Strange Secrets

by Lexy Timms

  I peeled myself upright from the bed—I was sweating hard, my lungs rising and falling quickly, and I did everything I could to land back in this moment. It was over. It was over. It had never happened. It wasn’t really. Everything that had happened to me back then was as far removed from this reality as it was possible to be, and I wasn’t going to let what I had spent so long building here get ripped away by one bad dream.

  But it was more than one bad dream. Ever since I’d done that interview a couple of days before, I had been pursued by the memories of what I was trying my very best to forget. And I didn’t know how I could eject them from my head. Or how I could get a good night’s sleep when they were all that I could think about.

  I lay back in bed, unclenching my fists from the tension that the dream had pushed into them. It was just a dream—just a dream. Which meant that I wasn’t going to do anything useful by letting it have more room in my brain that it already did.

  I stared at the ceiling and bargained with whoever was listening to give me a decent rest for the next few hours. I had shit to do. And I didn’t want it clouded by the memory of the bad choices I had made before.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sarah

  “I LIKE THE ARTICLE,” Tiffany told me with a big smile on her face—but I know that she was thinking the same thing that I had when I’d first seen it in print.

  “But it doesn’t go deep enough,” I remarked with a sigh as I handed her the bowl of pad thai that I had made for both of us and sank down on to the couch beside her. She was at my apartment—a loft, not that it matched up to the glamor that notion offered. It was small, with low ceilings and windows that looked out on to the gray sky above us instead of the pretty townscape below.

  “Yeah, it does seem a little...surface-level?” she suggested, as kindly as she could. I knew what she was getting at. I had looked over that article a hundred times before I had turned it in, wondering how much more I could add and tease out of it that I hadn’t already, but eventually, I’d had to concede that it was going to be little more than a puff piece at the end of the day, and that I was going to have to accept that my best work was still ahead of me.

  “Trust me, I know,” I replied as I tucked my legs up under myself and started to eat. I had taught myself to cook when I was in college, determined not to live off ramen and pizza the way everyone else did, and had even had ambitions to write about food at one time—but for now, I was just glad that I could put my cooking skills to good use and have someone over for dinner. My parents were traveling at the moment, so I didn’t have anyone to share in the joy of my first real print article—apart from Tiffany, who had picked up a copy of the paper as soon as it came out and texted me a picture of her reading my article with her morning coffee.

  “So why didn’t you put in something a bit more juicy?” she wondered aloud.

  I sighed. “Honestly, I wish that I could have, but he was holding so much back that it was hard to figure out what I could actually put in there,” I explained. “I liked the idea of going really deep, doing a deep dive into everything that he’s been hiding, but every time I started to get close, he would just pull back again. And then he outright told me that he didn’t want to talk about his past, and after that Allison took me aside and basically told me to turn it into a puff piece. And I didn’t want to fight with both of them on it, so I just...left it as it was.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured as she tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear before it got caught in her food. “And do you think he was hiding some specific? Like, do you think that there was something in particular he was trying to keep you away from?”

  “There might have been,” I replied. “It was strange, actually, because I was doing some fact-checking on the article before I turned it in, and I couldn’t find anything about him from before he came to Kingston. Like he just dropped out of the sky and landed here out of nowhere.”

  “Okay, now, that’s a story!” she exclaimed. “You should write something on that.”

  “I don’t think Allison would let me,” I admitted. “She seemed pretty adamant about not letting me get into all the stuff that had happened to him before...”

  “Oh, so you think she might know some of it?” she asked, perking up. She was a huge gossip, like me, except that I had managed to turn it into a career.

  “I was talking to someone else who works at the office,” I admitted, and I looked around as though waiting for someone to spring out from behind a curtain and reveal that they had been listening to me all along. Damn, this job was already getting me paranoid—I was going to have to keep an eye out for that.

  “Sounds juicy...”

  “Yeah, it was,” I agreed. “They said that they had heard that he had come to Kingston because he was on the run from whatever he did before. And that whatever he was involved in, it was some pretty fucked-up shit. Enough that he has good reason not to want anyone to go delving into it.”

  “And that means that you have to go looking, right?”

  I made a face. “I really want to, but I don’t know what else I can get out of him,” I admitted. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but it’s not as though I can just put that into the story when it’s essentially an unsubstantiated rumor.”

  “Yeah, but think of how good it would make your article,” she pointed out. “Surely that’s what matters, right?”

  “If you’re a tabloid,” I laughed. “And if you’re not reliant on someone like him to bail out the business when things get choppy, apparently.”

  “How are you supposed to write a good story on him if he’s got the press in his pocket?” she asked with a pout.

  “That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” I agreed. “And I think that’s exactly how he wants it. He wants to make sure that nobody can get close enough to dig up anything worthwhile on him without putting the fact that he practically runs the town in danger.”

  “That sounds seriously suspect,” she remarked, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, it does to me, too,” I agreed. “But I’m not sure how else I can approach it. I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to sit down and talk with him, and I feel like I blew it.”

  “You didn’t,” she assured me at once. “Hey, you could always try and reach out to him about this stuff, right?”

  “You should have seen how he reacted when I asked him about his past in the interview.” I snorted. “He would freak out if I tried to come up with anything else about that.”

  “Then don’t make it an interview,” she suggested. “You could just try and...befriend him. You know. Get to know him better.”

  I fell silent. It was something that I hadn’t even considered, but the thought of it was enough to make something in the back of my mind light up. Mainly because I knew that I would have gotten the chance to spend some more time with him. I should have known better, of course, than to just give in to the desire that pulsed around my head when he was close to me. But if I could couch it in work...

  What Mo had told me had been good. A good enough story to potentially launch my career if I played it right. I just needed to dig a little deeper, to find out a little more than I had already, to keep searching and keep sifting and keep inching my way toward him until I found what I was looking for.

  And he had been pretty anxious to see me. He had been the one to suggest that we do that interview together, not me. Maybe there was something to be said for getting closer to him. For finding out just what he was hiding from me and the rest of this town. Didn’t people deserve to know who they were getting their money from? He had been here for more than six years, and still nobody had any idea where he had come from or what he planned to do now that he had us where he wanted us. Something was seriously off about this, had been from the first moment that he had stepped over the threshold of Kingston and decided to make this place his own.

  Because it was his own. We could all talk a big game about what a historical town this was and how it belonged
to the people who had lived here for generations, but we all knew that we owed so much of what had happened, of how much this town had flourished, to him. Hell, the way that Allison had been talking, it sounded as though the Press itself wouldn’t have been there to hire me if he hadn’t stepped in at the right time to help keep it afloat. I wished that I could see every business that he had his fingers in, make out every way that he had helped the people in this town, as though he had something to prove.

  As though he had something to hide.

  “It’s a good idea,” Tiffany told me excitedly. She was always the one who had been able to talk me into bad plans, even when I could see straight through them and tell that they were going to end in disaster for me.

  “I’m not sure that he would fall for it,” I replied. “If he wouldn’t even talk about his past with me in the interview...”

  “Yeah, but that’s what I’m saying,” she pushed me. I could already feel myself tipping over into the bad decisions that she was guiding me in the direction of. I should have been able to shoot this down before it went any further, but there was some part of me that was intrigued to see just how far I could take this investigation if I tried. Just how much I could find out about him if I kept delving. It might not have been on the company dime, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t important. Sometimes you had to strike out and do something that you didn’t have permission for, right? Just to make sure that the truth came out.

  “Just try not to let him fall in love with you,” she continued, half-joking. “I know what you’re like—”

  “What do you mean, what I’m like?” I fired back, giggling.

  She cocked her head at me. “I see the effect you have on guys when you put all your attention on them,” she replied. “You have a habit of breaking hearts. Don’t pretend like you don’t see it, too.”

  “I don’t,” I replied bluntly, but I knew she had a point. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t noticed all the ways that the men I had chosen to involve in my life tended to get addicted before I got bored and dropped them and moved on. But there was no way that this was going to happen with Jesse. He probably had dozens of women throwing themselves at him everywhere he turned. The chances of him taking someone like me seriously, even for a second, were essentially nil, much to my relief.

  Which meant that I could turn my attention up to eleven without having to fear that something might go wrong. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I considered what was to come next. I could find out everything that he had been trying to hide—I could get to the bottom of the secrets that he had been trying to keep under wraps in this small town. Because he should have known that nothing stayed quiet forever in a community as tiny as this one. And least of all when he invited someone like me into his life.

  Tiffany was right. It was my duty to try and get under the skin of what he was trying to keep from the rest of Kingston. I needed to get close to him and find out the truth, whatever that might be. It was what a good reporter would have done. And I was determined to be the very best reporter that this town had ever seen.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jesse

  AS I STRODE OUT OF the coffee shop, I had one eye on my watch—but I should have been looking where I was going. Because I walked straight into the one woman that I hadn’t been able to get out of my head since the interview last week, as though I had conjured her through sheer force of will.

  “Jesse!” Sarah exclaimed as she hugged her bag to her chest and beamed up at me. The cool morning air had flushed her cheeks a little pink, and she looked even prettier than I remembered her.

  “Well, hey,” I greeted her. I didn’t want to give away the fact that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since I walked out of the interview, but I was sure that someone as perceptive as her would be able to see straight through me.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” she joked. “Though at least this time I’m not late for work.”

  “At least,” I echoed. I was struggling to think of what to say to her. Shit, when did I ever have this problem? What was wrong with me? I did my best to pull myself together. I needed to act right if I was going to impress her. I didn’t want her to think that I was just some bumbling fool tripping over my words when I was around her.

  “So, did you see the article?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I sure did.”

  “And you’re still talking to me right now, so I guess that you liked it?” Her curly blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It suited her—brought out the sharpness in her cheekbones, the delicate curve of her lips. I noticed that there was a freckle just underneath her jaw, and I felt the sudden urge to press my lips against it, just to figure out how she would react.

  “Yeah, I guess I did,” I replied. “You did a good job. Made me look a lot better than I deserve.”

  “I figured that it was the least I could do after how much I pushed you in that interview,” she remarked. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. Guess I just got a little overzealous, given that it was my first big article and all...”

  “I guess I can forgive it this time,” I replied, and she smiled at me. She had a seriously pretty smile, the kind that lit up her entire face and made it impossible not to smile back at her. I wondered, briefly, what she was doing at this end of town—the Kingston Press was pretty far from here, and she had to be due in to work soon. But that was none of my business. Maybe she was meeting a friend, or maybe she had just stopped into the local hipster coffee place for something to drink.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she laughed. “So what are you up to today? Not giving any interviews to rival papers, I hope?”

  “Why, you jealous?” I teased her lightly. Was I flirting? I was totally flirting. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to stop. I could practically hear my brother in my ear, telling me to turn it off, that getting too close to someone was just asking for trouble, but I ignored it. It had been a long time since I had let myself just enjoy the attentions of someone like this, and I didn’t want to stop now that I had started.

  “I might be,” she replied. “Or I might be worried that my strongarm interview was too much for you.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised at what I can handle,” I replied, and she cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “That sounds like a challenge...”

  “Maybe it is,” I replied with a shrug. I knew that I should have been wrapping this up politely and heading across town, but I was enjoying her attention way too much to even think about that. I had to find some other reason to keep her here with me talking because I didn’t want to see her walk away. Not before I knew that I had a chance to see her again.

  “So that’s your first article with the Press, right?” I asked her, and she nodded.

  “First one with my name really on it, yeah,” she agreed. “First one that my best friend got a copy of so that she could show it off to people.”

  I chuckled.

  “Sounds like a good friend.”

  “She’s the best,” she gushed happily, and I knew that she would have been pleased to just keep talking about how much she liked this friend of hers. I was running out of time, and we were getting further and further from the point at hand.

  “So your first article,” I remarked. It had been long enough since I had asked someone out that I had almost forgotten how to do it. But the fact that she wasn’t making her excuses to run along right now surely had to count for something, right? If she had been sweet-talking me like before, that would have been one thing, but she had no reason to be sticking around after she had already gotten her interview.

  “Yeah...” she murmured back, twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger. I knew that she was waiting for me to come out and ask what was on my mind, but I didn’t know quite how to do it. Okay, I had waited long enough—and I had done far scarier things than just asking a cute woman out on a date. I could do this. No, more to the point, I was going to do this.

 
“How about I take you out this Friday to celebrate?” I suggested, and I saw the flush to her cheeks deepen a little. She grinned widely, so widely I was surprised that her face could contain it.

  “Like a date?”

  This was my last chance to back out and pretend that it was just something professional—but I didn’t want to do that right now. I wanted to take her out on a date, and I wanted to show her just how much more to me there was than what she had seen in the interview.

  “Like a date,” I replied firmly. “You up for it?”

  “Yeah, I think I am,” she replied. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the way her cheeks darkened, saw the smile spread up her face. She was seriously cute, and I couldn’t wait to get her all to myself when the time came. I had no idea how I was going to manage going on a date with a girl who made me feel like this, but I was willing to find out, that was for sure.

  “Sounds good to me,” I remarked, and I checked my watch again. I could have stayed a little longer, but I didn’t want to say or do something that would have her re-thinking the date that she had just agreed to with me.

  “I should get going,” I offered her. “But I’ll see you soon, all right?”

  “I guess you should take my number,” she reminded me, and I slapped my hand to my forehead and nodded.

  “Yeah, I think I should,” I agreed, and she fumbled in her purse for a moment before she handed me over a card.

  “You have business cards now?” I asked, impressed.

  “My mom had a batch printed out for me when I graduated,” she replied, shaking her head with amusement. “I think this is the first time that I’ve actually given one to anyone.”

  “Well, I’m honored,” I replied. “Thank you.”

  “I guess I’ll see you soon,” she remarked, and with one last lingering look, she brushed past me and headed off down the street, leaving me holding her card and feeling like I had just won the damn lottery.