Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 28

[adminnovelsaudio]

Listen Audiobook Version:



Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 28

Eli kicked a lump of brown seaweed, scattering it across the sand. “Doesn’t feel like a god thing.
Felt very much like an Eli Ward thing.”
“Okay, I was there too. If anyone’s going to claim responsibility for burying our old school
underground, it’s going to be both of us.”
A groan broke free from Eli’s throat. “Can we not joke about this right now? I feel really, really
bad.”
“Why? You hated that place. You told me so right before—” Nick tucked his bottom lip between
his teeth, politely cutting himself off.
Eli tried to rally. “Yes, okay, the school was a shithole. That doesn’t mean I wanted to erase it
from the face of the earth!” Eli flailed his arms around like a deranged Muppet. “There’s a huge
difference between working through my shit in a healthy way that doesn’t hurt anything in the
real world and actively burning the motherfucker down.”
“Again, you didn’t really do anything. You were just kind of… present. And besides—” Nick
worried at his lip some more as he slouched along the shore. It was really distracting.
“Sometimes it’s better for the past to stay buried.”
Eli stopped, ankle deep in the warm sand. Nick didn’t notice and kept going ahead. The shape of
his shoulders was stark against the bluer-than-blue sky, his hands stuffed in his pockets like he
didn’t have a care in the world. And maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had decided to forget the kiss
they’d shared. He’d been eager to get into it a moment ago. But now Nick was saying, what?
That they needed to let the past go?
Nick had kissed him first, damn it. Eli looked out over the water, like he was trying to find the
spot where the crime had been committed. It was impossible to tell if they were close to where
they’d been before; everything looked different in the daylight.
Eli shuffled his foot through sand, disturbing bits of shell and the remnants of paper that
someone had littered along the ground. Straw wrappers and
cigarette butts. Okay, so Nick had changed tack—so what? Eli had told him they weren’t going to
be anything more than friends anymore, and he had obviously taken that to heart.
So why was Eli feeling like a sinkhole of disappointment had opened up in his own stomach?
“E?”

-- 119 of 228 --

Only Margo called him that. Seemed fitting that now Nick did too. Eli lifted his head to find Nick
in the distance, watching him right back with a look of concern on his face.
“You okay?”