Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

Chapter Two:

  Truth be told, the serenity I’d sought on St. Marcos was in no small part to escape my feelings for Nick—the ones he had made clear he did not share—and the soggy, drunken mess I’d made of myself over him. I’d buried my phone’s old SIM card only a few months before with great solemnity and purpose so Nick couldn’t reach me even if he wanted to. I hadn’t just buried the SIM card, either. I’d put my dead mother’s heirloom ring and an empty bottle of Cruzan Rum under the dirt, too. Release. Closure. Moving on from the pains that bound me. But apparently I’d failed. How did he have my new number? And what the hell did “I vote for the MC” mean, anyway?

  Jackie hissed at me, “You’re on.”

  “Can you take over for me? I’m feeling ill.” I put the back of my hand to my forehead. Was that a fever? Or was I just delirious?

  Miraculously, Jackie didn’t give me any lip. She just nodded, put on a wide pageant smile, and hit the stage. The way she shouldered on through her grief was an inspiration.

  Alone, I texted back to Nick. “?”

  “For Mrs. St. M. I vote for you. Great outfits.”

  I felt my face scrunch like a Sharpei in confusion. “What? Me? Where are you?”

  “Back row, far left.”

  “St. M???”

  “Couldn’t be watching you at this pageant from anywhere else.”

  My hands started shaking so badly I could barely type. Holy guacamole, this couldn’t be happening. In the middle of the already surreal Mrs. St. Marcos contest, in the middle of my five ridiculous wardrobe changes, here was Nick. Had he come to the island to see me? I clasped my hands together for a few seconds until they stopped shaking.

  I typed another message to him. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Ha. Those were practically the last civil words he had spoken to me, a lifetime of humiliation ago in Shreveport, Louisiana, before I threw myself at him and he opted not to catch.

  Well. Truth be told, there was a little blame on my side of the cosmic ledger. Details.

  He sent another text. “I even brought the damn bar napkin. May I have another chance?”

  Oh, no, and here were the details, whether I wanted them or not. The bar napkin. The one he’d held in a tight grip in my hotel room in Shreveport when I lied about my feelings for him and he erased me from his life. The napkin he’d made notes on to talk to me about, the napkin I had ridiculed, along with him. My bad. Someone needed to inform my emotions that burying a SIM card was an act of finality, because they hadn’t gotten the memo.

  The room was spinning. It was all too much. I had to get out of there. I turned off my phone, grabbed my purse, and left the theater in my blue wake with not a thought in my head but the need to escape to Annalise.

  Want to continue reading Leaving Annalise? Click here.

  ~~~

  Excerpt from Going for Kona (Michele Mystery Series, #1)