Catch up on the previous chapters here
This would never be a movie. There was absolutely nothing Nell could do, aside from go back over every decision she’d ever made in her life and second-guess them. Some of them were way past second-guessing. What if she hadn’t run out on Heidi as soon as Kent got there? What if Kent had come in, and they’d talked, and waited for Heidi’s friends to show up? According to the friends, none of them was going to show up, so maybe Heidi would’ve told them to go on to dinner, anyway, once they’d been there long enough, but …
But. That was the problem. If she’d stayed instead of running out to Kent like some lovesick teenager, would she have seen who actually came to pick Heidi up?
She had to have let him in, because the outer door was locked. There wasn’t a camera watching it because hey, they all had keys, and there was no way to unlock it permanently. Chock it, sure, but they weren’t supposed to do that. If you saw the outer door held open, you shut it, and you didn’t open it for someone you didn’t recognize. And Heidi … by the book, studious, and no-fun Heidi …
It was weird that Heidi had two names, too. Nell thought of Kent as Kent even when she thought about back then, when she’d called him something else, but now Heidi was also Hailey, and the world knew that part.
People were frothing at the mouth and champing at the bit to get their hands on Since You Went Away, and maybe the brains at Penguin really should’ve thought this through, because huge chunks of text purporting to be from the book were circulating online, getting taken down, and showing up again. More debates popped up about how much people could actually post, and if couching it as part of a review meant they could legally add more, and if anyone happened to have gotten enough screenshots to put the entire book together.
The frenzy was its own news story, which at least pushed the Rosie is both real and a serial killer story down the list, but man. Her stomach twisted, and she couldn’t eat. She wasn’t even sure she was keeping up a good face at work, since at least customers only needed her for brief moments at a time, and even if they had cash, the register computed the change for her.
Nell suspected she was cutting people out, but what else was she supposed to do? Most of her friends were actually Kent’s friends who had to hang out with her because she and Kent were a package deal. Art knew something was up, but he’d already prodded and pried more than he ever had before, and it seemed like he’d reached his limit, too. Plus the release was now less than a week away, which made her wonder why all big books came out on Tuesdays, and how many people had already called into work on Wednesday, and how were you supposed to lean on someone through all of this when you were currently lying to almost everyone in your life?
Normally it didn’t matter, or at least lately it didn’t matter. At the beginning she’d been so focused on not messing up the details that she hadn’t had the time and space to concentrate on those details all being lies. They’d been practicing their new names for months at that point, and they only got the marriage license after those new names came through, so it was okay if she slipped up and called Kent her boyfriend and had to correct it to husband, as long as she called him Kent. Most of the time she got around that, anyway, and used nicknames because she was so afraid of messing up.
Once they were settled in and accepted as that runaway married couple, and she’s so young, the dear, the lies were all in place and it would’ve felt like lying to try to undo them. As far as everyone else was concerned, she was twenty-two years old and would turn twenty-three in August. She’d graduated high school and run off with her boyfriend to get married, and hadn’t worked for anyone until she worked for Art.
It was originally just going to be an interim job while she looked for something else that she liked better, but that still wouldn’t point too many fingers at the person she used to be. Kent had gone through a couple different retail jobs before becoming a library page, which was only because it was too much to get him real credits in his new name, and he was on scholarship through the library to complete his college degree, one class at a time. The gen eds were repeats, but otherwise he was on a very different track. One that meant he got the math out of the way and celebrated when he never had to take another math class again.
It was comfortable, and she liked it here in her little bubble where Kent was her closest connection, but now she had to wonder how Art would look at her if he learned the truth. Oh, Nell? Yeah, she used to work here. Showed up lying about her age and her name, but it was legit enough for her to cash all those paychecks. Might’ve been a murderer. All her friends died in college, and maybe she killed them, so I guess I’m lucky to still be here. Is dairy milk okay?
Even people whose mothers fled their abusive fathers and fought for the best life they could find wouldn’t understand the choices she and Kent made almost in an instant, because they had to choose now or lose the opportunity forever. She hadn’t actually been eighteen, but she’d felt a lot younger.
Nell looked up when the bells jingled and tried not to wince as Brandon walked in, heading straight to the counter and placing both hands on it, eyes locked on hers. “There’s something going on with the two of you,” he said in a low voice, “and Kent won’t tell me, so I’m grasping at straws and probably breaking a lot of laws of friendship to ask you.”
Uh.
“Seriously, Nell.” He shifted his weight, but his eyes remained steady. “Whatever it is, we’re here for you. You know that, right? I’m not going to pull out the ‘found family’ trope or something, but … okay, maybe I am, because I don’t really have anyone else, either. So … what’s up?”
There was a noise behind her, and she looked back to see Art come out of his office and lean against the door frame, arms folded and silent.
“Nell.”
“I can’t tell you.”
That made him scoff and look away, and Brandon crossed his arms and made Nell frown, because those were tears in his eyes. “That’s BS,” he spat at a spot to her right. “You care about people, you love them, and you don’t just let them go through something alone. Look, Nell … if we’re friends … if we’re really friends …”
God, did she even know what friends were? And it wasn’t really her own safety at risk, was it? It was Kent, who’d left his entire life and his family and focused solely on her.
The bell jingled again, and the silence had probably gone on too long, anyway, but Nell looked past Brandon and blinked because it was Adam. Adam, in his suit and looking jumpy, and the air in the room crackled as all three men paused and evaluated each other.
Nell took a breath and straightened up. “You”—pointing at Brandon—“grab a coffee and wait for me. You”—to Adam—“back room, now.”
“Who is this stranger you’re dragging into the back room?” Art asked mildly, shifting away from the door frame and gamely taking up the spot by the till.
Good question. She turned back to Brandon. “Text Kent that Adam’s here, okay?” Shit, she’d almost flubbed his name. Kent, Kent, Kent. He’d been Kent for years. She’d known him as Kent longer than—
Shaking her head, Nell grabbed Adam’s suited arm and pulled him back into Colton’s space, the stainless steel and the dough torture devices, but at least there was a door to close between them and the others. “What?” she demanded.
“Look, it’s not …” Adam took a slow breath, but it was hard to tell if he was thrown more by what he had to say or the way Brandon had glared daggers at him. “It’s not bad.”
“So it’s not good, either.”
“Nell …”
She gestured at him. “You drove all the way out here in your fed suit and showed up where I work. Right after Brendan showed up, because he knows something’s up with us and he’s upset that we won’t even tell him what it is. So. Spill.”
Rebecca Frost 
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