, I marched by Michael Sullivan and his blond faster than I’d ever moved in my life.

“Dahlia!” he called out as I hurried down the steps. The exit seemed so far away.

I heard Bailey’s voice and then the deep rumble of Michael’s, but I yanked open the door without paying too much attention to them.

I was out.

The salty ocean air filled my lungs as I hurried down the boards. Fear of him chasing after me made my heart pound and I ran. I ran through the light summer crowd of tourists, the soles of my tennis shoes gathering small granules of wayward sand that always made its way onto the boards from the beach.

The light, warm breeze blew through my long hair, and I ran as if the devil himself were chasing me all the way to my store.

That panic, that terror, didn’t leave me until I’d locked the door behind me. I didn’t flip the “Open” sign from “Closed for Lunch.” I didn’t turn on the lights. Instead, I scurried into the back of the store to my workshop where the demons of the past tried to overwhelm me for the first time in years.