She remembered the autumn leaves on the balcony twirling around her and Jesse like wings. They were so orange in her mind. They glowed like fire. She imagined them blowing through her window, surrounding her on the bed as she rubbed her eyes, and she felt the overwhelming urge to step outside with her camera.
She had bought a new one weeks ago, but hadn’t taken it out of its box yet—or any of the other equipment, either. It was piled in a corner of her bedroom.
She rushed to get dressed, unable to shake the need to feel sand between her toes again. She hadn’t been out to the beach for over a year. She pulled a white sweatshirt from her dresser drawer and stared down at it in surprise.
You’re crazy. I couldn’t smell fish at all. Just you.
It wasn’t the same sweatshirt, but it reminded her of the old one. She pulled it over her head, her heart pounding at the memory of Damien kissing her wrist. Then she remembered Jesse’s hands sliding gently down her body, and finally Brad pulling her up from the chair, kissing her like she had never been away.
She hadn’t seen him since. She turned around and looked at her camera equipment still packaged so neatly in precise, unbendable boxes. What did she want? Who did she want? She had no idea.
Holding her breath, she looked over at her bookshelf where she had recently left an unopened letter from Harvard. Was that what she wanted?
She shook her head and growled to herself. She didn’t have to think about it right now.
HER PARENTS were in the kitchen when she went downstairs with her new camera bag slung over her shoulder. She cradled a tripod in her arms, reminding herself that she needed to buy a case for it. Her mother looked up from a cutting board where she was dicing a red pepper.
“Oh, sweetheart, your father and I are making some breakfast. You want some?”
That’s right. It was Saturday. They always cooked together on weekends now—ever since they had cut back Mindy’s hours. She breathed in the scent of red peppers. They reminded her of Eric. She pressed her tripod closer to her chest and watched her father. With his back to her, he cracked an egg with one hand and pulled his ringing cell phone from his hip with the other. Work. Always work. Even now.
Karen looked into her eyes and smiled, sleep still softening the planes of her face. She smiled back, trying not to think of Eric as she breathed in another whiff of peppers.
“Uh, no breakfast for me. I’m going to go take some pictures.” She motioned to the double glass doors.
Karen glanced out at the morning sky, still dim, but growing more blue by the second. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat something first?”
“No, I’m fine.” She turned to head out the doors, but not before her father spun around, still talking on the phone. He grabbed an orange from a bowl on the counter.
“You need to take something to eat,” he whispered, a playful smile spreading across his lips as he tossed the fruit to her. She barely managed to catch it without dropping her tripod and gave him an understanding smile. Did he remember how he used to peel them for her? The rinds falling to the floor as he answered phone calls, typed emails, gave her apologetic smiles.
“Don’t walk out too far,” he urged.
IT WASN’T a great morning for pictures. The sky was completely empty, the ocean calm and sluggish. There wasn’t a bird in sight. At least there were flowers and some tide pools down the beach.
She was too tired to carry her tripod and left it near a few rocks before continuing on. She forgot her father’s warning not to head out too far, caught up in the rush of having a camera in her hand. Everything in her head was fading away. Even Jesse. Almost.
She walked on, stopping every now and then to snap a picture. She looked through her lens down the beach.
And she saw him.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. A man was walking toward her—red hair beneath the sun, hands shoved into his pockets, green eyes focused on her as they drew closer and closer.
She couldn’t get the camera bag off her shoulders fast enough and threw it into the sand with a heavy thud. The orange rolled out of a side pocket as she took off down the beach, her toes sliding through the sand, her camera banging against her chest.
He pulled her into an embrace as soon as she reached him, his breath brushing her skin as he kissed her face and mouth. Pushing aside her camera, he pulled her closer and whispered that he had missed her like crazy and please, please stop crying.
Was she crying? She pulled away and reached a hand up to her face. Yes, her face was wet. Could he blame her?
“Jesse,” she gasped, gripping him closer. “How can you be here? Are you really here?” He didn’t seem real. It had been four months since she had stepped out of his car. Four long, bittersweet months.
He looked into her eyes, but didn’t smile. “Yes, I’m really here.”
“How?” She glanced up and down the beach, expecting to see a gang of armed policemen any second. There wasn’t anybody. They were completely alone.
“How what?” he asked quietly. His heart was pounding against her chest, and as she looked into his face she noticed beads of sweat along his brow.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “How did you know I would be here? Where have you been?” Her voice rose higher and higher. He hadn’t cut his hair in awhile. It was long and curly, hanging over his ears. His eyes were filled with fear.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he answered carefully, a soft smile spreading across his face. “I’ve been expecting you to take walks out here, but you haven’t, so today, the day I’m planning to ... well, I needed to see you again before ....”
“I don’t understand.”
He lifted a hand and smoothed it down the back of her head, rubbing her hair between his fingers as he spoke with a shaky voice. “I was on my way to your house. I was hoping I could find you.”
“You can’t go to my house!” She almost pulled away. “The second my parents see you they’ll call the police.”
“I know.”
Her feet sank farther into the sand and she stepped out of his arms as she realized what he was about to do. “No,” she whispered. “You can’t.”
He tilted his head. “I have to. Trust me, there’s no other place I’d rather be but here with you, but I’ve thought about it for four months now, and there’s no other way for me to live with myself.”
She took another step back, her camera suddenly weighing like a noose around her neck. The words staggered out of her mouth. “You’re really going to turn yourself in?”
He nodded. “I thought I could live with myself like this, but it turns out I can’t.”
Closing her eyes, she felt her body sway in the morning breeze. She imagined him handcuffed, sentenced, lying in a cell year after year, growing older without her, a book constantly in his hands. She opened her eyes in time to see him stepping closer.
“You need me to hold you,” he whispered, and gathered her to him. “You’re safe now.” He pressed her head to his shoulder. “I made sure you would be safe.”
“Why have you done all this?” She tried to hold onto him so tightly he would never be able to escape. “Why did you leave me? Why did you run? Why can’t we stay together?” Her mind reeled with sudden panic. “I’ll go with you. Whatever we have to do, I’ll do it.”
“Oh, Naomi.” He kissed her head and shifted his feet in the sand. “I love you, but you know as well as I do that it could never work. Not like this.”
She melted at the sound of those words—I love you. She knew it. She had known it all along. But now it didn’t matter. He was going to leave her again. She gritted her teeth. “You can’t leave me.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
She pulled away. “Not my decision? What does that mean? I’m tired of people talking to me about decisions.”
Cradling her face in his hands, he lowered his eyebrows and smiled. “You have a lifetime of your own choices ahead of you. I hope you make better ones t
han I have. Besides, I’ll only be twenty-seven in January. By turning myself in, my sentence might be lessened. Who knows? I might only get a few years.” He shrugged and let go of her face.
That’s when she remembered all the reports she had listened to about Eric and Evelyn and Steve. “Don’t you know they’re trying to blame everything on you? If you turn yourself in, you could be in prison longer than they are!”
“Not if you testify against them.”
A tremor rolled through her body. “But I couldn’t do that to them. I know I should. My mom said I might be forced to, but I care about them, Jesse. I don’t know why, but I do.”
“No you don’t.” He gave her an angry stare. “They deserve everything coming to them. They hurt you—and me. Even though I know everything has stemmed from my decisions, they made their decisions too. Evelyn included.”
“What do you mean? Evelyn never did anything wrong.”
“Evelyn made a choice, Naomi. Like you, she submitted to Eric’s power and stayed there. She knew what she was doing was wrong. I believe it was eating away at her, but she never fought it. None of us did until you tried to get away. I think seeing how much Eric hurt you when you tried to leave helped me realize how wrong it was to keep you. That was when I knew I had to let you go.” He lowered his eyes. “I realized how unhappy I would be if I kept you, even if you wanted me to. I love you, Naomi. I could never hurt you that way. I’m sorry I left you so suddenly in front of the police station, and I’m sorry I didn’t try to make it easier for you. I had to do it that way or I never would have been able to follow through with it.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ve never been as lonely in my life as I have been these last four months. Trust me, I want to stay with you more than anything in the world, but this is how things have to be. I have to fix what I’ve done wrong. I know you’ve forgiven me for the horrible things I’ve done, but I still feel like I need to keep apologizing.”
“For what?”
“For keeping you, for being such a sick creep at first and for letting you fall in love with me, for leaving you the way I did. I’ve hurt you, but you still love me. That means the world to me.”
She was still trying to control the fantastic pace of her heart. She was caught in a whirlwind. She felt like she might blow away any second.
“I’m going to stay here with you for a little while,” he said, squeezing her to his chest. “Then I have to leave.”
She looked into his eyes and saw pain swirling in them—like the water being tugged back into the ocean, reluctant, inevitable.
“Okay,” she whispered, her mouth dry. She nodded behind her shoulder to where she had left her camera bag. “Let’s head back there.”
They walked hand in hand, their footsteps leaving deep marks in the sand. She thought the warmth felt good on her heels and toes, but Jesse’s warmth was even better, closed around her hand, gripping her fingers tighter. She knew he didn’t want to let go, but he had made his decision.
“Did you get any good shots?” he asked quietly as she kneeled down by her bag.
She unzipped the main compartment of the bag, pulled the camera from around her neck, and slipped it inside. She would get it back out to take a picture of him later. She had to have a picture, at least. “No. The day is too perfect.”
“Too perfect?” he laughed.
She stared at the orange lying nearby. “Sorry, that probably doesn’t make sense. I mean there’s nothing interesting in the sky. Sure, the color is pretty, but it’s boring.”
“Ah.” He sat next to her. She tensed as he turned to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. It could be the last time he would ever hold her. “You want clouds and rain and turmoil. Some sort of resistance. That’s what makes things interesting for you, isn’t it? I read through your journal. I hope that’s okay.”
She blushed and looked down. “Yeah, I thought you might.”
“I think I cried through the whole thing. I had no idea the things you were going through. Those dreams about the dragons and the fire, all those memories of your mother you didn’t remember until we took you.” He smiled. “Then me. You talked a lot about me. The way you said things—it really touched me, Naomi.”
She looked up. “You mean everything to me.”
“I discovered that. I think for a long time I took it for granted and I’m sorry. Do you want the journal back? It’s in my car, but I can go get it.”
She was silent for a moment, her mind reeling with thoughts of him reading her words and connecting with her like that. It felt intimate in a way she had never experienced. At one point, she had thought the journal was filled with avoidance, but now she saw the truth. It was filled with the most complete honesty she had ever let herself experience.
“I think it might be best if you turn it into the police,” she said. “I think it might help your case.”
He nodded.
“Jesse?” she whispered, looking into his face once again. His skin was paler than normal.
“Yes?”
“Where have you been? I asked your father, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“I know. I met with him yesterday. He told me about your stopping by.”
“Oh.”
“No, it’s a good thing. I’ve always wanted you to meet him. Things are better this way. I can see it will hurt you at first, and I’m sorry for that, but in the long run it will be better.”
“I know.”
He turned to look at the ocean. “I’ve been staying with friends, people who know how to ...well, they’re not the best people to be acquainted with unless you’re trying to hide from the FBI.”
For a second she shrank away from him. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, turning to look at the ocean too.
He nodded. “Yes, I’m positive. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“I guess a lot.”
“Listen, Naomi. I know you still care about them—Evelyn, and maybe even the others. I guess that’s alright, but you’ll need to tell the truth when you’re called to testify, even the truth about me. You can’t lie.”
She tensed. “Do you think I’ll be forced to testify against them? Against you?”
“Maybe. When I turn myself in, things will change. Everything will progress faster. I’m willing to tell the authorities anything they need to know, and I’ll need your help in letting them see the whole story, even if it incriminates me more than I’d like.” He looked away. “It probably will, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to redeem myself and be with you again. If you still want to be with me after all that time.” Then, more quickly, “I would understand if you didn’t. It might be a long time.”
“Oh,” she whispered, unsure of what else to say.
“They’re not going to prison for murder, Naomi. Their sentence and my sentence won’t be for life. If you don’t feel they seriously hurt you, then say so. I’m not going to tell you to try to hurt them. You need to do what’s best for your heart, your conscience.”
She shook her head, almost choking on her confusion. He pressed a finger against her lips and made a shushing sound. “You don’t have to decide right now, okay?”
Wrapping her in his arms, he lowered her to the sand and kissed her.
XXXIV
MINDY KEPT THE BOWL OF ORANGES WELL-stocked. Naomi ate one nearly every morning, but only because her father woke up earlier than she did and peeled one for her. Nobody knew about Jesse visiting her. She was holding her breath waiting to hear about him on the news. Five long days later—nothing. What was taking him so long?
She rested her chin in her hand and scraped a fingernail across the toast on her plate. Her mind filled with thoughts of sugar and cinnamon, but she couldn’t ask her father for such a thing. It reminded her too much of Eric. He turned around from the stove and gave her a smile.
“What’s that by your plate?” he asked.
Swallowing, she shifted across the bar stool and loo
ked down at the letter. “It’s from Harvard. I opened it this morning.”
“Oh?”
He stepped over to the counter, a spatula in one hand, an un-cracked egg in another. He really liked eggs. Even though Mindy was around on weekdays, he had been cooking them every morning for the past week—like Eric had. They were just as good, though not as fluffy and delicately salted. Eric had made them just right.
He was slowly disappearing from her heart. Thinking about him and Evelyn and Steve didn’t make her cry anymore, but she ached for all of them more often than she wanted to admit. She knew she would see them again, whether in the courtroom or somewhere else in a time and space very different from now.
She stared at the envelope, knowing there was no way out of this one. Why had she brought it downstairs? “They wrote me again to tell me I’m still accepted and I’ve got a scholarship. I don’t know why.”
“You don’t know why you’ve been accepted and have a scholarship, or why they wrote you again?”
“Both.”
Clearing his throat, he leaned across the counter and looked her in the eyes. “They wrote you again because of a call from your mother, and they’ve given you a scholarship because you’re smart and have amazing potential, of course.” He turned around and grabbed the skillet from the stove. “Here are your eggs.” He slid a small pile onto her plate. “Have you decided, then?”
Her heart beat faster. “I have no idea, Dad.”
She was half hoping he would beg her to go. That’s what her mother would do as soon as she saw the letter.
Leaving her eggs untouched, she slid from the stool. “I’m not hungry. I’m sorry.”
His face fell. He followed her gaze out the doors and raised an eyebrow. “Another walk on the beach? That’s all you’ve done for the past five days. Why don’t you wait for your mother?”
The Breakaway Page 23