by Natasha Boyd
“Get this far,” I echoed and choked out a laugh at the words.
“Answer me honestly, if you’d known who I was when you first got here, would you have stayed?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know. I may have had to; I had no where else to go. What I know now is I don’t want you here anymore. You can go live on your boat, move in with Bethany, or do whatever the fuck you like, but you need to get the hell out of my face.”
“Liv—”
“Olivia. Or don’t address me at all.”
“So you don’t want to know anything else? What happened when Abby died, or why—”
“It doesn’t change anything, Whit.”
His eyes flickered, in a vague approximation of a flinch, except he didn’t move. Not a muscle. Nothing.
“It doesn’t change that Abby died. That you were a part of it. It doesn’t bring her back or stop what Mike Williams did, and it doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t really matter anymore.”
I stood, scooped up the kitten from where he’d curled into a round purring ball at my hip and headed for my room. The storm thrashed for the rest of the evening as I lay in my bed, covers over my head so I couldn’t hear Tom moving around. Was he packing? I tried really hard not to think about what it would be like to wake up in the morning and find him gone, and never, ever, coming back.
I’d had so many questions for so long. If I’d known Whit was alive, would I have asked him what I needed to know, or was it safer just to hate him? And he’d married, Abby. God. They were in love, and I’d betrayed her utterly. My stomach twisted with renewed remorse. How could he have done that to Abby? Unless… unless I reminded him of her so much that he couldn’t help it. Twisting into the pillow, I opened my mouth and screamed silently, soaking the pillow with my tears.
LOOKING AROUND the room I’d called my own for six years felt oddly unemotional. Maybe because the time might as well never have happened. I’d had six years to turn myself from a lost and terrified nineteen-year-old kid into someone worth something. And failed spectacularly.
I couldn’t believe I was even able to move with the pressure squeezing my chest and the raging in my skull.
Opening the armoire, I pulled all my clothes out and stuffed them into a duffel. It was sobering to realize how little I needed to pack. The bathroom was equally bare. I left the shampoo.
Had I always known deep down this day would come? I’d bought a sailboat and made sure it had the most powerful outboard engine on it I could afford. I hadn’t done that so I could tool around the Intracoastal Waterway. No, subconsciously I’d been poised to leave when the time came. Was that what happened when everything you cared about was ripped away from you, and all your roots were crudely severed? You could never grow any back?
Marjoe and Pete had become like surrogate parents to me, but how much would they really miss me when I was gone? If my own parents could let me go, this had to be way easier. The ocean would be perfect for me, definitely no roots growing there.
I could finish my degree online. And at least do something worthwhile with the rest of my sorry life. Maybe I’d work to expose corruption, or find abusers, wouldn’t that be ironic? It might even get me killed all over again. This time for real.
There was so much I wanted to tell Livvy. Things she needed to know before I left that would allow her to finally live. And she would live. I had no doubt. She was hurting now, because of me, but she’d grown in the time she’d been here. She’d grown strong. She thought she loved me, but she didn’t. How could she? It was based on a lie about the kind of man she thought I was. And she had so much love to give; I was just the closest target. The most important thing she’d done was develop the capacity for love. And that was worth more. So much more.
But for all intents and purposes she was a child. And that made me the worst kind of man. Was I any better than any of the men who’d taken advantage of her? Was I so intoxicated by the way she looked at me, like I was the center of the world, that I couldn’t help but descend into wanting to make her mine?
I’d fought it.
God, I fought it.
I’d spent hours last night with her lips a hair’s breadth away, and willed her to close the gap, because I refused to. With everything she’d been through, there was no way I was going to kiss her, even though I wanted to do it more than breathe.
So I waited for her to do it.
She saw herself as something broken and damaged, and I saw her as absolutely fucking perfect. She saw herself as spoiled and ruined, and while I’d seen a lost, abused girl when she first arrived, I now saw her as something so pure and so light, that no amount of knowledge of what had happened to her could taint her for me. Except what I could do to her.
My restraint in not kissing her the night before had gone out the window the instant I’d gotten her text and had to think of her making a choice to be with anybody else but me. How had that happened? Her light, fun, flirty text telling me she was thinking of dating suddenly ripped a hole through every barrier I’d erected between us. I was blindsided by my reaction, and so I was gaping and raw when she mentioned Tyler a few seconds later.
In retrospect, obviously she was joking, trying to make light of what had been a horrible situation. And being able to look back on something stupid with wiser eyes was healthy, right?
In ret-ro-spect.
Everything made sense in retrospect. Like in retrospect I probably should have told her who I was before I completely violated her trust by not just finally kissing her, oh no, nothing that simple… I gave in to kissing her, only to find myself buried inside her within minutes. I mean, how many minutes was it? One? Ten? How did that even fucking happen?
But in retrospect I knew why I hadn’t told her who I was, because that’s where I wanted to be. And if I’d told her, it never would have happened. We never would have happened. So, yeah, I grew a conscience as soon as the shock of feeling her pulsing around me broke through the haze of my lust-addled brain.
There were no answers for why I was in so deep with her. None that I liked. I almost felt as if…
No. I wasn’t even going to go there.
I saw the way she watched me. I saw the way she looked at Bethany with mild confusion, trying to figure out what made Bethany a better choice for me than her. But what the hell had I ever done that made me worthy of her love?
Well, I hadn’t done anything. I’d taken advantage of her. Plain and simple.
I finished getting all my shit together and stepped out of my room. As I passed her closed room, I grabbed the doorframe on either side, resting my head against the wood, and simply breathed.
Finally, I headed to the front of the cottage and dumped my bag by the door. My phone sat on the table. The fire was low. I wouldn’t sleep tonight and there was nowhere to go until morning. I picked up the book of fairy tales and started reading. After a particularly depressing one about a tin soldier, I snapped the book shut. Christ, she wasn’t kidding when she said these weren’t your typical fairy stories. It was my turn at chess. I might as well make my last move.
I stared at the chess set for what felt like an eternity before sitting back in resignation. I wasn’t going to win so what was the point in trying.
“Aren’t you going to make your move?”
I jerked around in surprise. “Shit, you scared me.”
She’d changed into her long white T-shirt she always slept in. Her small slim legs were bare and one toe was pointed in. She always stood like that. I smiled inside, tucking it away as a keepsake. Looking at her was agony, knowing that this was the last night I’d see her, and wishing I’d stared at her every possible moment until now.
“When are you leaving?”
“You’re beautiful,” I said at the same time, hating myself for letting it come out.
Her jaw slammed shut and her eyes narrowed. She began to turn away.
“Wait. Please.”
She swung back, bu
t her eyes were vacant. Pale and cold. Like freaking arctic ice shelves where I’d gotten used to them being like the frolicking sandy waters of the Caribbean Sea.
“What?” she snapped.
I wanted her to stay but wasn’t sure how to make her. Offer to talk? Play chess one last time? “Why did you come out here?”
“To see if you’d gone.”
Ouch. Okay, chess then. “Let’s finish this game.” I motioned to the board.
“Then make your move.” She walked to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. I’d gotten the chamomile tea that was on her list last time I went to Savannah. It helped her sleep. She looked at home, and in command of her domain. Suddenly I was the awkward visitor at the cottage, and she was the long time resident. I didn’t want to question why she was tolerating me right now, so I tried to concentrate on my next move, knowing I would fail. In the end I moved a pawn just to do something.
She walked over with her tea, blowing on the surface of it, then leaned down, exposing more of her legs, and captured my pawn with her knight immediately. “You can’t just throw the game to get it over with,” she said.
I wanted to howl with laughter, and not the funny kind. “Why not? Is there any point to my playing when I can’t win?”
“Then why did you ask me to play?”
“Liv, sit down.” We locked eyes for a long moment. “You’ve asked me to leave, and I will. But until then, neither of us is sleeping because we’re… we’re not done.”
At the sight of her head moving side to side in a gesture of rejection, I forged on. “I’m not saying it will change anything. It won’t. But I know you must have questions. Ask them while you can. While I’m here. I know about regrets, Liv. You don’t want any. And you need to move forward. Move on. So go ahead. Ask.”
“Why did you do that earlier?”
“What?”
“Say ‘you’re beautiful,’ just like that? After everything? After everything has turned ugly and disgusting.”
Ugly and disgusting. The words mixed in nicely with the cesspool in my stomach. “Because you are beautiful.”
“You have no right to think I’m beautiful,” she snapped acidly. “Was it not enough to have one of us? I’m not like her you know, we may have gone through the same hell, but I’m not her. I’m not your second chance with her.” She shuddered as if nauseated, as if her skin was crawling.
She thought…? What? “You and I…” My voice sounded like it was scraping through a pit of rocks in my chest, and it hurt just as bad. “We were never about Abby.”
Liv shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
“Was Abby really so perfect, Liv?”
She nodded.
“Really?” I pressed, “Because I can hardly remember what she looked like.” I wasn’t trying to disparage Abby’s memory, but to be honest I really couldn’t. I remembered I loved her, of course, as much as my immature younger self had been capable of. And I remember she was pretty. Really pretty. And also a lot messed up. What I’d thought I felt for her was nothing compared to the crushing pain I was experiencing right now.
I tried a new tack, to break through. “She didn’t want to go back, you know. After we left there, she didn’t want to go back.” I stared hard at her, pressing myself with words into her comfort zone. There were things we needed to get out there.
“I know she didn’t. She said so in a letter she left me, so why did you?”
“Because I convinced her to. She kept saying that telling your parents wouldn’t help. It would only destroy everything. I didn’t understand what she meant, but in the end I finally convinced her to go back. I mean, I guess it seemed cut and dried to me.” I stood up and turning, stirred at the embers of the fire with the metal poker. They flared with newfound oxygen. “I thought I could get my father to help. We could get Mike Williams arrested. Or investigated or something.”
“And did you? Did you tell your father?”
I laid the poker against the wall, then folded my arms. I realized I was bracing myself. I couldn’t turn around. “Yes.” My brows pinched together.
“Turn around.” Her voice was curious.
I exhaled and turned, hating what she must see. I was haunted by my father’s reaction. Blindsided, really. Still.
She stared at me carefully, hardly blinking. “So you told your father? And what did he say?” Why was she asking like it would change history?
“My father and mother,” my lips twisted, “told Abby and me to shut our mouths about it.”
I saw the shock as it hit her. “What?” she rasped. “Why?”
I picked my king off the chessboard, removing him from play, staring at him, and turning him over in my hand as if he held some clue. But in the end, facts were just that. There was no spin to this. “My father was up for a potential vice-presidential nomination.”
She heard my words, and her mouth opened in surprise. I saw her mind turning it over, piecing together things she must have heard. “The night she died… I heard him, Mike, saying something about your father… having people on payroll. Was that true?”
My parents had been in full-blown sanitize the family mode. “My father paid a lot of people for a lot of favors. Most of the time it was to get them to look the other way on certain issues. When he needed extra security, off-duty cops supplemented their salaries by helping him out, and if they ever needed to ‘lose evidence’ for a fellow crony, well, my father’s money was too sweet for them not to comply. They—”
My cell phone rang. It was too late for anyone to be calling unless there was something wrong. We both looked at it. My first thought was Pete, and I leapt up to grab it before it rung off. I was too late, but it was Tyler’s name on the screen.
Oh, shit.
Not tonight of all nights. The house phone rang. “Leave it,” I barked to Olivia, earning a scowl. “Sorry, just hang on,” I said and dialed Tyler back from my cell.
“You sure picked a fine night for it,” I said, my voice mangled from trying not to sound like my chest was caving.
“When things are lined up, things are lined up. Anyway, consider it a favor that I picked a time when you’re least likely to run into anyone.”
“Whatever. Like Pete and I have ever done a fish delivery at night. You’re an idiot.”
Tyler hissed.
I was being reckless. I knew it.
“Not now,” he said. “But first thing in the morning. Five a.m., it’ll be waiting for you on the boat. Call Pete and let him know. Consider it a favor I’m giving you more time. Just get the job done, and everyone will be happy. And don’t fuck up. Cal’s been talking nonstop about little Olivia, and there’s only so much I can do to stop him sneaking around that cottage.”
My heart slammed. “What are you saying?” Christ. Was it Cal who’d been in the house, messing with Olivia’s head? Fuck. My eyes snapped up to see Olivia staring at me hard, her bottom lip sucked between her teeth as she chewed the hell out of it. Her thinking face.
“Just that,” Tyler’s voice responded innocently in my ear. “There’s only so much I can do.”
My bunched fist slammed down on the table. Olivia flinched. “You tell that sniveling piece of shit that if I even hear anything close to that again, I’ll tie him up and saw his fucking nuts off.”
“Calm down, calm down,” Tyler said, his voice thick with satisfaction. “I can call him off any time. Anyway I‘m not so sure I’m ready to give her up to him. Maybe I’ll keep her for myself. You just hold up your end of the deal, and I’ll hold up mine.”
I mashed the end button, breathing hard. This was what real panic felt like.
“What the hell was that about?” Olivia asked, her pale eyes wide.
“Nothing,” I bit out. Shit. This better not fail. What the fuck was I even doing? I’d completely put her at risk even coming up with this damn scheme. But no, she was at risk anyway, and had been since the moment Tyler had seen her at Mama’s.
I stared at her porcelain fac
e and cerulean eyes. Why had fate, God, or who-the-fuck-ever, seen fit to keep placing this girl in the firing line?
SHE WAS CURSED. Olivia had to be cursed.
Some kids grew up without ever seeing the ugliness she’d seen. And she’d not only seen it, she’d lived and breathed it, and now it continued to pulse around her just waiting in the shadows for a chance to take her again.
Was this why I’d met Abby? Not to save Abby, but to save Liv? I’d failed of course. Something I would never forgive myself for. Nor would Liv. But for some reason I was being given this chance. Because horror was still thirsting for her, waiting to take her down.
“Stop staring at me like that.” Liv stepped backward. “Who was on the phone?”
Did I tell her about the threat from Tyler and/or Cal, and risk her being in a full-blown panic without me here? Or was forewarning her actually forearming her, in case I failed? I needed help. And I needed to tell her.
“Liv,” I started.
“Olivia,” she growled.
“Fine. Olivia. When I leave, I need you to lock the doors and windows. That was Tyler. I have to go do something for him, a favor, and he…” I blew out a breath as if it would help me lay it on her easier. “He threatened you, if I don’t do it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of favor? Tell me you aren’t going to try and pull one past Pete and put some of Tyler’s shit on his boat?”
Pull one past Pete. Her words dinged in my skull. I didn’t want to put Pete at risk at all. With our original plan of pretending Pete had changed his mind and was dumping the stuff in the marshes so Cal and Tyler had to come get it, he’d be a target.
Pete didn’t need to do this.
I could do it without him, now I had my boat. Way less risk. I was only risking myself, and who the fuck cared about that? Certainly not me.