Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(81)

Her cousin turned and walked back into the shop, locking the door, and turning the sign from “Open” to “Closed.”

And Erik, who had no more answers than he’d had when he arrived five minutes earlier, had no other option but to walk back to the charter with his bleeding cheek and swollen chin and start making his long way back to Raleigh.

Laire’s gone. And she ain’t comin’ back.

Truer words had never been spoken. Laire was gone—his Laire, the girl he’d loved so completely, so passionately, so goddamned much—was gone. And wherever she was, she was lost to Erik, never coming back.

He had mulled over her cousin’s words from time to time over the years—the pointed question about how he could sleep at night, as though he’d done her an injustice. Try as he might, he couldn’t figure out what that injury was, though it had tormented him for a few years whenever he turned his mind to it. He’d loved her. He would have done anything for her. Perhaps, he’d finally decided, her cousin had been talking about the politics of the Rexford family and his father’s administration, which wasn’t known for making life easier for the working man. It’s the only thing he could come up with because, as far as Erik was concerned, he’d never done anything to hurt or disappoint her.

When he really wanted to torture himself, he sorted through her words at the hospital, trying to wrest from them some meaning, some explanation for the way she’d pushed him out of her life. The last words she’d ever spoken to him were, I’m not your darlin’. I’m not your anything. We were just a . . . a fling. A fantasy. I’m an islander; you’re a dingbatter. It’s over. . . . It wasn’t real, Erik. It wasn’t real.

But it had been real. Or at least it had been real for him.

He gasped suddenly, the muscles in his face clenching, and he flinched, growling softly under his breath as if he’d stepped on a rusty nail that punctured the soft skin of his sole. It gaped and oozed, this wound inflicted by Laire Cornish so many years before. It had never healed. It had never been sewn up or doctored. It was as raw and painful now as the day she’d banished him from her life, perhaps all the more so because of the energy he’d expended in trying to ignore it.

Sometimes, lying in his bed alone, late at night, he stared up at the ceiling and wondered what he would say to her if he ever saw her again. And though there was a foolish, masochistic part of him that fantasized about saying nothing, just opening his arms to her and feeling the heaven of her heart pressed against his one last time on this earth, mostly the word “Why?” circled round and round in his head. And sometimes he bargained with God: if he could just find out why she’d pushed him away, it would give him the strength to finally let her go.

***

Whatever he expected to feel, or not feel, when he pulled into the well-lit Pamlico House B & B parking lot later that night—anger, sadness, sentimentality—an emotion that he didn’t expect to feel was relief. After a perilous nine-hour journey, however, he was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and whatever he felt about being back at the place where he’d courted Laire so faithfully, it would have to wait for processing until he’d had a good night’s sleep.

The drive from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras had been especially shocking. His rental had hydroplaned more times than he could count. He’d gone over and around dead, fallen trees, twice by driving off the road and over the sand. He didn’t bother going to Buxton to look at Utopia Manor—it was pitch-black out. There were almost no lights after Rodanthe, so he was better off waiting until morning.

He knew that the Pamlico House had a generator, but the warm lights through the windows were the best greeting he could have asked for. No matter what had happened between him and Laire so many years ago, this little inn was his beacon in the wilderness tonight, and he was grateful for it.

Swinging his body out of the car, he found his muscles stiff from the drive, and doubly stiff from staying alert throughout the dangerous journey. Pulling his phone from the center console, he turned it back on and scrolled for messages using the inn’s Wi-Fi. He’d missed a text from Hillary.

HILLZ: Sorry I stormed out, but you make me piping mad. You know I still love you. Text me when you get there. Drive safe. xoxo

Erik sighed, his breath a white puff of smoke floating up into the night sky.

ERIK: I’m here. Pamlico House B & B. Banks are toast. It’s good I came. xo

He slipped his phone into the hip pocket of his jeans, then opened the back door of the rental, pulling his leather duffel bag from the seat and swinging the strap onto his shoulder. On the floor was his laptop bag, and he hesitated for a moment but decided to bring that it too. May as well get some work done tomorrow, before and after meeting the contractor.

Looking up at the inn, his eyes scanned the lighted windows. The reception area was still open, of course, waiting for his arrival, but there were a couple of other lights on as well, in the upstairs guest rooms. Three or four night owls still awake at one o’clock in the morning, he guessed. It wouldn’t be a packed house, of course, but it looked like he wouldn’t have the inn to himself.

Trudging up the walkway, he stepped into the reception area, suddenly assaulted by the smell of the Pamlico House—oiled floors, old carpets, sea air, and cinnamon. His undammed memories sluiced back, and his breath might have hitched a little as he felt the ghostly weight of her hand in his, the softness of her lips beneath his, the lightness of her step on the shiny hardwood floors.