Page 9 of Secrets in the Deep

But he couldn’t undo it. So he stood there and stared at the screen like an idiot for an entire minute. A full sixty fucking seconds.

She didn’t respond. The three dots didn’t even pop up.

Ofcourseshe didn’t. She hated him. He kind of hated himself too.

The muscles in his arms twitched as he shoved the cell into his pocket and started running. He moved fast, like he was being chased. And maybe he was. By his past. By his decisions. By the day he’d ruined everything.

3

Someone was watching her. Not one person. A lot of people.

The sharp awareness clung to Emily’s skin. Over the years, she’d kind of gotten used to it. Not completely, but at least it didn’t make the hairs on her arms stand on end anymore.

Two young women across the street. They stared and whispered as if Emily couldn’t see them. A teenage girl in the gazebo, who sat with her mother, eyes wide and solely on Emily. What looked like a husband and wife. The husband didn’t seem to care, but the wife was hitting him in the shoulder and pointing right at her.

Oh, and Shaun across the street. The man who was basically a thorn in every Hollywood actor’s side. He was a muckraking, bottom-feeding tabloid writer. He liked to publish dirt on A-list celebrities, and he didn’t even care if it was true. Why he thought he’d get that here, in Deep River, she had no idea.

He offered a sleazy smile from the back of his truck, camera in hand.

“I see Shaun’s close by, as per usual,” her mother said, almost sounding amused as they walked.

And fifty bucks says it was her mother who gave him their location.

Emily nodded and glanced over her shoulder at the security detail. Nothersecurity. Her mother’s. Emily refused to be followed by a strange man unless they were somewhere busy, like New York or LA.

What had her mother said his name was? Darcy? He didn’t look like a Darcy. He looked like a Hank or a Gunner. Maybe even a Sledge. “Is he really necessary? We’re in a small town.”

“Bad things happen in small towns too. There was a string of murders here not too long ago. We’re only here because they found the psycho behind that.”

They were only here…like Emily’s career wasn’t actually her own. And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe her mother, who was also her manager, and Roscoe and everyone else who played a part in her daily life assumed more ownership than she did.

But only because you let them. The words whispered through her head.

Whydid she let them? Because sometimes she felt so detached from it all, she may as well be in someone else’s body? Walking in their shoes, wearing their clothes. Living their life.

Her mother stopped. “I guess this is it.” Her mom peered through the window with a grimace, like she was looking into a dumpster rather than a café.

“As long as they have coffee, I’m good.” Emily pushed inside, ignoring her mother’s huff behind her. A floral scent suddenly surrounded her. Not just the scent, the flowers themselves. Tulips and lilies. Lisianthus. They all sat on a table to the right of the door, and God, they were beautiful.

Her gaze slipped to the handwritten chalkboard above the wooden counter. Then to the wildflowers in Mason jars on the tables, and the mismatched mugs.

And the bookshelves at the back…

Like her feet had a mind of their own, she crossed the café. There were so many books! Some new. Some with worn spines from so many reads.

Her gaze lowered to a couch in front of the shelves. To the scattered books on the low tables. They’d clearly been read with a coffee, then left for the next person.

Something in her chest kicked. Something she hadn’t felt for years.

Longing.

For a quieter life. A world without cameras or media or people telling her what to do and say.

She could see it. A Saturday where she just walked into this café without security and no place to be. She’d sit on the old sofa with the smell of wildflowers and coffee surrounding her. And she’d just read.

“Emily Quinn Prior. How many times have I told you not to run off? For someone with your…notoriety, that can be dangerous.”

The spell snapped. Vanished. Disappeared in the span of a second as if it had never existed, and reality hit her like a freight train.