Page 58 of The Vow

I checked my phone again, my numerous messages to Pat still resting unanswered.

I shouldn’t worry. I shouldn’t care. But I did, and that was what I hated most. That in this moment, I didn’t hate him at all.

My bare feet skittered to a halt by the front door, and I looked left and right for where Nonna had gone.

“Nonna?” I called. She had to know something.

My arms wrapped tight over my front, trying to hold in the absolute wreckage in my chest. No answer and no sign of her. My skin prickled, and I slowly faced the massive rack of pristine fedora hats, each one hanging like a monument to Damon’s cunning.

Fuck him. Fuck his partial truths. Fuck his stupidity. And fuck his stupid fucking hats.

I lunged forward and grabbed as many as I could. One after another, I piled them on top of my head like a tipping tower. I pinned them under my arms. Stacked and fisted even more in my hands. And then I flew downstairs like a thief in the night. Except I wasn’t stealing them. I was taking them for a swim.

“Fuck. You.” Each word punctuated the toss of one hat after another into the heated water.

The light weights landed with far less of a splash, literally and figuratively, than I’d hoped, but it still felt good to see them float like round, felt carcasses in the pool.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me.” Another plopped onto the surface. “You shouldn’t have left me.” I shook my head, swearing it was a drop of pool water and not a tear on my cheek. “You shouldn’t have—” My breath hitched.Made me fall in love with you.The last was silent as I drew my arm back and threw the hat in the pool like I was dunking a basketball.But instead of sinking, the stupid thing had the audacity to bob on the surface just as confident and un-fucking-bothered as the man it belonged to.

I swayed, taking a step back to steady myself, and then stared at the pool full of fedora hats, all of them poised on the surface. None of them sank. Hardly any of them even rattled the stillness of the water. They just floated there, unbroken, unsunk, undeterred by the anger and pain that Damon had caused me.Just like all the ways I wanted him.

Just like all the promises he made in spite of my protests.

Tears dripped down my cheeks until I couldn’t move fast enough to swipe them away. I wanted to not want him. To not ache for another kiss like it was the first breath I’d taken in fifteen years. The first feel of warmth. Of a heartbeat that was anything more than a drone.

I wanted my stupid, self-annihilating heart to not ache for the cause of its destruction.

Another swipe of my palms across my cheeks, and then I was at the side of the pool, my legs sliding over the edge, and then I was chest-deep in the warm water. My shirt sealed to my chest, my arms treading as I grabbed the nearest hat and forced it beneath the surface.

I was going to drown them all. And then I was going to drown every last desperate concern for the master manipulator of my marriage.

Minutes blurred together in a tumult of tears and frustration as I sank each and every reminder of the man Damon had become since he’d disappeared from my life. A chameleon, becoming everything and then nothing to those he worked with. A ghost, his striking features hidden behind layers of security, some of them as simple as the rim of a felt hat. A Casanova, no matter how rooted his seeds of doubt had become.

I panted, lunging for the last felt buoy and dragging it under the water, feeling like I took a piece of my heart with it. And then everything was still. The pool was like an underwater graveyard, each hat a distorted tombstone to every one of Damon’s facades that had fooled me.

And still, an indefatigable, unrepentant fragment of my heart beat with worry for him.

Asshole.

I treaded to the side of the pool, resigning myself to having to hold the reins of my emotions for another night since he obviously wasn’t—my breath caught.

The light in Damon’s room was illuminated.

I drew myself along the edge of the pool, my hardening heartbeats pushing the water in front of me from my path.

Instead of Damon, it was Pat I saw first. The rugged Irishman stalked from one side of the room to the other, determined. Water funneled between my creased brows and dripped down the length of my nose.What was he doing?My eyes swung to the rest of the house, the lights still doused like I’d left them.

Was Damon even with him? Or did he just send Pat back here so he didn’t have to face me? Or was he not…had Belmont…

My pulse crashed with sudden, violent despair just as Pat appeared again, this time supporting another, clearly struggling body.

Damon.

Water sloshed and spilled. It tugged hard at my clothes as I shoved myself out of the pool and ran for the house. He was back.He was alive.

I needed to know what happened. I needed to make sure whatever Belmont did wasn’t going to kill him, and then I was going to kill him.

My feet slid and squished on the floor, leaving a sopping trail in my wake. I took the stairs two at a time, gripping the railing when I almost slipped and fell in my hurry.

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