Alicia Martinez is determined to keep a low profile. After a tough year, she deletes all of her social media and retreats to the small coastal town of St Andrews in the hopes of starting over - and avoiding her tumultuous past.
Oliver Hogarth is a...
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Five Years Later...
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The young couple picked their way up the Scores, following the winding path past crumbling castle ruins and to the sea. To a passing stranger, they could have been a pair of students enjoying a Sunday stroll. It was only when you looked at them closer that you would notice the way that they tugged their baseball caps lower as they passed, or the way that the girl giggled when she spotted a teenager in a Patriots t-shirt.
"Look!" Alicia nudged him. "That one's got your face on it." She paused. "Or a more attractive version of you, anyway."
"Oh, shut-up."
"Seriously. Do you think they photo-shopped your wrinkles out?"
"Oi!" Oliver frowned. "I don't have wrinkles."
"Sorry, darling." Alicia stretched up on her toes to place a placating kiss on his cheek. "Let's call them laugh lines, shall we?"
They picked their way past the Cathedral, making for the beach. A middle-aged man carrying a bag of golf clubs paused, squinting hard at the pair of them. "Sorry," he said. "Are you who I think you are?"
Oliver gave a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, I'm Oliver Hogarth." He dropped Alicia's hand. "Do you want a picture? I can do a quick one if you—"
"Not you, mate." The man frowned. "I have no bloody clue who you are. I meant her." He jerked his head to Alicia. "You're not Alicia Martinez, are you?"
Alicia smiled. "So my mother tells me."
The man immediately produced a scorecard and a pen, babbling about her performance in Phoenix, and Alicia signed it gamely. She smirked, enjoying Oliver's obvious embarrassment; it wasn't often that she was the one recognized. Then again, Alicia mused, they were standing in the home of golf, and she was currently ranked number one in the LPGA.
These things happened.
Oliver took her hand again as they walked away. "Just say it."
"What?"
"I'm an egocentric narcissist."
"Oh, no, darling," Alicia said soothingly. "I would never use two synonyms in a sentence like that; I would say that you're an egocentric monster." They walked past a splash of colorful houses. "Hypothetically."
