Night & Day (Taste of Port Andrea) by Lily Seabrooke

Author:Lily Seabrooke [Seabrooke, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-08T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Cassie

“Guess I’ll catch you after work,” Parker said, looking over her shoulder at me. She looked so right there on our sofa, legs kicked up on the coffee table, Wynnona Earp on the TV, her sleek white laptop open on her lap and a big cup of Komodo’s Den coffee in her hand. “Have fun selling kombucha.”

She looked so right there, but that look in her eyes was so haunted. Something happened after she’d left to walk home from Crescent Point Harbor the other day, but she’d never told me what it was. When I’d gotten home that evening, after a long while spent in Strawberry by myself, Parker had been shut up in her room, and I hadn’t seen her all night.

I’d been heartbroken, thinking she just hated me now that it was out in the air that I liked her—even though she up and admitted herself she liked me too—but the next morning, when I’d woken her up for our morning miracle together, she hadn’t complained once. She just went along with it all quietly, barely even speaking the littlest acknowledgements when I signaled poses, and when we’d finished, she’d just gone back to her room without a word.

It wasn’t too much to ask, just for her to talk to me, was it? I spent hours anguishing over what I could do to make her feel comfortable enough to talk to me, over what I might have been doing that made it too hard to share things with me.

She barely spoke to me that whole day. That evening, once I’d gotten home from a trip out with the other Insta girls, doing photoshoots on Aberdeen Hill, I’d heard her on the phone sounding more upset than I’d ever heard her before.

“My business is going bankrupt if I have to pay that much upfront,” she’d said, and it turned my blood to ice. “Can’t we work out a payment plan or something? Right now is the worst possible timing.”

I slipped past, trying to get to my room without eavesdropping, but I still heard one more thing before I got to my room.

“I know I owe you. You’ve seen the reports. I’m on track. I’ve been working on paying it off for the past nine years.”

Nine years? It left my head spinning as I fell into bed, Parker’s voice turning into an indeterminant mumble through the wall. Parker was twenty-five. What was this debt she’d been paying since before she was legally an adult?

It took me until somewhere hours deep into the night to realize—the ever-growing expense Tatiana had told me about. Parker brushing it off when she’d asked about it. Was it all just this secret debt Parker owed? For what?

I didn’t know how to ask. And I knew if I tried, I’d scare her away. So I just lay there in bed, trying to remember how to fall asleep alone in my own bed again. It was too big without Parker in it, nestled up in my arms still watching Netflix while on her phone as I fell asleep first—all just quiet now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.