Page 130 of The Love Destroyers

She took to her social media accounts to tell everyone the true story of Jeffrey Nichols. Including how he’d knowingly ruined me to keep evidence of his embezzling from becoming public. And how he’d roped her into his “throne of lies.”

She has twice as many followers as she did a month ago, and a new turtle sidekick, who hopefully doesn't have to be drugged to look calm for the camera, although Seamus and I did make an anonymous tip to a local animals rights group just in case.

Jeffrey’s lawyers must have advised him to drop his complaint against me, because he did.

I can go back to my profession.

I could also have gone back to my life in Charlotte. Admittedly, Jeffrey’s practice is burnt toast, but I own an apartment there. I have connections. And suddenly all of the people who’d turned their back so on me were in my inbox, wanting to get coffee or a drink to hear the whole story.

“Animals,” my mother had said when I’d told her. “Wanting their taste of carrion.”

For a woman who’d always loved gossip, it was an interesting sentiment, but my mother was fiercely loyal in her own way. My former friends were not.

She’d also lifted her chin and said, “You know, your work on the house is not complete. There’s still that enormous hole in the wall. Your young man seems like he’s doing well. I’m thinking ofknocking his rating down to a four if it’s not completed within the next week.”

Seamus and I knocked it down together. It felt fantastic to break the wall down with him, putting to rest that final part of my past. He and Anthony are going to do the rest of the renovations together. They even have a Google Doc with all of their plans, started by Anthony of course.

Staying in Marshall was an easy decision. I’d meant what I’d said to Seamus the night of the break-in. I want to leave the past behind, even to destroy it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t carry pieces of it into the future with me.

I am the girl who grew up in Smith House. The debutante who’d burned another deb’s dress in the bathroom after she spread false rumors. The little child who was never acknowledged by her father. The woman who was duped by a man who’d claimed to love her. Those different versions of myself are all a part of me, and I’ve reached a place of peace with that.

But I feel more motivated than ever to protect women who need it. I’ve decided to go into legal aid work and, shockingly, Nicole set me up with a local friend—a woman named Mary who is twice as Type-A as I am and has been interested in setting up a legal aid practice for a while.

Now, we’re going to do it together.

And then there’s Seamus. He recently started a new job at a garage that specializes in restorations. He told me, my mother, and Chuck the story of meeting Hank, and the look on Chuck’s face was so priceless, I took a photo of it on the sly.

“Fate had a plan for you, son,” he said with a broad smile, and even though Seamus always insists he doesn’t believe in “things like that,” he grinned back and said, “You know, I think you might be right this time.”

Truthfully, I think hedoesbelieve in things like that, and getting that job and then arriving at exactly the right time to help me has finally convinced him that the universe isn’t conspiring against him because of what he did.

My mother claps her hands, engaging our attention.

“We’re all here today to celebrate the downfall of one of the worst miscreants to ever walk this earth. He is singlehandedly responsible for the destruction of my best bottles of alcohol.” She smiles at me, because this is my mother’s sense of humor at work. “And, of course, he mistakenly thought he could take a Rosings Smith woman down. That is usually the last mistake a man makes.”

I catch the fond glance Seamus and Chuck exchange and feel that now-familiar hot butter feeling. It doesn’t scare me the way it used to. There’s nothing to stop a woman from being strong and loving. My own mother is, even if she sometimes has questionable ways of showing it.

She lifts her glass. “To Jeffrey’s downfall. May he spend the rest of his life eating tasteless prison food and reading forty-year-old books while we feast on Claire’s delicacies and drink champagne.”

Smiling at her and then Seamus, I remove the flask and take a small sip. But only a small sip, because our plans for the afternoon involve driving.

A sly smile crosses his face, and he lays one of his hands across my thigh, rubbing with his fingertips.

“Hey, Emma, is that Dad’s flask?” Rosie asks, the question surprising me so much that I nearly drop it. It’s still bedazzled, with a few rotating stickers on it.

“It really belonged to your dad?” I ask Seamus, eyes wide. “You told me you were joking.”

He lets his hand ride higher on my thigh. “I wanted you to keep it. I liked knowing it was with you.”

“Still believe people can onlythinkthey’re in love, Shay?” Declan asks him.

“Oh fuck off,” Seamus says.

I feel a little flustered because we still haven’t said those words to each other.

“We were having a nice moment,” my mother says pointedly, and Seamus lifts his hands.

“My apologies, Mrs. Rosings.”

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