Close to Home by Lily Everett

Author:Lily Everett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2017-02-07T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The trees along the winding country lane showed the brilliant green of new leaves tipping their sheltering branches. Redbuds and forsythia splashed dots of pink and yellow among the green. Spring was beautiful on Sanctuary Island as the midday sun began to warm the sand and salt marshes.

But inside Johnny’s rented sedan, the atmosphere was as cold and barren as the depths of winter.

Johnny, who’d offered to drive because he would have offered to do anything for Tessa and it was the first thing that sprang to mind, gripped the steering wheel with grim focus. All he wanted was to jerk it to the right and pull them off the road, lean over the gear column and convince Tessa she was wrong with his hands, his mouth, whatever he could … but she didn’t want those things.

She wanted his heart. And that would be fine, except Johnny was pretty sure he didn’t have one.

His heart and soul—his ability to love the way Tessa wanted—had been burned out of him years ago, long before he ever met her.

So Johnny kept driving and he kept breathing, even though the loss of hope felt like having his ribs prized open with a bone spreader. Looking at Tessa only made it worse, but he couldn’t stop himself. His gaze moved from front windshield to side mirrors to rearview to the woman staring out the passenger side window on a ceaseless rotation.

“Can you please drop me off at the bakery?”

Her quiet voice broke the silence that had gripped them since his offer to drive her home had been awkwardly accepted. Johnny battled the hot spurt of resentment at the mention of the shop that was taking his wife from him.

It was so much more complicated than that, he knew. But still. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to look a sticky bun in the face again.

“Sure. No problem,” he said, working to keep his tone even and free of blame. They were still about fifteen minutes out from the center of town, where the bakery was. If these were some of his last moments with Tessa as his wife, Johnny wanted to savor them. Even if it hurt.

He was casting around for something to say, some topic that would allow him to hear Tessa’s sweet, husky voice without starting World War III all over again, when a truck in his rearview mirror caught his attention.

Big and covered in enough rusty patches that it looked almost more brown than black, the truck’s engine roared as the vehicle sped up behind the smaller car too quickly for him to make out more than a vague impression of the driver as a burly man with a knitted cap pulled low over his brow.

“What’s this jackass up to?” Johnny wondered aloud, firming his grip on the wheel and keeping a steady pace despite the way the truck was riding his tail.

“That’s weird.” Tessa frowned at her side mirror. “People on the island are pretty considerate drivers, usually.

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