On the Run (Whispering Key #2) - May Archer Page 0,98

tell you, righ— Oh. Hang on, Dad’s calling.”

While Rafe stood up to take the call, I bit my lip and spun my juice glass, thinking about what he’d said. I’d sort of imagined Toby was back in New York, mostly caught up in the whirl of his life again. I remembered our conversation in the pool—how he’d said he couldn’t stand to live too far from a big department store—and figured he wasn’t missing the Key too much. But was it too much to hope he missed me?

Without conscious thought, I found myself with the phone in my hand, and for the first time in two weeks, I let myself type in the HiWire website.

I’d been a little worried that if I read Hagatha’s column knowing it was Toby behind the words, I’d miss him so badly I wouldn’t let myself stick to the plan and do things in the right order, make things good for him the way he deserved. But just then, every instinct screamed at me to do it, and I couldn’t resist.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, as soon as the page loaded and I read the first couple of lines. I read it through… then read it again a second time. My heart beat like crazy, and I jumped to my feet. “Rafe? Come on! We need to get to Littlejohn’s.”

19

Toby

Help Me Hagatha (Issue #2450)

Dear Readers,

For the past ten years, I’ve published five columns a week, forty-nine weeks a year. That makes two-thousand-four-hundred times I’ve told someone what to do, so you might well believe that Auntie has her own life sorted out, and that I am always kind, and brave, and practice what I preach.

Not so much.

Recently, I told a lie to a man I care about. It was a tiny lie. A lie of omission. To protect someone. And the truth was nobody else’s business. I had a billion reasons, a billion excuses. But in the end, when the lie came to light (and readers, they always come to light), I hurt this man I care about.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

When I should have owned up and apologized for my error, when I should have dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness, when I should have barred the door (in a law-abiding, consensual sort of way) and insisted we not leave until we’d hashed out the truth, instead I let the lie stand and ran away to protect my heart… only to find I’d left the foolish thing behind in his keeping.

So, to that good man I hurt: I’m sorry I let you down. We are real. We are important. I thought you deserved someone more perfect than me, but it occurred to me that what you deserve is someone who really, really loves you… and there is no one who’ll do that better than I will. If you let me, I’ll prove it to you.

Readers, thanks for sticking with me, even when I mess up… because we all mess up.

Love always,

Hagatha

Look, it wasn’t like I’d been expecting Beale to storm the HiWire offices with a half-dozen buff, lightly oiled, and scantily dressed friends, each carrying a bouquet of red roses, to perform a highly choreographed flash-mob dance routine…

Or not exactly that, anyway.

For one thing, I was pretty sure he didn’t know where the office was, and for another, he knew my identity was a secret, for a third, I didn’t think he knew any Bruno Mars lyrics, which was kind of a requirement. And if that weren’t enough, there was the small matter of him never venturing farther north of Whispering Key than the Florida state line.

But I’d kind of expected a phone call.

Or a text.

Or a message delivered via trained plover.

Something.

I’d definitely expected something.

I’d woken up thrilled to greet the sun for the first time in weeks, so secure in the knowledge that I had fixed things that I literally sang in the shower. No, I will not tell you what song. No, we shall never discuss it again.

Fine, it was Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” if you must know, and I danced so aggressively that I bumped my elbow on the tile quite, quite hard, so that pain still radiated through my forearm even half a day later.

I’d skipped my way to the office—no, not literally—even stopping for coffee at Dot, my favorite local shop. Although there’d been a distinct lack of kitschy decor and overly friendly patrons, I’d managed to enjoy it, mostly because I told myself that soon