My Fiancé Wants Me Back Too Bad The Only Thing Coming Back Is Your Regret novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fish Fry
Hallie finds her missing fiancé tending bar under another name, he says he's never seen her, and she names him in front of the whole bar; outside a man is on the phone, and Declan says: you brought them here.
The Friday fish fry at Philbrick's Landing was so crowded that I had to stand by the coat hooks.
Behind the bar, a man was drying a pint glass with a grey towel.
Black hair, a little longer than he used to wear it.
Flannel sleeves pushed to the elbow, and across the back of his left hand a pale scar shaped like a fishhook.
I had kissed that scar.
My phone buzzed in my pocket with the text my father had sent when I parked.
"Tell me the second you see him. Love you."
Dad had paid a private investigator to find this town, because he said he couldn't watch me wait any longer.
Every April for four years, Dad had handed me my birthday cards himself, in one rubber-banded stack from the old house.
Every April he'd looked sorry and said, "Nothing from Declan, sweetheart."
A woman with short dark hair and an apron stopped beside me with a tray of fried haddock.
"You look like you drove a long way, hon," she said. "Sit anywhere you can find. I'll bring you a chowder, and it's on the house."
She was so kind about it that my throat closed.
"Thank you," I said.
I didn't sit.
I walked to the bar.
The man looked up, and his hands stopped.
It was one second, no more, and then his face went smooth and polite.
"What can I get you?"
"Declan," I said.
"Sorry, miss." He set the glass down. "I think you've got the wrong guy. My name's Dean."
Somebody at the next stool laughed. "Dean gets that a lot. He's got one of those faces."
Four years.
I had answered my phone at three in the morning for four years, in case it was him.
I pulled the chain out from under my sweater, unhooked the clasp, and put the ring on the bar between us.
It made a small, clear sound on the wood.
"His name is Declan Shaw," I said, loud enough for the whole room. "He's a special agent with the FBI."
The fry cook stopped scraping the grill.
"Four years ago he asked me to wait six months. He gave me this and told me not to call his phone."
Nobody was laughing now.
"He has a fiancée in Boston who has been looking for him this entire time, and he has been standing here pouring beer."
A man by the dartboard lifted his phone and pointed it at me.
I didn't stop him.
I wanted every one of them to see his face.
"Hallie," Declan said, quietly. It was the first thing he'd said in his own voice. "Stop talking."
"No."
"Please."
"You said please to me once, too," I said. "You said it at the airport."
The woman in the apron had put her tray down on a table.
She wasn't looking at me.
She was looking at him, and she didn't seem surprised.
"Well," she said. "There it is."
"Sue," he said.
"Four years you've been afraid of this door, and she walked right through it." She took the apron over her head and folded it. "Did you tell her I was just a friend, or did you let her wonder?"
"I didn't tell her anything," he said. "I couldn't."
That was the answer I'd driven three hours for, and it still hurt.
"He told me he was alone," Sue said to me, without any heat at all. "I'm sorry for whatever you thought."
I didn't know what to do with that.
I had come ready for a woman who'd fight me, and she'd brought me soup.
"Fish fry's done, everybody," Sue said, in a raised, steady voice. "Pay at the register on your way out. Dean's closing."
Chairs scraped.
The man with the phone went out first.
I picked up my ring and walked out behind them, because I couldn't stand in that room another second.
The cold air off the harbor hit my face.
The lot was half empty already.
At the far end, beside a grey sedan, a man in a flat cap stood with a phone against his ear.
I knew that cap, and that heavy grey coat.
Tommy Dunne had driven me to school every morning from the age of seven.
He saw me and lifted two fingers, the way he always had.
"Hal," he mouthed.
Relief went through me, stupidly, because it meant Dad had sent someone to look after me.
The door banged behind me.
Declan came across the gravel fast and caught my arm above the elbow.
He wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at the grey sedan.
"Who is that?" he said.
"That's Tommy. He's my father's driver. Dad probably sent him to make sure I was safe."
His hand tightened until it hurt.
"Hallie," he said, and his voice had changed completely. "You brought them here."
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