Best I've Ever Had (Sea Breeze Meets Rosemary Beach 3)

I didn’t wait for her to speak. I didn’t turn to Micah to find out what the fuck he had to do with this. I turned and began to leave.

“ELI, wait!” Annie’s voice called and I cringed at the sound of it. I never wanted to see her or anyone connected to Alice again. They were as dead to me as she was. I didn’t stop. I kept walking. “Please, Eli! Please just at least let me give you this. I need to explain, you need—”

I stopped and spun back around to face her. Not wanting to hear another word come out of her mouth. “NO! Do you understand? I said NO! Now get the fuck out of my life. You don’t belong here.”

“You ignored all my calls. I had to come here,” she started again, her face frantic as she glanced at Micah for what? Support? How the fuck did he equate into this anyway?

“Leave,” I demanded. “I want nothing of hers. Why the fuck would I? Why would you think I needed to hear anything about her? She is dead. Go home, Annie.” I didn’t give her time to say more before I began walking away again. I didn’t head toward the path that would take me back to the front of the building. I couldn’t go in there now. I needed to be alone. I needed to get the fuck away from it all.

Just a moment to calm down.

“The baby wasn’t yours.” Annie had said the words loud enough for me to hear her without yelling. I heard them, but that didn’t make what she had said clear. I stopped and stood there for a moment. I didn’t turn around again to look at her. There was no point. It was her words I was trying to make sense of.

“JT had wanted her to get an abortion. I found the paperwork for her consultation at the clinic. The night you met her, they were on one of their many breakups because she wasn’t getting the abortion. I found a letter she’d written to him but never sent. It was written the day y’all ran off to get married. She told him she’d found her baby a father. She was going to stay clean and she wanted him out of her life.”

I didn’t want to hear any more of this. It wasn’t true. I had lost my son already. She wasn’t going to take his existence from me too. I shook my head and kept walking. This was more of the O’Conner lies. That’s all they knew to do. Lie. Destroy everything around them.

“Do the math, Eli. Add it up. The doctors thought the baby could live. She was almost six months pregnant. Not four. Did you even ask about that? The night you met Alice she was pregnant.”

Unable to listen to any more of her lies, I turned and stalked back toward her. My fury building as the words continued to spew out of her. “NO! You won’t take him from me! I have only that and you want to take it too. He was all that was pure all that was real within the fucking web of lies she destroyed me with.” The torment that had held me captive for so many dark days after I’d buried my son was there again. Wrapping me tightly. Reminding me of all that I had lost and how I’d let him down.

Annie didn’t move and I stood there now feet away from her wanting to see her walk away. Just fucking disappear.

“I didn’t come to cause you more pain,” she said slowly. “I came here to free you. To tell you what I should have already done. To save you from the lies that she left behind.”

I took a step back from her. The pity in her eyes wasn’t meant for me. I wouldn’t accept that. Just like her words were bullshit.

“She was my wife. That was my son. The rest was a lie. Our life had been one big motherfucking lie. But I held him. MY son, damn you. He was mine. You won’t take that from me too.” Every word from me burned like acid in my throat. I saw the truth in her eyes and my chest felt like a fire had exploded inside me.

Without another word, I went to my bike. I didn’t look back and I rode away. From the lies, from the truth, from everything that I’d been running from since the night Alice died, from Sea Breeze . . . and from the only hope I had at living again.

JUNE 30 / 12:07 AM

Ophelia Finlay

SITTING IN FRONT of the dance studio when I pulled up after my drive back from Sea Breeze was the last person I expected to see. I’d hoped in the dark corners of my broken heart that Eli might be here waiting. The small shred of hope that when he had driven off, he’d needed to leave everyone else, but he would find his way back here. He wasn’t here though, and the tears still wet on my cheeks did nothing to ease the pain he’d inflicted. Not from the words I’d heard outside Live Bay but from his leaving without saying anything. I thought we were something more. That he’d explain it all to me, tell me the whole story. But I’d been wrong, and the heartbreak was like anything I had ever experienced.