Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(15)

I was you. I had your life. I took it for granted, just the way you are.

There’s still a tiny part of her that would give anything to have those days back again, blinders and all.

There’s another part of her, though, that would never go back, not even if she could have known what was coming. No, especially not knowing what was coming.

Two summers ago, after her father-in-law died of cancer, she and Nick had discussed that very topic in the car on the way home from the funeral in Baltimore.

Would you rather die a slow death and have the chance to say good-bye, or would you prefer to die in an accident and never know what hit you?

Nick took the latter option. She couldn’t understand it. Not back then.

“One minute you’re here, the next you’re not?” she shuddered. “I’d rather know what was coming, even if it was horrible, so that I could prepare myself and the kids.”

“You mean if you were the one who was going to die, or if I were?”

“If I were. Or if you were. Either way, I’d rather know.”

“Not me. Either way, I think it’s better not to know,” Nick told her. “That way, you get to go about your daily life, same as always, until the very last second.”

Oh, the irony.

Nick, after all, was the one who got to know—probably a mere few months after that conversation—that their marriage was doomed.

Lauren was the one who got to go about her daily life, same as always, until the very last second.

She grasped, the moment she found out about Beth, that her own life as she knew it was over. Just like that. Just like being hit by a truck.

Yes, she forced Nick through the motions—counseling, talking, dating, sex—but she really had no illusions about saving their marriage. Maybe she was trying to make it harder on him.

Or maybe she was just trying to do it her way, after all. Trying to buy time, to prepare to say good-bye.

Across the grass, the young mom packs away the extra Goldfish crackers and juice boxes, probably looking ahead to more of the same tomorrow. Probably thinking about heading home, and getting the kids cleaned up, and making dinner in time for her husband to get off the train from the city.

Probably never dreaming that one night, he might get off that train with another woman and want to kiss her.

Lauren wishes she’d never pressed Nick for the gritty details of his relationship with Beth. At the time, she’d thought hearing them would make it easier to hate him—and thus, easier to let go.

She was probably right about both of those things, but now she carries the added burden of all those memories that aren’t even her own. Every time she glimpses Beth from afar, she imagines her in Nick’s arms during one of their countless intimate moments stolen while Lauren was shuttling the kids to tournaments or away with her sister on a spa weekend Nick gave her for Mother’s Day.

“You need a break,” he’d told Lauren on that sunny May day over a year ago. “Go to Red Door with Alyssa. The kids and I will hold down the fort here.”

Bastard.

And now he’s off on a permanent vacation while she holds down the fort forever.

Lauren forces herself to lean back in her chair, tilt her face to the sun, and close her eyes.

In a perfect world, Nick would get what’s coming to him.

But the world is far from perfect, and he’s most likely lounging on an Atlantic beach somewhere at this very moment, without a care in the world.



“Next!”

Byron Gregson steps forward, glad there’s no one in line behind him. The fewer witnesses, the better.

“Hi. I’m looking for my daughter’s toy. She dropped it here in the station when we were here a few weeks ago—I can tell you the exact day.”

“Can you now.” The woman behind the counter doesn’t seem particularly impressed. “All I need to know is the month.”

“July. It was a pink—”

“Toy. Right. July. Be right back.”

Byron watches her step away. So far, so good.

For three weeks, he’s been waiting for this opportunity. Three weeks spent in a hellhole prison cell for mugging a tourist over by Penn Station, stealing the guy’s wallet.

Even now, despite everything else that’s happened to him—despite everything else he’s done—he’s incredulous that he, Byron Gregson, is a common street thief.

The other stuff—it kind of goes with the territory when you work in this field.

But pickpocketing?

Desperate to get out of town, he had few options—and all of them demanded cash. He didn’t dare use his ATM card or a credit card—he couldn’t risk a trail.

So he did what he had to do: ran up behind some old guy and grabbed the wallet he’d foolishly tucked into the back pocket of his baggy Wranglers.

Never in a million years would he have imagined that the guy’s wife—a puffy, florid-faced woman in a track suit—would fight back, grabbing on to him and screaming bloody murder.

He wrenched himself from her clutches and shoved her. Hard. Again, he had to. All that commotion—it was the last thing he needed.

Naturally, a couple of cops spotted him and gave chase.

All those blocks in the hot Manhattan sun, knowing he wasn’t going to make it, knowing he needed to come up with a perfect, brilliant plan…