Play The Part (Player Next Door Book 3)

17 | Austin's Surfboards

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Chapter 17: Austin's Surfboards

Driving is a form of therapy. My mind shifted into autopilot, emotions dispersing like water into steam, as my car rolled through the terrain.

It's been a smooth ride – apart from the traffic cone I knocked over on the way out of the school parking lot. Oh, and the water bottle someone dropped on the road.

Minor details.

I tried not to think about Luke, but some of his comments kept returning to haunt me. I knew I needed to give him a chance to talk through those texts with me. I just needed some time before we did that. It hurt too much. The thought of looking at one of those pages made me sick.

I'm sure the blackmailer tried to make the worst of this and, honestly, I wouldn't have believed the texts if Luke hadn't quasi confirmed them.

It was his reaction more than the texts that set me off.

"You have reached your destination," the British lady inside Google Maps told me.

I parked my car outside the cutest beach house I had ever seen.

We were on top of a hill, with a luscious garden full of perfectly shaped bushes and vibrant flowers. There was a sparkling fountain in the center that I walked past on my way up to the house.

She lives in a fairytale.

The house was made of old stone with large windows, framed by extravagant curtains and ambient lighting. I knocked on the front door and, after a few seconds, I heard footsteps run towards me.

"Millie!" Lara exclaimed, almost out of breath as she yanked the door open, "Come on in. Please excuse the mess, we're just moving in."

She kicked some boxes out of the way and led me into her home. I followed her, walking on a green tiled floor and then I stared at the life-sized zebra sculpture in the hallway.

"Mom bought that in Zambia," Lara noticed where my attention had gone to, "Feel free to use it as a coat hanger until we find ours. Lola! Can you please leave the living room? I'm having my math lesson there today!"

Lara's little sister picked up her dolls and reluctantly walked past us, moping up the stairs, and dragging one of her dolls by the hair behind her.

"Um Lara?" I asked, taking my shoes off even though she didn't ask me to, "Have you moved house?"

We'd taken our last couple lessons somewhere completely different.

"Oh I should've told you!" Lara exclaimed, guiding me to the desk where we were going to have our lesson, "The beach house is our summer house. We move here when the weather starts getting nice again."

They have seasonal houses. Is that normal?!

She pressed a remote and the shades on the windows rose to give a full panoramic view of the outside: lush gardens, a pool and out in the distance, the giant ocean.

"Wow," I gazed out, never seeing a view like this except in James Bond movies.

"Come on," Lara called me over, already walking to another room, "Let's get some drinks."

I followed her into the kitchen, which had green cabinets and state of the art appliances. Lara's chef was squeezing orange juice from a presser into a pitcher of red liquid.

"Perfect timing. I'm making a mocktail of cranberry and orange juice for your lesson," she greeted us as we walked in, "I don't want Lara falling asleep in a lesson again."