“What if we went to Senegal again?” I suggested, clinging to the memory of when we used to be happy together. “We could volunteer again. Couldn’t we?”
He shook his head. “That… it wouldn’t…”
I was running out of ideas. I felt like I could convince him not to go if only I could come up with the right words.
“Please don’t do this,” I whispered. “Please.”
More begging. Ugh. I promise I’m not usually so pathetic.
I studied Joel’s face, with his pale eyelashes, thick brown hair, and the flush creeping up his neck. “Is there someone else?” I asked.
“No,” he said quickly. “There’s no one else.”
The subtext was obvious: Not yet. There would be someone else someday. Another woman. One he’d someday deem worthy of marriage, the house in the suburbs, the kids, the matching rocking chairs—everything I wasn’t good enough for. Because he and I didn’t work.
“Don’t do this to me,” I said, the volume of my voice rising above the din of the restaurant. Joel hated making a scene. He would do anything to avoid it. I was making him very uncomfortable now, although it was his own damn fault for doing this in a restaurant. Maybe he thought if he did it at home, I’d rip the whole place apart. I had no idea that as we were having this conversation, his buddy Pete was hauling his belongings out of the apartment so they wouldn’t be there when I got back.
Joel glanced around. Half the people in the restaurant had their eyes on us now. He looked really uncomfortable. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. And then he stood up, tossed a few bills on the table, and sprinted out of the restaurant.
I was stunned. Fifteen minutes earlier, I had been planning a life with the man I loved. And now? Now it was all down the toilet.
They say there’s a thin line between love and hate. In those few seconds between when Joel stood up and when the door to the restaurant slammed behind him, my love for Joel Broder started to morph into hatred. It didn’t all happen that day, but with time, I grew to hate him. I hated that I wasn’t good enough for the life he imagined for himself. I hated the pity in his eyes when he offered to pay the rent on our apartment because he knew I couldn’t afford it. I came to despise the new girl he would meet who would someday take my place at the altar when he was finally ready to settle down. Much more than I ever hated Joel, I came to hate this nameless, faceless woman.
I wanted to get back at him for what he did to me.
And her.
That was my intention from the beginning. When Joel dumped me that night, he took away my entire life—my home, my friends, my dignity. I could never get any of that back. All I wanted was to even the score.
I never meant to kill anyone.
I swear.
Chapter 1: The New Girl
There are three businesses that nobody in their right minds would want to own in the twenty-first century:
1） A travel agency
2） A video store
3） A bookstore
Cassie Donovan has been booking trips online for her entire adult life, and she only vaguely remembers what it was like to walk into a store and borrow a DVD to watch on her family’s DVD player. She doesn’t even own a DVD player anymore.
Yet here she is, shelving her latest acquisition of slightly worn books at the used bookstore she inherited from her grandparents: Grandma Bea and Grandpa Marv. She was only twenty-two when she took over the store—just out of college. Nobody else in the Donovan clan had any interest in taking the reins of a used bookstore that was struggling in the setting of a growing online and electronic book sales market. But Cassie always had a passion for print and couldn’t let Bookland close its doors.