Page 61 of When I Fall In Love

Kyle locks his car. As he walks around with a cabin bag in his hand, he looks up for a second and I do a double-take. The smart designer clothes, the hip beard and haircut, those gleaming patent leather shoes, are all so Successful San Francisco, it seems incongruous with every emotion he displayed during our call half an hour ago. Only his red-rimmed eyes give away that he’d been crying. As he walks up all I can think of is that he looks out of place. Yes, we both have a lot of miles on us, miles that took us away from our impoverished youth.

“I was worried sick,” he says as he comes up to me, and when he gets close, he pulls me into a tight hug. “Brenda only let me know about the paddleboard about an hour ago, and that’s when I got really freaked out.”

“I’m okay.” I turn into the cottage and wait for him to step inside. As he walks past me, I can feel his walls going back up. Who knows what went through his head when he saw our old cottage—the only thing I sense now is that he’s done.

“Pfft. Doesn’t this place just remind you—” He breaks off and peers into the open-plan lounge. “It’s very… quaint.” He drops his bag in the mudroom and toes off his shoes as he peers into the cottage. “Brenda says there’s a sofa bed I can bunk on. If you can believe it, there isn’t an open bed in all of Ashleigh Lake on a Sunday night in October.”

“It’s a busy time of year.”

“Crazy,” he says. “But I can see why. I forgot how it looks here in the fall.”

I trail him as he pads deeper into the cottage, taking in the homeyness of the furnishings. Does he feel the same pull towards our prior life like I did when I first walked in here?

Kyle walks over to the glass doors and the view of the lake. “Yes, still pretty spectacular, but honestly, this type of place should be flattened. Did you see the house next door? Now that’s something that’s more in line with my expectations.”

Yes. Kyle has put our old life solidly behind him with brutal force. He might have had a glitch in the matrix on seeing the farm, but he’s plugged back into the system of pretend he’s built around himself.

He turns to me and rakes his hands through his hair, and in the movement I notice that his fingers are trembling.

“Do you want a coffee? Are you hungry?” Not that I have any food in the fridge. Everything crossed the border to Hunter’s place over the weekend. “I only have ice cream.”

At this he chuckles. “Let me guess. It’s Ashleigh Lake’s?”

“How did you know?”

“A wild guess.”

I pad over to the fridge to take out the two pints of ice cream. “Nutticrust and Strawberry Shortcake.” I hold them out for him to see. “See anything you like?”

“Is it keto?”

“Nope. It’s organic, for what it’s worth.”

“Did you buy it?”

“No. It was here in the freezer when I arrived, courtesy of the rental agency.”

“Yeah. You know this is Hunter Logan’s cottage, right? He owns it, as well as the mansion next door. That ice cream is courtesy of Hunter Logan, not the rental agency. He opened up this cottage especially for you. He never lets it out in October.”

“I—” I stall. Hunter never mentioned that he owns this cottage. Nobody ever mentioned it. Except that it did suddenly become available, as if someone had waved a magic wand.

“Yeah. Let that sink in.”

“I know he owns the house next door, but nobody said anything about the cottage.” Little things suddenly start to make sense now. Hunter opening the front door by magic that night I was drunk. Hunter fetching my things and later the food from the cottage without me giving him the code to the front door. Hannah running up to the deck and Derek warning her that she can’t play here when there’re guests, as if this were her own little doll’s house.

“Beth… I know this sounds cruel, but he didn’t want you to know so he could play you. So that they could all play you.” He shrugs off his jacket as if he is suddenly too hot. “Can you see that?”

“No.” This isn’t Hunter. That isn’t the Brodie style. None of them would play me like this… would they?

“Don’t be blind, Beth. Do you have any idea what’s at stake for him? They’re all playing you so hard, hoping that we don’t make the bucks we can off this sale. The mere idea makes my stomach turn.” He stalks up to me with a dark look in his eyes. “Let me guess. Since the moment you set foot in Ashleigh Lake, you’ve been wooed and coddled and included in their little indulgent family parties and long dinners at May Brodie’s table just like way back when.”

I bite down hard on my lip. Nothing in me wants to acknowledge this. Kyle’s words are like a slow rip of my body into two parts, from the crown of my head, down, down, down. Once the rip reaches my heart, I clutch my hands to my chest, trying to prevent the pain from coming. “No. It hasn’t been like that.”

Except that it has. That night of Ethan’s birthday when I got asked to join them. Dinner at May’s table. Hunter taking me around. Everyone luring me closer, a spiral of people leading me to believe I belong and am worthy of being let into their inner circle again.

“Hasn’t it?” he asks, his eyebrows hitched in question. “God, the feeling I got when I stood in front of our old cottage—how that bitch degraded you, used words—”

Those words that still ring at the back of my head when I least need it. When Lady Collingwood called me a whore she implied I was only good enough for one thing—only good enough to be used. I close my eyes, hoping it would block out the words, but when they’re stuck in your head—

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