open, and my hand brushed the wall just inside, connecting with the foyer switch, illuminating the empty space from the chandelier above.
It was then that I saw it. Through the foyer, down the hall at the back of the house. The shadow of a man standing before the glass patio doors, silhouetted in the moonlight.
“Oh,” I said, taking a step back just as he took a step closer.
I would know the shape of him anywhere. Parker Loman.
CHAPTER 2
Jesus Christ,” I said, my hand fumbling for the rest of the light switches. “You scared me to death. What are you doing here?”
“It’s my house,” Parker answered. “What are you doing here?”
Everything was light then. The open expanse of the downstairs, the vaulted ceilings, the hallway spanning the distance between me and him.
“I heard something.” I held up the flashlight as evidence.
He tipped his head to the side, a familiar move, like he was conceding something. His hair had grown in, or else he was styling it differently. But it softened his edges, smoothing out the cheekbones, and for a second, when he turned, I could see the shadow of Sadie in him.
He shifted and she was gone. “I’m surprised you’re still here,” he said. As if their local business had continued to operate for the past year on momentum alone. I almost answered: Where else would I go? But then he grinned, and I imagined I must’ve shaken him pretty good, walking in his front door unannounced.
The truth was, I had thought about leaving multiple times. Not just here but the town itself. I’d come to believe there was some toxicity hidden at its core that no one else seemed to notice. But more than the business, more than the job, I had made a life for myself here. I was too tied up in this place.
Still, sometimes I felt that staying was nothing more than a test of endurance bordering on masochism. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to prove anymore.
I could feel my heartbeat slowing. “I didn’t notice a car,” I said, taking in the downstairs, categorizing the changes: two leather bags at the base of the wide staircase, a key ring thrown on the entryway table; an open bottle on the granite island, a mug beside it; and Parker, sleeves of his button-down rolled up and collar loosened like he’d just arrived from work, not sometime in the middle of the night.
“It’s in the garage. Just drove up this evening.”
I cleared my throat, nodded to his bags. “Is Luce here?” I hadn’t heard her name in a while, but Grant kept our conversations focused on the business, and Sadie was no longer here to fill me in on the personal details of the Lomans’ lives. There’d been rumors, but that meant nothing. I’d been the subject of plenty of unfounded rumors myself.
Parker stopped at the island, a whole expanse between us, and picked up the mug, taking a long drink. “Just me. We’re taking a break,” he said.
A break. It was something Sadie would’ve said, inconsequential and vaguely optimistic. But his grip on the mug, his glance to the side, told me otherwise.
“Well, come on in. Join me for a drink, Avery.”
“I have to be at a property early tomorrow,” I said. But my words trailed off with his returning look. He smirked, pulled a second mug out, and poured.
Parker’s expression said he knew exactly who I was, and there was no point in pretending. Didn’t matter that I was currently overseeing all of the family’s properties in Littleport—six summers, and you get to know a person’s habits pretty well.
I’d known him longer than that. It was the way of things, if you’d grown up here: the Randolphs, on Hawks Ridge; the Shores, who’d remodeled an old inn at the corner of the town green, then proceeded to have a series of affairs and now shared their massive plot like a child of divorce, never seen at the same time; and the Lomans, who lived up on the bluffs, overlooking all of Littleport, and then expanded, their tendrils spreading out around town until their name was synonymous with summer. The rentals, the family, the parties. The promise of something.
The locals referred to the Lomans’ main residence as the Breakers, a subtle jab that once bonded the rest of us together. It was partly a nod to the home’s proximity to Breaker Beach and partly an allusion to the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, a level of wealth even