Or maybe that was just the emotions of the day. But when she got to the tire swing, there was no Cam.

So she kept going. After what was probably only half a mile, she got a kink in her side that hurt like hell and slowed her to a walk, but she still didn’t stop. She had no idea how long it took her, but she didn’t really start thinking again until she got to the hidden cove where she and Cam had moored that day, the one that seemed so long ago now.

She went to the rocky shore, where she sat, with her back to the stones, knees bent, staring out at the water.

It was cloudy. Fitting. The sky matched her mood, dark and turbulent.

With a sigh, she pulled the journal from her pocket and began to write down her feelings. Gavin had kept his secret because he’d wanted to wait until the right moment to tell her. Fine. Winnie had kept her secret/secrets because . . . well, because she was Winnie and she marched to her own beat, no drummer. Piper understood both of them, she got them, she accepted them. She also loved them deeply, which was the only reason they could hurt her at all. Her siblings’ needs had changed. They needed comfort and home, and she’d not understood that—which was on her. She stopped writing. Because there was no list for this, for a way to deal with it.

She wasn’t in control. Not even a little bit.

Because then there was Cam. She’d thought, mistakenly of course, that he was . . . well, hers. Her own little safe haven from the storm that was her life. Okay, yes, when he’d asked for more she’d freaked out a little bit. Or a lot. That was her bad. She’d needed time.

But it was mortifying to know that while she was angsting over whether she could give him all of her including the good, the bad, and the ugly . . . he’d already known it all, and more. He’d known what she hadn’t.

And he’d left her in the dark.

Everyone had known everything and she, the oldest, the only one who’d ever tried to keep them all together, hadn’t known a thing.

Her phone buzzed. She intended to let it go to voice mail, but it was Jenna. The one person who’d have her back in all this. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Jenna said. “I’m at the house and your siblings are looking like someone killed the cat. Which isn’t true, because the she-devil is yelling at me for food. Where are you?”

“Taking a time-out.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

Piper told her everything, including the fact that she felt betrayed by everyone going behind her back.