Nobody But You Read online

  him…

  And since that made her knees weak, she sat.

  He surprised her by not sitting next to her but instead crouching in front of her and taking her hand. “I didn’t know,” he said. “When I met you, I mean. I had no idea that the resort’s attorney was your ex-husband.”

  She’d already figured out that much for herself. “The resort’s attorney and someone you went to school with.”

  “True,” he said. “But you’re going to have to trust me when I say we didn’t hang in the same circles. We were never friends, and that hasn’t changed.”

  “But you knew he was the resort’s attorney, if not when you first got back, certainly later. When did you find out?”

  He didn’t move an inch, but she sensed a wince that he couldn’t quite hide from his eyes. “Soph—”

  “When?”

  He held her gaze in his for an interminable beat and then let out a breath. “Hangover day.”

  She stared at him as that sank in. The day she’d thrown up on him—day two. Rising to her feet, she started to walk past him.

  He caught her by the arms. “I didn’t tell you right away because at first I didn’t see how it mattered.”

  She made a scoffing sound. “You didn’t tell me at all! And we talked about him, more than once.” Embarrassment heated her cheeks. “You never even blinked!”

  “Fine,” he said grimly. “I should have told you. I know I should have. But I didn’t, because as I learned with my family, sometimes standing by your opinion of someone doesn’t matter so much as keeping your mouth shut and minding your own business.”

  She stared at him. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

  “Why do people keep saying that?” he asked, tossing up his hands. He shook his head. “Put yourself in my shoes, Sophie.”

  “But that’s the thing. I’d have told you,” she said. “I’d have told you that your lying, cheating, scum-ball ex was my attorney.”

  “Not my attorney,” he said. “The resort’s attorney, a guy who was in place when I got here. A guy I had nothing to do with hiring, a guy whose work no one can fault.”

  She imagined the smoke coming out her ears. “And back to that whole keeping your mouth shut and minding your own business crap,” she said. “Seriously? Your family would hate that, and for the record, so do I.”

  “Except I was never able to mind my own business when it came to you,” he said. “Not once.”

  But she called bullshit on that. “I’ve been with someone I can’t trust,” she said. “You know that. What you don’t know is that I can’t do it again. I won’t. I’m making better choices for myself now, Jacob. I have to.”

  There was something in his eyes now, something to go along with the regret. A flash of anger to match hers.

  “So tried and hanged without discussion?” he asked quietly. “Is that it?”

  The barb hit home, but she just shook her head and walked away.

  And this time, he let her go.

  Chapter 30

  When Jacob got back to the event, breakfast had ended and their guests were all packing up and leaving in small groups. He couldn’t reconcile the normalcy of the scene with the wild ripping and shredding going on inside him. His heart seemed to be shattering inside his chest.

  He could still feel the way Sophie had quivered with emotion as she’d stepped away from him. Their eyes had met for that one beat, and the hurt in her expression had been a sucker punch to his gut.

  And then she’d turned her back on him. He’d stood there and watched as the best thing to ever happen to him walked away.

  And it’d been his own fault.

  Since they’d given resort staff the day off, his brothers and sister were on cleanup detail.

  And Sophie.

  She was on her knees in the wild grass, rolling up one of the canopies. Her head was bent so he couldn’t see her expression, but he had no problem reading the fuck-off ’tude emanating from her in waves.

  He stood there in rare indecision for a beat, then started toward her. When he was two steps in, she lifted her head and leveled him with a don’t-even-think-about-it look that only made him all the more determined. She’d clearly tried and hung him on the assumption that he’d withheld information from her for the sole purpose of hurting her. That she’d lumped him in with her ex really sucked.

  But before he could reach her, Chris stepped in front of him. “Got a minute?” his old friend asked. “I’m about to get on the road and wanted to…”

  Jacob watched as over Chris’s shoulder Sophie began directing the takedown of the rest of the rental equipment, pointing to the back of Gray’s truck.

  She’d walked out of his world, but she was still running it. That was when he realized Chris was looking at him, waiting on an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. “I…Shit.” Jacob shoved his hand through his hair and grimaced. “I’m sorry. What?”

  Chris smiled a little sympathetically. “She got you dizzy?”

  “Something like that.”

  Chris nodded. “She’s pretty amazing, you know. You’re a lucky guy.”

  Funny, but he wasn’t feeling so lucky at the moment.

  “I’d wish you good luck with her,” Chris said. “But given how she was looking at you last night and then how you two vanished, you don’t need it.” He slid the duffel bag off his shoulders and handed it to Jacob.

  Jacob stared down at it, his heart suddenly thumping hard in his chest. He knew this bag.

  It’d belonged to Brett.

  He opened it and stared down at Brett’s personal effects. His diver’s watch, which Jacob had given him for his birthday seven years ago. The beat-up DS he’d played to distraction. An old, battered book of poems that Brett hadn’t actually read because he hated poetry, but it had belonged to his mom, so he’d carried it all around the planet. His lucky Dodgers hat.

  That was it, Brett’s life in a damn nutshell, the only things left to honor a good man who was sorely missed.

  Jacob was glad to have the bag and the memories that went with them even as it pained him to imagine Hud or his mom getting a bag of his things. Through a lump in his throat, he lifted his head and met Chris’s gaze.

  “You really didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” Chris asked. “I told you that I don’t know why they sent Brett’s belongings to me. I was listed second. You were first. It was a mistake, and I knew you’d want to have his things.”

  Jacob nodded and shouldered the bag, which felt like a million pounds. Brett hadn’t had any family. He’d had no one but his unit. Jacob had felt the same way, which was part of what had bonded them so tightly. He opened his mouth to thank Chris for bringing the bag all this way, but he found he couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat, the one that felt as big as a regulation-size football.

  Chris clasped him on the shoulder. They hugged, and then Chris was gone. Jacob stood there, registering the low hum of everyday noise in the background. The water lapping the shore. The slight wind rustling the pines. The talk and laughter of the people nearby. A boat motor.

  Normal life. And it was going on around him as if completely unaware he’d stepped off the merry-go-round.

  He wanted to set the bag aside and force Sophie to talk to him. At the very least he could help finish the cleanup. He wanted to jump back into that “normal life,” the one that had just started to fit him like a glove.

  But it was like a switch had been flipped inside of him and normal no longer applied.

  “Where’s Jacob?”

  Sophie turned at the question. The last of everything was loaded up and she was just about out of there. Her head hurt. Her body hurt.

  Her heart hurt.

  And Hud stood at her side, looking around. “Have you seen him?” he asked.

  Yes, she had, and she was trying not to think about it.

  “He was saying good-bye to Chris,” Kenna piped up. “And it looked pretty serious. Chris handed him a duffel bag that