Storm Shells (The Wishes Series #3) (19 page)

I couldn’t quite believe that that was all it took for her to cross to the dark side, especially considering she’d been successfully warding off the advances of Ethan Williams since primary school.

“So how long before it turned bad?”

She shifted in the seat and let out a long sigh. “As soon as we left town I knew it was a mistake.” A hard laugh escaped me. “I’m glad you find it funny.”

I shook my head. “Nicole, I’m genuinely sorry that your decision to skip town with a bad boy resulted in you being treated badly.”

She dropped her head and began to cry, which is something I’d only ever seen her do a few times. I had no idea how to comfort her, or even if I wanted to.

“Look, just tell me what happened,” I urged.

Nicole composed herself as best she could and launched headlong into the whole sorry saga.

As it turned out, life on the run wasn’t such a great gig. Nicole and Ethan spent an entire month holed up in a dodgy backpacker’s hostel in Melbourne because he was too paranoid to leave the country.

“Ethan was worried that the police were involved,” she explained, grimacing. “He was convinced that if we left the hostel, we’d be picked up. It was ridiculous.”

I shook my head, frowning at her. “I didn’t call the police.”

I should’ve called the police.

“Ethan wasn’t worried about you,” she mumbled. “He was worried that Adam had caught wind of it. He actually made me call him to find out if he knew anything. Adam was totally oblivious, of course.”

I’d long considered that phone call to be her biggest betrayal of all. It hurt to even think about it.

“You told him I’d done a runner with Mitchell,” I growled, drumming my finger on the table. “You screwed me over all over again.”

“I had to tell him something, Charli,” she replied, clearly ashamed. “I had no real reason to be calling him in the first place.”

“You should never have called Adam.”

“Of course I shouldn’t. I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t you just ditch him? You could have come home.”

The look she gave me was one of the strangest I’d ever seen. “I just couldn’t.” She shuddered then, reliving a memory that didn’t seem pleasant. “He kept the money, my passport, everything.”

She smoothed back her hair, composing herself. “Eventually, he figured out that no one was coming for us so we jumped on a plane and went to Fiji. And that’s as far as we got.”

Nicole spent a year and a half in a small resort town, working two jobs to support her surfer bum boyfriend. Inexplicably, their bounty of stolen money ran out within weeks.

“You had thirteen thousand dollars!” I cried in disbelief. “Where did it all go?”

She scowled down at her now cold cup of tea. “Ethan likes the good life. We were always broke. I cleaned rooms at two different hotels to keep him cashed up. It was a vicious cycle. I couldn’t even scrape together the money for a ticket home,” she said bitterly. “But Ethan lived like a king, full of drinking, surfing and women. I guess I got what I deserved.”

I’d wished the worst on Nicole more than once in the past two years. But in my mind, the worst entailed getting stung by jellyfish or losing her luggage. It didn’t feel good knowing that things had gone so awry for her.

“One day we got into a terrible fight. I can’t even remember what it was about. Ethan was raging drunk. “

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest, but something in Nicole’s expression made me listen.

“He hit me.” She paused, steadying herself by drawing in a breath. “I knew that had to be the end. It could only get worse. I called Mum that night. She sent me a plane ticket so I could come home.”

I remembered how distraught Carol had been when Nicole had taken off. “She must have been so thrilled to have you home,” I said quietly.

Nicole smiled for the first time since the conversation had begun. “She howled when she saw me. I looked completely down and out.”

I’d always known Ethan was a controlling pig but I never suspected he was a thug. “Are you still afraid of him?”

A pained frown flashed across her face. “When I got home, I took out a restraining order. Even if he does follow me back, he can’t come near me.”

I stared at her for a long time, weighing up my options. There were two. I could forgive her and move on, or continue being infuriated by her betrayal. Perhaps she’d been punished enough.

“I’m sorry for what you went through,” I murmured. “But I’m having trouble forgiving you.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I hate what I did but I can’t take it back,” she said shakily. “It’s been miserable here without you.”

I picked up the cold cups of tea and carried them to the kitchen. “Why haven’t you been hanging out with the Beautifuls? I hear they’re recruiting,” I asked, lightening the conversation considerably.

Nicole groaned. “I couldn’t stand it. They’d probably grant me membership, though. They’re down on numbers now that Lisa’s gone.”

I poured both cups of tea down the sink. “Yes. Where is Lisa?” I hadn’t given Lisa Reynolds a single thought until that moment. I felt a little bad about that. She’d always been a key member of the Beautifuls.

“Well, it turns out that Lisa actually has a brain. She’s attending university on the mainland. Engineering, I think.”

“Wow,” I marvelled. “Who knew?”

“I know, right? I thought she’d end up working at Jasmine’s salon. Have you been there yet?”

“Hardly,” I scoffed.

“Her daddy bankrolled it,” she explained. “It’s three doors down from Mum’s salon. You can imagine how that went down.”

It would have been World War Three. I was almost sorry that I hadn’t been around to witness it. Then I imagined Carol and Jasmine going at it on the main street. It would have been a blur of fake tan and sequins. I shuddered, relieved that I was on the other side of the world at the time.

Conversation remained light while I made more tea. The scene had been set. It was my turn to be interrogated.

“So, what’s your story, Charli? What brought you home?”

My story paled in comparison to hers, especially considering I only gave her minor details, starting with the year I spent with Mitchell. “Mauritius, Madagascar, South Africa and then I made my way to New York,” I explained, ticking the list of destinations off on my fingers. “We had a great time.”

She nodded, but seemed uninterested. “I want to hear about Adam.”

I was unwilling to give her details. “It didn’t work out. He came here and we tried again, but it didn’t work.”

She nodded. “How does he feel about the baby?”

I sucked in a long breath, debating whether to lie or tell the truth. Honesty won out. “He doesn’t know.”

Her eyes widened and she leaned back. “Are you going to tell him?”

“When I’m ready.” My tone instantly took on a dark edge. “
I
have to be the one to tell him, Nicole. If he finds out before I’m ready, I’m going to know it was you who sold me out.”

Her hands flew up in the air as if I’d threatened her at gunpoint. “I’d never do that, never.”

I didn’t trust Nicole one iota. She’d had no problem screwing me over in the past.

The heavy turn in conversation wasn’t welcomed by either of us. Nicole glanced at her watch and made an excuse to leave. I was happy to let her go.

* * *

It had been a long day. After a lazy dinner that consisted of a handful of almonds and a sandwich, I headed to my room with my Billet-doux mail and a pen, preparing to spend the next twenty minutes signing my name. I settled in bed and tore the strip off the top of the envelope.

It wasn’t paperwork pertaining to Billet-doux. It was something much more serious.

I’d been served divorce papers.

My first inclination was to bury myself in the covers and cry, but I willed myself to take a more grown-up approach. I’d demanded that Adam let me go. He was doing it in spectacular fashion.

I began reading through the twenty-three page document, distancing myself as if I was interpreting how someone else’s life was being broken down in dollars and cents. I was actually quite curious to see what an errant Décarie wife was worth.

From what I could tell, Adam was playing extraordinarily fair. I’d retain co-ownership of Billet-doux and all my personal possessions. At first it seemed like a silly clause to include, but then I remembered the clothes and shoes that were still boxed up in the spare room. I had a wardrobe worth literally thousands of dollars.

My eyes drifted to my left hand. The curly fry rings glittered under the low light of the bedside lamp, reminding me that they were also worth a small fortune. I glossed over the part pertaining to ‘an adequate cash settlement.’ It made me feel like a whore.

I forced myself to keep reading.

According to the documents on my lap, Adam owned four properties in New York City. I’d only ever known about the apartment he shared with Ryan. It highlighted the fact that I was clueless when it came to his finances. It made me wonder what else he hadn’t told me.

In fairness, I couldn’t exactly take the moral high ground. I had a contraband baby growing inside me and, he knew nothing about her.

I bundled the papers together, stuffed them back in the envelope and cried myself to sleep.

* * *

My father always seemed to know when things weren’t right. I didn’t think my demeanour was any different than normal, but within ten minutes of being in the cottage his interrogation began.

“What’s going on, Charli?”

“Why would you ask me that? What do you think is going on?”

“You’re fidgeting and you haven’t touched your food. If I’m going to bring you breakfast, the least you can do it eat it.”

I slunk down in my chair, looking at the spread on the table. Alex had gone all out that morning, appearing at my door with enough food to feed the whole Cove.

“There is something going on,” I volunteered.

I stood and picked the envelope of doom off the coffee table. I didn’t want to explain it to him. I didn’t even want to talk about it. I handed it to him, demanding that he read it for himself, which he did with the slow speed of a first-grader.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “But he’s only doing what you asked him to.”

“I didn’t ask him to divorce me!”

“Charli, you had him arrested to get him out of here. That seems pretty final.”

“If I sign those papers, it’s all over,” I said sadly.

Alex’s face twisted into a frown. I knew that look. It was the one he gave just before launching into a conversation he didn’t want to have. “You know it might never be completely over, right?”

“He doesn’t want the baby.” He didn’t even want
me
any more.

Alex brought both hands to his face and let out a long moan. “You don’t know that. You haven’t given him the opportunity to decide whether or not he wants to be involved. As far as he knows, there is no baby. You might have written him off too early.”

“I don’t think I did.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t give him time to think it through, Charli. Adam doesn’t go with the first thought, like you. He probably constructs pie graphs and flow charts, analyses them and then makes a decision.” He smiled wryly. “That’s why he’s Boy Wonder.”

I began clearing the table, busying myself so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “What if I decide not to tell him?”

It was an idea I’d been toying with since I woke that morning. I just wasn’t sure how I’d pull it off. It didn’t matter, anyway. Alex wasn’t going to let it get that far. His hand gripped my wrist.

“Sit down, Charlotte,” he ordered. “We’re going to have a little chat.”

A chat implied something light-hearted and pleasant. Alex’s idea of a chat was neither of those things. It was harsh and borderline mean.

“Your child deserves to have her father in her life. If there’s even a chance that he wants to be involved, you have to make sure that happens.”

“I had no mother. You did okay.”

His body tensed but his voice stayed calm. “Olivia made a conscious decision not to be involved in your life. If she had changed her mind at any stage, I would’ve made allowances for that.”

“But she didn’t, did she?” I asked acidly.

“No, she didn’t. I don’t know why some people can walk away and others can’t, Charli. It’s just the way of the world. You have to at least give Adam the choice, and then you’ve done your part. It’s up to him from there.”

He walked into the kitchen and snatched the calendar from beneath a fridge magnet.

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling rank,” he said coolly, dropping the calendar down in front of me. “Pick a date. Any date between now and, say, the beginning of July.”

“Why?”

“Because that will be the date you tell him,” he ordered. “That will give you a few more months of being Adam-free and easy. After that, you put your big girl pants on and deal with him.”

I stared at the calendar, pondering my lack of choices. If I refused, he’d tell him anyway. “The third,” I volunteered listlessly. “My big girl pants will be huge by then.”