Page 16 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Everly
The way my heart is racing by the time I slip inside, you’d think I was running from death. No such luck.
I throw the lock, the bolt sliding into place with a comforting tap. I let out a shaking breath and press my forehead against the door, then stand there breathing for a whole minute while I try to convince my heart that we are not, in fact, being chased by a bear.
Only by Beckett Benson.
When my heart finally settles, I turn to face the empty foyer. My muscles ache, my feet ache, my head aches. I reach up, my fingers threading through the dark hair, and I let out a heavy breath.
Then I take off the wig.
The bobby pins come out first—eight of them, jabbed into the wig cap. Probably way more than necessary, but after that dream where my wig falls off mid acceptance speech and is carried off by a rare gust of indoor wind to land on top of the award-ceremony cake, I don’t take any chances. The cap peels off. And then it’s just my hair—auburn red, feral, a full mutiny of curls that have been smashed flat for seven hours and are now erupting in every direction with righteous fury. I let out a sigh and run my fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp, hushing the fury.
I catch my reflection in the hallway mirror. There she is. The real one. Freckles across the nose. Green eyes that my mother always called olive and my optometrist always called slightly astigmatic. No dark bob. No E.J. Hartley mask. Just Everly.
The house is dark and quiet and too big, the way it always is when I come home late. I bought this Tudor two years ago with the advance from my hockey trilogy and the accumulated royalties from five E.J. Hartley thrillers. White stucco, swooping slate roof, tall windows that look out on the Lake District. Three bedrooms for one person. A kitchen with marble countertops and a six-burner range I use exclusively for reheating pad thai. Built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves framing a stonework fireplace I’ve never learned how to use.
It’s a beautiful house. It’s a lonely house. Both things are true at the same time.
I go upstairs, peel off the gala dress, toss it on the floor of my walk-in closet—a problem for Tomorrow Everly—and I pull on pajamas. The good ones. A pair of well-worn flannel pants and a gray, oversized, wearable blanket hoodie.
I go back downstairs. Heat some water for tea and click on the TV. My Netflix opens straight to Gilmore Girls. Season three.
I drop a tea bag into my mug and settle onto the couch, tucking my legs up under me.
I hate this show. And I love this show.
Lorelai drives me nuts with her choices. And the thing with her and Luke? Sometimes I just want to scream at the TV.
And Rory with Dean. Don’t get me started on Dean.
But then there’s Jess…I always come back to poor, misunderstood Jess.
I’m three minutes into the episode and not absorbing a single syllable because my brain is running a highlight reel of the last four hours on loop—the elevator, the dark, his voice, the gala, the tray, the books, the box exploding, his laugh, my laugh, the stomach growl, his face when I said no, his voice going flat and dead when he said Sure, whatever you want. Finally, I mute the show, toss the remote aside, and pick up my phone.
Julia answers on the second ring. “It’s midnight.”
My eyes dart to the clock in the kitchen, and I wince. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Eh. It’s fine. I was still midnight doomscrolling. Are you okay?”
“Physically, I’m fine—well, my feet are sore from wearing heels all day, and my hand is tired from signing books, and my hands are chapped from touching so much paper, but yeah, I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. And emotionally?”
“Emotionally, I have been backed over by a pickup truck, and the truck circled back and ran me over again, and then the driver got out and offered me a casserole.”
Silence. Then, “All right, I’m up. I’m making tea. Start from the beginning.”
Julia McMillan has been my best friend since freshman year at the University of Minnesota, when we were assigned to the same dorm floor and bonded over a shared obsession with true-crime podcasts and a shared inability to cook anything more complex than toast. She’s a family law attorney in St. Paul now. She has the emotional range of a woman who has watched humanity torch itself at close range and still believes in love—theoretically—and she is one of exactly three people on earth who know that Everly Hart is Sutton Blake.
“So, I had that gala tonight.”
“The hockey gala.” Her spoon clinks against ceramic. “The one you told me you would attend, quote, over your dead body?”
“My dad guilted me. He used the voice.”
“The proud-dad voice.”
