Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,117

either. Sometimes when we were out on the boat together, or working on a car, the past would come up and swamp me and I had to walk away from him. I had to be alone just so I could breathe.

The regrets gave me some pretty dark days sometimes.

Right. I guess the counseling was a good thing for me, too.

“I know you’re not serious,” she said, pressing down the lapels on the fancy fucking coat she’d made me wear. I swear to God, if Dylan wasn’t wearing a coat, I was peeling this thing off the second we walked in the door. “You’re excited to see Dylan.”

I was excited to see Dylan. It’s not like it was perfect between us. Like we just snapped back to the way we were when we were kids. There was way too much water under the bridge for that.

But we were trying.

“Whose car is that?” I asked, looking over at a beat-up Ford parked in the far shadows of the parking area. Dylan’s crew were such gearheads, no one would drive around in that POS. I felt like I was slumming it, showing up in the old Buick that Olivia would not let me get rid of.

“I don’t know,” Olivia said, looking past my chest. “Carolina plates. Maybe one of Annie’s friends.”

Of course. The car was quickly forgotten as we walked toward the house.

Olivia and I lived near Tampa where Jennifer was going to college and Olivia was finishing up her nursing training. Jennifer lived in an apartment above our garage, which gave me and Olivia some privacy and Jennifer some independence.

It was also close enough that Fern and Eric could visit every once in a while. It was close enough that I could do some work for Eric, too. Not a lot. He was starting me out slow, but I liked what I was doing. He was teaching me some of the computer stuff, too. And I was surprisingly good at it.

Jennifer had already walked right into Dylan and Annie’s house, leaving the door open behind her.

“That girl,” Olivia said through her teeth.

I smiled, because she barely meant it.

“Did she tell you how she did on her midterms?” I asked, keeping my arm around her as we walked toward Dylan’s strange house on a cliff.

“No! Did she tell you?”

“Two As and one B.”

“What!” Olivia cried coming to a stop. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

Because she told me, I thought. And I’m so fucking grateful that I matter in Jennifer’s life because she matters in mine.

“I don’t know, because you’d give her a hard time about that B?”

“She’s not a B student. She’s….okay. Fair point.” I smiled and put my arm back around her, walking into the slice of light let out by the open door.

Annie had decided to throw a Christmas party and since Dylan quite literally did just about everything Annie wanted—they had a Christmas party.

Dylan’s home was a weird thing, built up into a cliff and over a waterfall. Sometimes it honestly killed me how rich the guy was. He kept trying to give us money, but me and Olivia were used to living small. And with her waitressing job that she worked around her school schedule and the work I did for Eric, we were okay.

The front door was actually two doors. The first door opened into a dark and wide foyer and the other door opened to the kitchen and the bright lights and noise of the party.

And between Annie’s friends from school and the guys from Dylan’s shop, the house with its amazing views was full to the rafters with family and friends.

I was halfway through the door when Olivia pulled on my coat, stopping me.

I turned and saw her. A woman in the shadows. Pale and terrified.

“Jesus, Tiffany?” Olivia breathed. “Is that you?”

The woman blinked wide eyes. “Joan?”

“Yeah.”

The woman, Tiffany, took in all the beauty that was my girl. “You look different.”

“You look scared shitless.”

Tiffany laughed, a feeble thing. “Thank you,” she said. “It was the look I was going for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another party to get to. The holidays, you know? So many parties.”

“Wait.” Olivia stopped Tiffany from going out the door and she glanced at me over Tiffany’s thin shoulder. Get Annie, she mouthed and I nodded.

“This…this was a mistake…I should go—”

Before I could step through the kitchen door, a big guy stepped out like he was about to leave the party. The light was behind him, so he was