The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel

by Jessica Pine

  Maybe he was trying to distract me. It worked. I barely felt it as she worked on the N – I was too angry. I kept thinking of all the times he’d left me high and not-so-dry, wondering where he was getting what he was withholding from me, at great cost to himself. Men, as Everglade was fond of telling me lately, were almost always looking for some sort of hole to fuck.

  “You’re done,” said Theresa, clapping a sterile dressing on the nape of my neck. “Keep it dry, keep it out of the sun and whatever you do, don’t pick the scabs off when they form.”

  I shot out of the shop like it was on fire. Justin came out after me, easily keeping pace with my angry strides. “You okay?” he said.

  “What do you fucking think?”

  I kept walking, the ocean roar a kind of cool white noise in my head. I headed down onto the beach, wondering if I could wreck Theresa’s artwork by taking a dip in the water. I couldn't remember ever being so mad. I went raging off down the beach, not even sure where I was going. I knew he was behind me but I couldn't run on the soft sand, so I ran towards the shoreline.

  "Amber, come back here. Amber! What the hell has gotten into you?"

  You. There was no other answer. Once he'd gotten under my skin there was no getting him out. He was the one who made me act this way. He made me crazy. He made me feel like I couldn't breathe - like there was no room in my chest for air when he was in the room. I was all heart, all hunger, all him. I'd never behaved like this before him.

  I ran down into the surf. My foot slipped out from under me and I went down. I screamed in anger as the water soaked into my clothes, but I was cut off when a wave smacked me in the face and pulled me under. My mouth was full of salt and I remember thinking this was one of the dumbest ways to die - caught off guard by the ocean surf while having a shitfit. I had no air in my lungs before I went down. The next wave turned me over in the dark and I didn't know which way was up or down or anything.

  Then somehow just before the panic took over I was pulled up. He had a hold of the back of my shirt. The weight of me must have knocked him off balance because he fell, but when the next wave came we were lying with our feet to it and he was on top of me, pinning me to the sand.

  "Are you okay?"

  I coughed salt water out of the back of my throat, but he stayed put, almost crushing the breath out of me. As the waves crashed again I could feel them tug at our bodies, but he held me firm against them. "You lunatic," he said. "You little fucking psychobitch."

  "I'm sorry." I was so ashamed. I'd made such a fool of myself. I knew what was coming next. A cold, wet ride home. A goodbye. An 'I'll call you' that never materialized.

  He held me pinned. "You love me, lunatic?" he said. "Do I drive you this crazy?"

  I nodded and sputtered and sobbed. I'd never said it before. I was so afraid I'd scare him off - it had only been three weeks, after all. I couldn't breathe all that well, but it didn't matter. I was cold and wet and afraid but it didn't matter, because he crushed his mouth on mine and said, "I love your crazy. I love you. I never loved anyone like you before."

  Chapter Seven

  Jaime

  I'm just about to head out from the gatehouse when Beca calls. "You busy?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Nothing. I was just wondering if you were free this evening. I got a sitter and I thought we could out to eat - bring Emily. Make it a double date."

  I barely stifle my groan. This means she's already told Emily that I'm interested. "Don't you want a little alone time with Marcus?" I say. "You don't see enough of each other."

  "Since when were you a marriage guidance counselor? Me and Marcus are fine. I just thought it would be fun is all."

  Yeah right. I'm not going to let myself get railroaded into this. I know what she wants. She's playing matchmaker and she's got it all set up perfectly in her head. She's probably already figuring out what to wear for the christening of mine and Emily's firstborn.

  "I can't," I say.

  "Jaime..."

  "No, I'm serious. I've got to stay late."

  "How come? How much security do these people need? They've got dogs, fences, cameras - I've seen those places up on Laurel. They're like Guantanamo."

  I sigh and turn around, coincidentally into the face of the security camera over the gate. It winks a lazy red eye at me. Time to come clean. I can't keep letting her construct this little fantasy in her head. It's not fair on any of us.

  "Listen," I say. "It's not that I don't like Emily..."

  Beca hisses like a pot boiling over.

  "...don't make that noise. It's not my fault I don't love her even half as much as you do. She's very nice, very pretty, but I'm kind of...I don't know. My mind's elsewhere lately."

  I hear her exhale. It sounds a little like she might even be giving up.

  "What are you saying?" she says. "You're seeing someone else?"

  "No. Not seeing. Not exactly. It's complicated. Besides, it's none of your business."

  "You don't have to be rude."

  "I have to go, Beca. It's time for my rounds."

  I'd like to think we were done, but I know it's wishful thinking. My sister has a way of moving heaven and earth in order to get exactly what she wants. She didn't want to go into a hospital to have Chuy, even though she was a first time mom and the doctors recommended it. Beca was adamant - it was too expensive, she said. Which is why she kept the lid on her contractions until the baby was practically crowning. She had him right there on the living room floor. What she saved on hospital bills she ended up spending having the carpet torn up, but that had also been on her to do list - for several years she'd been on at Marcus to get rid of the old carpet and put in hardwood floors.

  The wind is hot and dry as I make my way up the hillside. The summer is nearly done - hurricane season on the Gulf coast, brushfire season here in California. Another year older and still no wiser. By the time they were my age my parents had been married for eighteen months; it seems insane to imagine that they were ever that young, or that stupid.

  When I reach the pool I nearly turn back. I don't know how I'm going to stand being there. Amber is stretched out on one of the sun-loungers, wearing a little black bikini and giant sunglasses. Her skin is so pale it almost glows. Her legs seem to go on forever. She lies motionless, her fingers carefully spread to catch the sun. If it wasn't for the slight rise and fall of her chest you'd swear she'd been carved out of marble.

  I clear my throat. She doesn't move. I do it again and this time her hand comes up, tips the sunglasses down.

  "Hi," she says. A phone rings at her side and she picks it up. "Time up," she says, and gets up off the lounger. "Can you help me with the umbrella? I think it's stuck."

  It's on the tip of my tongue to say that she needs to take the plastic off the damn thing first, but I see she's already done that. She's right - it takes a little jiggling to push the umbrella up.

  "You should have had this up in the first place," I say. "You'll burn."

  "I won't. I'm on a timer - twenty minutes. I need the vitamin D. I'm getting prison pallor."

  "Is this where I ask you why you won't go out?"

  She pulls another lounger into the shade and pats it. I sit down. She settles into her own. I see how her little bikini bottoms are held at her hips with two little interlaced C's - Chanel. Complicated, I'd told Beca. Understatement. She's a million miles and a million dollars out of my league.

  "Do you want to know?" she asks, picking up a bottle of sunscreen.

  "Only if you want to tell me," I say. "If I wanted to know I'd have looked online, wouldn't I?"

  "I guess," she says. She's very thin - too thin. When she leans over to put sunscreen on her legs I can see the bumps of her spine where she bends. I want to ask about the scar at the back of her neck, but I don't want anything to spook her. I don't think I could handle it if she told me to go away and never come back. When she kissed me the spot on my cheek was tingling for days.

  "It was kind of you
," she says. "Not to ask, I mean. Some days when my therapist comes I feel like I do nothing but talk about...stuff. Issues. Emotions. All of that. You were the first normal conversation I'd had in forever."

  "I'm glad."

  She smiles.

  "Me too. And I do, by the way."

  "Do what?"

  "Want to make friends."

  I stare at the pool for a moment and swallow. I don't trust myself to look at her. She's too lovely and it's been too long for me.

  "Good," I say. "So do I."

  She doesn't say anything else. I think she knows somehow that I'm trying to keep my eyes from straying. Out of the corner of my eye I see her rubbing sunblock on her chest. Her fingertips dip beneath the fabric of her bikini. She has one leg bent and I can see the pale inside of her thigh, but it's different this time. Nobody's shoving a camera up her skirt and forcing her to show herself.

  I have no idea what to say. Everything on my lips has the word 'beautiful' in it.

  Eventually she lets out a dry, embarrassed little laugh.

  "So much for that," she says.

  "For what?"

  "Normal conversation."

  "Oh." I stare at the swimming pool again, but I feel like we've exhausted that topic of conversation. "I don't know what to say," I admit. "If things were different...I don't know."

  "Don't know what?"

  I shrug.

  "I guess, if this was anywhere else, if we were somewhere else, I guess I would have asked you out for a drink by now."

  She turns her head slightly towards me. Her sunglasses have gone less dark in the shade and I can see her eyes through the big, tinted lenses.

  "A date?" she asks, with the trace of a smile.

  "A drink."

  "Sounds like a date to me."

  I laugh, not quite sure what's going on here. She's a movie star's kid. She can't possibly be flirting with me.

  "You're putting words in my mouth. It could just be a drink."

  "Do you ask men out for drinks?" she asks. I think she is flirting with me.. Wow. Her sunglasses have slipped down her nose and her eyes are full of mischief. The tip of her tongue pokes out from between her teeth.

  "I've arranged to meet male friends for drinks, yes," I say, carefully.

  She starts shaking with badly concealed laughter. I'm fucking this up so bad.

  "So," she says. "Would you go back to the gatehouse, for example, and say 'Cory, I would like to take you out for a drink'?"

  "No," I say. "When you say it like that you make it sound really gay."

  "It would be really gay. You would be asking him out for a drink in a date kind of way. The way you asked me out for a drink. And I'm pretty sure I'm not a man and you're not gay, so doesn't that make it a date?"

  I sigh.

  "You're determined to make me suffer one way or another, aren't you?"

  She shrugs.

  "It's kind of what I do." She settles back on the lounger and lights a cigarette. "Where would you take me? Where do you usually go for drinks?"

  That's a laugh. I think of the mysterious watery fruit punch at the CYO.

  "I don't," I say.

  "You don't drink? After all that?"

  "No, I do. I just don't get much out of sitting around with other men drinking beer. I prefer hanging out with women - that way I get to dance."

  "You dance?"

  "When I can. My Pops says it’s the Argentine in me dying to get out - I guess I'm sentimental that way."

  Her body moves face me. I have her full attention. "Why sentimental?" she says.

  "National weakness, I guess. Tangos are sentimental songs - criollos pining for the land of their grandparents, all that shit. The men are super macho, mothers are always saints. There's always love and loss at the heart of the tango."

  She smiles shyly. "I always thought it was...kind of hot."

  "The dance is, sure. But the traditional songs are pure soap opera. I guess it's one of the reasons I slacked off in Spanish, that and being lazy. When you understand what the lyrics mean they just become...I don't know..."

  "Banal," she says.

  "Maybe. Is that the word I'm looking for?"

  "Probably," says Amber. "It means cliché. Or maybe something that's even more worn out than that. Kind of like the things your grandma shares on Facebook, you know?"

  I laugh. "Yeah, that's it. That's perfect. That's just how it is."

  "Is that what you want to do?" she asks. "To dance?"

  I shake my head.

  "No. It's just for fun. The world of competitive dancers is way too crazy for me. What about you?"

  "Me? I can't dance, if that's what you're asking."

  "I wasn't, but now I'm curious. Why can't you dance?"

  "Why can't you swim?"

  She makes me laugh. "I never learned."

  "Same here," she says, taking out another cigarette. Her glasses have slid down onto the end of her nose. "Maybe we should teach each other a thing or two."

  I glance at the oval of clear, blue water. She sees my expression and sighs. "It's not that hard," she says.

  "It is."

  "It's not. You just have to learn how to float."

  "The only thing I'll learn is how to sink."

  Amber laughs.

  "That's the art of floating, dummy. You just have to forget how to sink."

  She makes it sound so easy, but I've been sitting here for too long. If I stay here much longer they'll want to know what's up.

  "I have to go."

  "That's a shame. I kind of like your company."

  "Me too." I reach out a hand and she takes it. Her skin is smooth and still greasy with sunblock. Her fingers seem very small in mine. She's looking at me with something like expectation, but I don't dare move closer. I still remember the way she went flying from my touch the first time we met.

  "Can you get back here?" she asks. "When your shift is over?"

  "Yes," I say, a tiny word that swallows the world in that moment. Everything takes on a new glow of possibility.

  "Good. Maybe we can have that drink?"

  "I'd like that."

  My radio crackles and she lets my fingers fall. Back to work.

  ***

  When I come back later the doors beyond the pergola are open and I'm looking into a living room - kind of off-white with pretty dark red accents. The couches are low and modern and in the middle is a long coffee table. When I get closer I see the whole back wall is some kind of fabric - like suede or something, and the delicate red flower design is actually embroidered, with sequins and glass beads that catch the light.

  Amber appears from behind a door, a lit candle in her hands.

  "Hey," she says, exhaling as if she was making a great effort to keep herself together. She looks amazing. I don't think I've ever seen her wearing make-up before. Her eyes look enormous. She sets the candle down on the table. "Citronella," she says. "I don't know if it really keeps the bugs away, but it can't hurt to try."

  "I didn't realize there was another room here," I say.

  "Yep. Actually this is kind of a special occasion." She smiles and folds her arms tight again, her hands on her elbows. "It's the first time I've been in here since...well...since I got sick, I guess. Can't very well invite you into my bedroom for a drink, can I?"

  I feel my face turn hot.

  "No. That might not be a great idea."

  "I didn't mean it like that. It's not really presentable in there. Laundry, books. Crap everywhere. I'm kind of a pig - never really got properly housebroken." She picks up a throw pillow and gives it a quick shake before setting it down on the couch. "Please - sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

  "Thanks." Her hair is loose around her shoulders. She's too-thin in a straight little black dress that comes down to her knees. I want to ask her about the scar, about why she's hiding herself away, but that wasn't the deal. I want her to tell me only when she wants to tell me.

  "Is wine okay?" she asks. "I don'
t really like beer."

  "Wine is great. Thank you."

  This is terrible. This afternoon I thought we were easier with one another, more relaxed, but now my spine feels like a steel rod. We're not talking - we're just making polite noises at one another.

  She pours out two glasses of pink wine and passes one to me.

  "Zinfandel," she says. "Kind of training-wheels stuff, but I'm a cheap date these days. I hope it's okay." She sits beside me and holds up her glass - she's trying so hard to play the perfect hostess but the ripples once again give her away.

  "You're shaking," I say, as our glasses clink.

  "I know. This is big - for me. Huge, actually. Isn't that stupid? I walk into a different room and it's some kind of progress."

  "Amber, it's not stupid at all."

  "It is. You don't have to pretend I'm not a freak."

  "You're not a freak," I say. "You've obviously got some things going on. That's all."

  "You're very sweet," she says.

  I laugh it off.

  "Nah. Not really. But if you ever want to talk...you know."

  She reaches out and gives my fingers a quick squeeze.

  "I know. Thank you."

  We sit there in stiff silence for a while. I watch the light play on the surface of the pool.

  "When are you gonna teach me to swim?" I ask, eventually. I've no desire to get in the water, but I have to say something.

  She laughs.

  "I don't know. When are you going to teach me to dance?"

  "Why not now?"

  "Now?"

  "Why not?" I get to my feet and hold out my hand. Her face is a study in comic anxiety. "Come on. I'll show you something."

  Amber sets down her drink.

  "Oh my God. I can't believe I'm even thinking this - I'll be awful. I hope you like your toes being crushed."

  "Pfft. You're like a hundred pounds wet. I'm gonna teach you a basic tango step, okay? Eight beats. Watch me."

  We stand shoulder to shoulder as I show her the steps. She shakes her head. "I'll never remember that."

  "Sure you will. Do it along with me. Weight on your right foot - one forward, two side, back three four, and cross left over right..."