She is exceptionally good at being distant and frosty.
"This is Lane Peterson, my friend," I say.
There is something tense about the silence that follows, and I see the wordless glance Lane's brother's exchange. Lane speaks first, while I'm still trying to puzzle through the tension. "We're headed to dinner. I'll see you later, Gwen Barrie."
I nod, and he walks a few steps backward until I give a tiny wave. His face shutters, and he turns away abruptly.
"I did something wrong," I murmur to myself. Grayson, at my side, makes a softly sympathetic noise. "What did I do wrong?" I ask.
"You called him a friend, darling."
Since that makes absolutely no sense, but I can't argue, I follow him as Micah leads us back to my dorm hall.
We decide, after minimal debate, to have dinner out.
Micah and I stay on campus—Grayson and Aunt J go check into their hotel—and make plans to meet them at a local steakhouse at five. It doesn't leave a lot of time—just enough to change and touch up my makeup before I hurry back downstairs. Whatever is going on with Orchid and her parents, it's happening somewhere other than our dorm room.
I hope it's a happy reunion and make a mental note to check in on her later. I need to tell her about James and the kiss—I just can't decide how to do that without ruining one of the few friendships I have here.
I can’t think about that right now, so I shove the thought aside and hurry downstairs to meet Micah.
He’s quiet on the drive, which makes me nervous. Usually he’s the one to fill the quiet spaces with needless chatter.
“Are you still mad at me?” I ask abruptly.
He glances at me from the corner of his eye and shakes his head. “No. I told you I wasn’t. I’m just worried, Gwen.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me all the time,” I say, almost sharply.
His expression turns bleak.
It’s too late.
I hear the unspoken words, and I hate them because they’re true.
“Let’s just enjoy dinner. I promise, Micah, I’m doing good. I’m healthy and sane.”
“Why did you introduce Lane as your friend?” he asks suddenly.
“What?”
“You’ve been out with him four times in a week. You went to a party with him. He sure as hell doesn’t think of you as a friend. So why did you introduce him as a friend, and not your boyfriend?”
“I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal,” I say, sitting back in my seat.
“I know you don’t. And that’s part of the issue, Gwen. You don’t have any idea how to live in the world because you’ve been isolated from it for so long.”
I flinch and he sighs. “That’s not an accusation, and I’m not upset, sis. It’s just the truth. I don’t know how to change it, and until we do, you’ll always be a little different—separate—from the rest of the world. And you can’t be healthy with that distance. It was distance that caused the problems in the first place.”
“It was watching our parents be murdered,” I snap.
Micah parks the car and turns off the engine. I can hear it ticking softly as it cools. “I know. That had its own effect. But being alone on that boat for three weeks didn’t help, sweetie. You need to be part of life to live it.”
I raise my chin in challenge. “I spent the majority of the last seven years in a mental institute. One Aunt J and you thought I should be in. Being isolated wasn’t exactly my choice.”
He stares at me, frustration clear in his bright blue eyes. Eyes we both inherited from Daddy. Micah looks like him, more and more each day. It makes it hard to be around him sometimes.
I wave a hand. “Let’s just go,” I say.
Micah catches my arm as I push the car door open, and I glance back at him. “I’m not the enemy, Gwen. I’m your brother. More than anything, I want for you to be safe and sane. You know that, right?”
I nod, and relief fills his eyes before I get out of the car.
Grayson and Aunt J are sitting on one side of the little booth, which is a little unusual. Typically, Micah sits with Aunt J and I have Grayson—it’s easier for him to whisper amusing nonsense in my ear when he’s sitting next to me.
Grayson is a big believer in laughter as a medicine and coping mechanism. It’s one of my favorite things about him.
But now, his eyes are subdued. I hesitate, a finger of unease tracing its way down my spine as Micah gestures for me to slide into the booth.
Trap.
The mental whisper is ridiculous. These people are my family—or as close to it as I have—people who have nothing but my best interests at heart. It’s ridiculous to think they would be doing anything to hurt me.
I slip into the booth, and Micah sits next to me, neatly boxing me in.
“How long are you planning on staying?” Micah asks, directing the question at Aunt J.
“We’ll leave Sunday morning—before the brunch. I have a Board meeting on Sunday night that I’ll need to be in the city for.” Her gaze flicks to me, and I wait for her to ask me to Skype the meeting.
But she doesn’t.
It occurs to me suddenly that no one is looking at me—they are quite studiously ignoring me. They acknowledge me with half glances and they talk around me with vague questions. But it’s there, a cautious handling that makes me furious.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask.
Aunt J’s gaze snaps to mine, and Grayson sighs. “I told you this wasn’t the way to do it.”
“Do what?” I snap.
“It’s the only way—we can’t get her to tell the truth on her check-ins.”
“Would you quit acting like I’m not here?” I snarl. “If you have something to say, just fucking say it.”
Aunt J flinches, but her gaze meets mine, just as angry as I am.
I can always count on her to get angry and drop the kid gloves.
“You’re spiraling,” she snaps. “And you’re lying about it.”
“I’m not,” I protest. “I’m fine. Micah can tell you that I’m fine.” I glance at my brother for a backup. He looks away.
For a few seconds, I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Then I whisper, softly, “You bastard.”
He flinches. I smile, absurdly pleased.
“You went off your meds, Gwen,” he says, his voice low. “And you’ve been out rowing. Without me.”
“It was one day!” I protest shrilly. This can’t be happening. I refuse to lose control of my life because of one fucking day.
“If one day derails you, darling, you aren’t nearly ready for this,” Grayson says gently.
I shake my head, hard. It’s a fucking ambush. And a well done one, at that. I didn’t have a fucking clue. I’ve become entirely too trusting, if I didn’t see this shit coming.
“We’re worried. The Board is worried. You’ll be twenty one in two years, and you’re no closer to stability.”
My head is pounding. “What do you want to do?” I ask thickly, morbidly curious. Do they plan to ship me back to Pembrooke? Do they really think I’ll let them?”
Of course they do—I’ve always gone along with their plans. I’ve never fought Aunt J because I’ve always assumed that she was right. That I was batshit crazy and needed to be helped.
“I want you to come home,” she says. I stare at her, my lips ticking up into a cool smile. Her gaze falters, and then she rushes on. “I think you need the stability of being home. You need structure, and this doesn’t offer it.”
“I disagree. I have a pretty rigid schedule. Class and homework doesn’t leave much time for anything else,” I say.
“But you aren’t the best person to judge your own stability,” Micah says softly.
I flick a disgusted look at him. If I could move I’d have stormed out by now—probably why he boxed me.
Fuck. One day, I’m going to start listening to my damn intuition. It’s not that far off, despite the words and wisdom of my doctors.
“I’m not leaving,” I say, cutting Aunt J off as she babbles about me coming home and taking residence in her Upper East Side penthouse. “Believe what you want, but I’m fine. I have friends and a guy who’s interested me, and I’m doing a damned good job in my classes. Yes, there have been bad days. But I had bad days in Pembrooke too, and your house, Aunt J, is a short step away from the institute. We all know it.”
“We could compel you to go back,” Aunt J says stiffly.
I heave a tired sigh. “That would mean getting the lawyers involved. And I might not have come into my inheritance as a Board member, but I have access to my trust and I’ll get my lawyers involved.”
Aunt J’s eyes are wide, and Grayson is staring at me, his gaze appraising. “It would cause a scandal,” she protests.
I glance at my menu—where the hell is our waitress?—and nod. “Yep. It would.”
“Why—“
“Shut up, Jane,” Grayson says abruptly, and her mouth snaps shut. I swallow my smirk. He stares at me intently. “Why go that far? What makes it different now?”
My anger wells up suddenly. “Because I’m not fucking crazy,” I spit. “And I’m not a pawn on her chessboard.”
He doesn’t react to my anger—but then, Grayson is well accustomed to it. I grab my purse. “Unless there is something else that you urgently need to ambush me with, I’m leaving.”
“Gwen,” Micah protests.
“No,” I snap, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to see you right now—I sure as hell don’t want to hear your lame ass excuses.”
His eyes fill with hurt, and I don’t care. I’m too angry to care—and I’m hurt. He chose to open this can of worms. He can deal with the fallout.
“Let her go,” Grayson says softly.
Micah opens his mouth to say something and then thinks better of it. He moves aside, and I slip out of the booth and stalk out of the restaurant.
Our waitress still hasn’t made an appearance. Probably a smart girl.
Chapter 10
I take Micah’s car. Because I know Aunt J will give him a ride, and because it’s bitchy and after that little meeting the least I can do is be a little bitchy.
I think about heading to the boat house, but taking my kayak out alone is asking for questions from Grayson and Micah, so I angle for the Cliff instead. It’s sure to be deserted, and it’s close enough to the ocean that I can get some calm.
I crank the music loud, letting Shinedown wash over me as I drive and try to blank my mind. I don’t want to start crying while I’m driving, and if I think too hard, I will.
Thankfully, Crayville is small enough that it doesn’t take me long to reach the parking lot by the Cliff. I toe off my shoes and let my hair loose of the pony tail then hurry across the gravelly cement until I hit the rock that slants upward.
The wind is picking up, and it’s stronger up here where it sweeps off the ocean with nothing to break it. I shiver, digging my toes into the crevices of stone to steady myself.
It’s going to storm. I can’t help the little thrill of excitement at the thought—I adore storms.
Suddenly the magnitude of what just happened sweeps over me. I stumble, dropping to my knees.
Am I really so fragile that I need to go back to the city, to be watched and cared for? And if they think I am despite my censoring what I tell them about—how true is it? Maybe I should go back. It would get me away from Peter.
Except I’m not entirely sure I want to get away from Peter. He irritates me and he confuses me—reminds me of things that are best forgotten. But he’s also bracingly real, and I never expected to have the Boy.
Not really.
Even knowing that he isn’t my Boy, he is closer than I’ve ever come. Every ounce of common sense says to run, but I’m tired of running. How do I keep doing something I don’t want to do, when he is so adamant about chasing me?
You leave.
I can’t. I need college, to prove to my brother and Aunt J that I am not irrevocably broken.
To prove it to myself.
Leaving isn’t an option.
“Gwendy?”
I glance at him. His exotic eyes are worried, narrowed in concern. I bite my lip, and he drops into a crouch next to me, the bill of his ball cap brushing my hair as he leans in. I stiffen and he sighs. Sits back on his heels. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I whisper, and tears prick my eyes.
Northern was supposed to be my fresh start. My chance to get away from the memories and the Boy and the stigma of being so fucking crazy. So why is it that he’s there at every turn, pushing for answers?
“My aunt wants me to go back home,” I say.
Panic flashes in his eyes, there and gone so quickly I can almost pretend it was my imagination. But it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t, just like I know there is more to Peter than first glance would lead me to believe.
“Are you going?” he asks, his voice surprisingly steady.
“No,” I say, catching the way his shoulders slump just a little. “Even though I should.”
“Why not?” he asks curiously.
I look at him. “Because I’m tired of being broken. I’m tired of them telling me that I’m one bad day from falling apart. I want to be stronger than that.”
He smiles, reaching out to brush my hair over my shoulder. “You are one of the strongest people I know, Gwendy.”
I laugh, but the noise gets stuck in my throat. “Can you tell my brother that?”
He nods, and I shift, staring out at the water. The waves are picking up with the incoming storm. I shiver.
“Are you afraid of it?” he asks softly.
“No,” I say. “I should be. But I’m not.”
He’s quiet and still, sitting cross-legged next to me. “When I was twelve, I went on a cruise with my parents, in our private yacht. It was a way to appease me—Daddy was sending me to his alma mater, a boarding school in New York. I’d always known he would, when I got close to high school, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen. Anyway. I was miserable, and he knew how much I loved the Second Star. So he took me and Mother out for a month—we were sailing from Spain to the southern tip of Africa.”
I expect him to say something, to interrupt me. But he’s quiet, merely reaching out and brushing my cheeks with his thumbs—I don’t realize I’m crying until he does.
“Mother and Daddy died on that boat,” I say, my voice unsteady. “The official report says an attack of Mongol pirates. And I suppose that’s true. But they never came near me—I was in the cabin, napping. I didn’t see anything until I went on deck.”
Blood. So much blood. It stained the pretty deck of the Second Star, even though I scrubbed the deck for hours a day. Gore was splattered on the side of the boat where they shot her. And a machete was buried in the wood, scarring it and marking where Daddy died.
“I was on the boat for three weeks, drifting in the Atlantic, before a Navy vessel pulled me out of the ocean,” I say softly.
It felt longer.
Illusions. Not real.
The Island was real.
NO.
“And you went home?” he asks.
I shrug. I don’t want to talk about it—about coming home and telling Aunt J about the island, about the boy and the months I was gone. She didn’t believe me—and since the calendar refused to support my delusions, I could hardly blame her.
I hated her, a little. For not believing me. I sometimes think I still do.
“I don’t talk about it. At home, everyone knows about their deaths—it was big news.”
“Why?”
“I’m a Barrie,” I say simply.
Peter’s eyebrow goes up, and I gape at him. Does he really not know? “My father was Piers Barrie—we own Barrie Enterprise.”
He shrugs. “I don’t pay attention to company executives.”
A warmth floods me. No one is ever this oblivious about who I am, what I stand to inherit. It’s intoxica
ting, that he doesn’t know. Or care. "I came here because I didn't want to be immediately associated with Barrie Enterprises, with my father. We've been an institution of the financial world for so long that everyone knows me at home."
"Then why tell me the truth?" he asks, so softly.
I shrug. "Because I can't help but trust you. Even though it's stupid and I have no good reason for it—I want to trust you. I want you to be someone I can trust." I open my mouth, to tell him more about the Boy, about why it is so important to me. Why I should stay away from him, and why I can't seem to. I can’t separate the Boy from reality, not when Peter is real, and a walking memory.
Peter speaks first. "I don't know who your father is. I don't know why you want to run from your past. But the thing is, Gwen, I don't care. I want to be part of now. I'll fight tooth and nail to be part of now."
"What if now is temporary?" I ask, thinking about my aunt and my tenuous grasp on sanity and all the reasons I should step away from Peter.
"Then we enjoy what we have," he murmurs. I shudder as his voice wraps around me, as warm as the hand curving around my neck. He makes a low noise and lifts me until I'm sitting in the circle of his crossed legs. Pressed against him. I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, the unsteady pounding. His fingers are still pressed against my hips, still holding onto me despite having me where he wants.
I should move back, put distance between us, so he knows that this isn’t ok. I sit still and silent in his arms and wait for the chiding voice, telling me it’s wrong.
The voice that has drown out every thought and feeling, every time a boy has touched me.
But it’s silent, oddly absent—maybe it is as charmed by Peter’s appearance as I am.
“What is Lane, to you?” he asks, breaking my thoughts.
I shrug, looking at the pulse point pounding in his throat. “A friend.”
“I don’t want you near him,” he says.
There is a part of me, slight but there, that is annoyed by his pronouncement. But the bigger part is smirking, leaning in so that my lips tickle along his neck. Peter goes very still as I whisper, a hairs breath from his skin, “Are you jealous?”
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