Little Secrets by Megan Hart Read Free Book Online

She tried the keys, but they all seemed fine. The screen too, which was a good thing, because if Sean had not only spilled juice and left it for her to clean up, but also had gotten it all over her computer, paying hell would be less expensive than totaling up Ginny’s expense report.
    Moments ago she’d been on fire to get something done, but the inertia of pregnancy settled her more firmly into her chair as she opened iTunes and clicked Shuffle to play through her entire music library. She didn’t have to check her email or anything else…but she was going to. Why not? Sean had said she was supposed to take it easy, and fooling around on the Internet, not even pretending it was for work, was as easy as it got.
    She checked her messages, answered one from her mom, marked one from her brother as unread so she’d remember to answer it later, deleted a slew of fluffy kitten glitter angels and urban legend warning forwards from Sean’s mom, who obviously never visited Snopes.com . Ginny logged in to Connex and skimmed the updates, wished an old college friend a happy birthday and thought about resisting the allure of starting up a word challenge game with some random strangers, but didn’t. She loved and hated those games because despite her large and eclectic vocabulary, she sucked spectacularly at the sort of strategizing necessary to make the most of the double-word and letter tiles. This time, she started off with a seventy-six point word that made her whoop aloud with glee.
    With half the day already gone, her stomach momentarily at least sated if not full and a house full of boxes silently cajoling her into opening them, Ginny moved to log out of everything but the music program. And then…the way it always happens, a song shuffled up. At the first note she froze, fingers on the trackpad twitching so the cursor flew around the screen.
    This song.
    Oh, this song.
    She hadn’t let herself listen to it in months, though there’d been a time when she’d played it over and over again on Repeat, barely a break in between. On her laptop, in the car, through her headphones as she exercised or shopped or sat on the beach and pretended to read. That song had been a punch in the gut every single time, and yet she’d done that to herself on purpose. She’d let it cut her open so she had to sew herself back up again, over and over and over, and gained some sort of sick satisfaction from it. Some measure of…relief, she guessed.
    Some closure.
    The problem with doing something you don’t want anyone to know about is that when it all goes wrong and you sit at your kitchen table and put your face in your hands and cry because you’re hurting even though you have no right to ache…you can’t talk to anyone about your pain.
    This pain was hers to carry alone, and that was all right. She deserved it to be that way. Heavy, with nobody to help her carry it. Sharp enough to cut.
    She ought to have deleted the song from her music library entirely instead of just taking it off her playlists, but the fact was that even now, months later, a year later, maybe a fucking lifetime later, this song would always have the ability to cut her open. She would always find a way to sew herself up; that was who she was. It was what she did. So now when it started and she sat at her old table in its new place and stared all around her at the unfamiliar patterns of light streaming through the windows, all Ginny could do was sit and listen.
    And when the song ended, though she knew she needed to get up and get to work, Ginny hit Replay.

Chapter Four
    â€œIt’s cold in here.” Sean set the paper bags of takeout food on the table. “Has it been this cold all day?”
    Ginny didn’t turn from the sink where she was washing her hands. She’d spent the rest of her day wiping out the cabinets and cleaning the counters and cupboards so that when Sean unpacked the dishes he