Free The Fireside Inn by Lily Everett

he rasped, low and halting.
    Disappointment lanced through her. “What? You can’t tell me love exists because you still don’t believe in it? Even after all the things we’ve read together, all the time we’ve spent together…”
    Even after making me fall for you?
    “No.” Leo straightened and faced her with the posture of a man facing down a firing squad. “I mean, I can’t read the poem aloud.”
    Still battling her own disappointment, Serena arched a mocking brow. “If you have such bad stage fright you can’t read aloud to me in an empty room, how are you going to get up in front of a church full of people and do a wedding reading?”
    “For God’s sake,” Leo burst out, stroking a hand through his hair and clenching until the muscles stood out in his forearm. “I don’t have a problem with stage fright. I have a problem with reading. As in, I never learnt.”
    Despite herself, Serena’s jaw dropped open. “What, at all? But you went to fancy British schools!”
    “Fancy schools that owed a lot to my father’s generous donations.” Leo shrugged tightly, directing his stare to the side.
    Unable to believe what she was hearing, Serena shook her head as she stumbled up from the couch. Her watery knees threatened not to hold her up under the tidal wave of realization crashing over her head.
    Not again
, was all she could think, but it
was
happening again.
    “You lied to me,” she said through numb lips, staring at the marble-cold profile of the man she’d come so close to giving her heart to.
    “Because I was embarrassed,” Leo said, still not even bothering to look at her. He shrugged, sending shadows dancing along the walls. “It’s not the kind of thing a man likes to admit to. Being so thick, the best teachers in England couldn’t knock reading into his skull.”
    “I don’t understand. How did you memorize so many quotes?”
    A pained expression tightened the corners of Leo’s downturned eyes. “Ever notice I mostly quote from plays? I found recordings, watched videos, that kind of thing. For the rest…”
    He paused, and a chill pooled in Serena’s belly. She shook her head. “You couldn’t have gotten through the English curriculum at your fancy English prep school without help.”
    A muscle ticked in Leo’s jaw. “I did have help. I hid my problems from the masters, but some of the other pupils…”
    Serena’s heart froze. She knew the truth without needing to hear him say it. “You got girls to help you. Sweet, nerdy girls like me.”
    “I’m not proud of it,” he growled. “But I couldn’t go to the teachers, because they would have informed my parents. My father—”
    But Serena could barely hear a word he said over the sound of betrayal wailing in her ears. “You’re just like all the rest of them. Like every other man I’ve ever known.”
    He finally swiveled his head to pierce her with the silvery brilliance of his eyes. “No. That’s not true,” Leo said, taking an urgent step toward her.
    Throwing up a hand between them, Serena halted his progress. She couldn’t bear it if he touched her, that smooth, practiced, lying touch that had made her feel so beautiful and desired, when the whole time… “You said you wanted me. But all along, what you really wanted was—”
    She broke off, heart hammering and mouth dry, unable to believe that after all her caution, all the lessons she’d learned at such a painful cost, she had managed to fall into the same old trap.
    Humiliation scorched up her neck and face, and abruptly, Serena needed to get out of the warm, cozy little room and away from the Fireside Inn. She needed the fresh, cold air against her cheeks as the ferry sped her back to Sanctuary Island. She needed to be alone.
    Alone was safe. From now on, she’d remember that.
    “Wait, Serena. I can explain. When I left school, I left all that behind me. But this wedding reading thing brought it all up again, like breaking open a wound that never really