To the Edge

by Anna del Mar

  “He’s an inept, irresponsible fool.” I returned the wire to the hole and twisted the pin between my fingers. “These fucking antiques are a safety hazard. Did you know he was such a fumbling idiot when you agreed to come out here?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Experiment,” she stammered. “First time ever...”

  First time ever?

  “Oh my God.” Panic sharpened her voice. “We’re going to die here.”

  “Negative.” I rotated the wire and felt a second pin gave way. “We’re not going to die today.”

  Another crash challenged my statement. The smoke began to bubble more fluidly from the hallway.

  “Leave,” she pleaded. “Noah, please, get out of here.”

  My hand froze. My gut turned to ice. My senses had known it was her all along, but my brain had been in complete denial. The shock threatened to paralyze me, but I forced myself to function, twisting the pin in the keyhole. It was the kink garb. That’s what had thrown me off. It was impossible to reconcile the sex kitten in the cage with the wholesome girl I remembered. Wholesome, yes, but she’d had spunk and she’d liked sex. Clara Luz. Christ. What the hell was she up to?

  My fingers tripped. The mechanism gave way. In the cage’s crowded confines, I grappled with the cuffs. They snapped open and suddenly her hands were free.

  She whirled around and threw her arms around me. “You did it!”

  If I had any doubts left, in in that instant, my body confirmed my brain’s findings.

  It took all the training I had to keep the mission going. Now more than ever I had to keep my shit together. Clara was here and so help me God, I would not allow a single spark of the fire to harm her.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I squeezed out of the cage, helped her out and gestured toward the doors. “Get outside. Go.”

  She stepped out of the cage, snatched her shoes from the floor and ran toward the back of the house. I was still reeling from the shock, but I scrambled around the corner and checked out the fire. Smoke billowed from the bathroom door. I covered my nose and mouth in the crook of my elbow and, crouching low to the ground, peeked inside. The smoke’s acrid stink attacked my nostrils and the heat prickled my eyes, but the flames were mostly contained to the bathroom.

  I sprinted back to the living room and almost collided with Clara. Instead of following my instructions, she ran toward the fire, carrying a fire extinguisher in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.

  I grabbed the bucket from her. “What part of ‘go outside’ don’t you get?” I pointed at the door. “Out. Now.”

  Her chin rose. “I won’t let this house burn.”

  Goddammit, neither would I.

  I ran ahead of her and dumped the water on the burning cabinet. The fire sputtered, but the flames flared on the shower curtain and licked at the walls.

  “Here.” She came up behind me and thrust the fire extinguisher in my hands. “I’ll be right back.”

  I pulled the pin, aimed and fired the extinguisher, smothering the flames on the curtains and the counter. By the time the extinguisher ran out, she was back, this time carrying the end of a hose. I grabbed the nozzle from her and sprayed water into the bathroom. It took a few minutes before the fire was out.

  “It’s done,” I said, smothering the last flares with the hose. “Turn off the water.”

  For once, she followed directions. She rushed outside. Clinging to my mission mind-set, I dropped the hose in the tub and examined the scene of the fire. Soot darkened the tile, stained the ceiling and streaked the ceramic bathtub, the sink and the toilet. Broken glass and cracked tile crunched under my boots. I wondered how the fire got started and in the bathroom, of all places.

  I pulled my cell from my back pocket and snapped a few pictures, for the insurance adjuster perhaps, although my brain went in a totally different direction. Something about this fire wasn’t right. Careful, Blake. The liquid courage I’d taken was known to induce paranoia. I put the cell away. Let the insurance investigators do their job.

  I looked over my shoulder and found Clara standing by the door, taking in the damage. She’d been a powerful sight when I’d first seen her in that cage, but now she hugged herself, shivering in that skimpy, provocative outfit, looking frightened and fragile. Funny thing: fire and all, she was still wearing the mask.

  I took off my jacket and slid it over her shoulders. She zipped it up, betraying a self-conscious streak incongruent with the woman I’d found in the cage, but consistent in every way with the girl I remembered.

  I’d fantasized a thousand ways in which I’d see her again, some coincidental, some planned, most on this very island. In my mind, finding Clara again had been inevitable. But cage, handcuffs, fire...a scenario like this one? Negative. It had never crossed my mind.

  The anger hit me all of a sudden. The memory of her in that cage was enough to enrage me. “Experimenting? Really? First time? What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Excuse me?” she said, laying her long delicate fingers on her chest.

  I narrowed my eyes on her and put out my hand.

  Her eyes shifted between my palm and my face. “What?”

  How I managed not to growl was beyond me. “The mask, please.”

  Her lips quivered as she pressed them together into that stubborn, rebellious expression I remembered so well. I gritted my teeth and suppressed the urge to maul her right here and now, to seize her defiant mouth and kiss her until her lips submitted to mine and we were both on our knees.

  Clara’s throat convulsed with an audible gulp. Her chest rose and fell with a huff. Reluctantly, insolently, she took off the mask and placed it in my hand.

  Seeing her face was like taking a bullet to the brain. I forced out the words. “Clara Luz.”

  Her eyes fixed on me, blue irises sparkling like the crystal clear ocean off the Maldives. “Noah Blake.” She challenged me with a lift of her eyebrows. “What are you doing here?”

  Her tone got the bitterness in my gut churning. “Is there a law that says I can’t be here? The entire island doesn’t belong to your family.”

  “True.” She gave me a look, the one that said the world was her playground and I was lower than crab shit.

  The old rage flared. “Tell me, Clara: Were you going to fuck whoever the hell put you in that cage?”

  Her eyes widened, but her chin whipped up. “What is it to you?”

  “Just tell me,” I bit out. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  I clenched until my jaw ached. “Is that all you have to say to me after all of these years?”

  Her back straightened, her hands fisted by her sides. “As a matter of fact, no, there’s one other thing I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time.” Her glower could’ve melted the flesh off my bones. “Goodbye, Noah.”

  Chapter Four

  Clara

  I stomped away from the past, away from Noah and everything that he’d meant to me. Noah Blake disappeared from my life fifteen years ago. What were the odds he’d reappear here, at the worst possible moment?

  I wasn’t going to deal with this. No way. I couldn’t face him, wouldn’t. What was done was done. Fifteen years ago he’d been the center of my life. Not anymore. I didn’t want to talk to him. I’d learned long ago to live without him. I fled to the kitchen, opened the drawer and grabbed my bag and my clothes.

  He followed me, fixing his stare on me as I jammed my legs into my blue jeans. He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, shoulders squared as he studied me without making any effort to hide his scrutiny. I launched a blistering glare in his direction. Inside, I roared like a freaking lioness.

&n
bsp; I took a deep breath and tried to control my temper. Not an easy thing to do, with my emotions whirling out of control. Out of the corner of my eye, I examined his face, where a pair of high cheeks, a straight nose and a wide mouth assembled into a fundamentally masculine face. Jaw shaded with stubble, he looked tired, but his stare roiled with dark emotions and his black eyes gleamed like obsidian.

  He was a sharper, leaner, buffer version of his younger self. His swimmer’s shoulders had broadened. His limbs had thickened. His straight raven hair was now peppered with a few grays that glinted among all that black. How old would he be now? I calculated in my mind. He was about to turn thirty-five. It irked me that I knew the answer to the day.

  The bangs that fell over his eyebrows needed barbering. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth spoke of sea, sun, shifting weather and deep emotions. A scar that hadn’t been there before streaked the bridge of his nose and another one dented his chin. He hadn’t been a couch potato since I’d seen him last.

  I undid my bun, shook my head and, raking my fingers through my hair, let it hang loose around my shoulders. Escape was my number one concern. I pulled out my cell from my purse and texted the taxi service for a pickup. Then I put on my flats, gathered my things and, after slipping on my own sweater, shoved Noah’s jacket into his hands on my way out of the kitchen.

  I had the presence of mind to grab Mark Walker’s duffel from the foyer before I left the house. My knees were still shaking, so once outside, I dropped the bags on the porch and plopped down on the stairs, willing the driver to hurry up. I had to get out of here.

  The rain tapped on the porch’s metal roof as it brushed in veils over the landscape and continued on to blend with the sea. The scent of ozone filled my lungs as I took deep, even breaths and tried to regain my balance. Yeah, right. As if that was possible. Noah had really thrown me out for a loop.

  After a few moments, he slipped through the front door and came to stand by the railing. “Do you know what happened, how the fire started?”

  Ah, yes, I knew how the fire began. Fifteen years ago, when he came into my life for one sweet summer. It started when we went sailing, first with a group, then just the two of us. And then, for the remainder of the summer, always just the two of us. When I closed my eyes, I could still smell the sea in his hair and hear his breath gusting in my ear as we made love in the Seaductress’s small cabin.

  “The fire?” Noah repeated.

  “Candle and wax play,” I muttered reluctantly and only because I knew he wasn’t going to stop asking until he got a reply.

  “Are you sure?”

  I didn’t like his tone. “What can I say? The guy probably lit the candle and threw the match in the wicker basket.”

  “Fucking idiot.” Noah rolled his eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  He didn’t say hello, or how have you been, or fancy meeting you here. He didn’t ask what I’d been doing for the past fifteen years. No casual conversation from Noah. No pleasantries. No excuses. Just why.

  “What I’m doing here is of no consequence to you.” I flicked my bangs away from my face and clutched my purse against my chest, as if the designer leather could shield me from the emotions skewering my heart. “What are you doing on Avalon?”

  “I bought a house on the island.” His voice broke. “I... I need to get back there.”

  “Fine, then.” I fixed my stare on the horizon. “Nobody asked you to stay.”

  “You don’t understand,” he muttered. “I...”

  I glanced up at him. “You what?”

  “Nothing.” His fingers tightened around the railing. “You do know that what you’re doing is dangerous, don’t you?”

  I took in a calming breath. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Perhaps.” His gaze probed my face. “But I’m worried. About your safety.”

  My nails bit into the purse’s leather. I wasn’t going to lose it. The past was behind me. I’d moved on. He didn’t matter anymore.

  “I’m not stupid.” I plunked the purse on the wooden stairs. “And my safety is none of your concern.”

  “I’ll always be concerned,” he muttered, “about you, I mean.”

  “Right.” I seethed like a pot about to boil.

  “Clara, I—”

  “Don’t you dare Clara me.” I sprang to my feet and faced him, hands fisted by my sides, words shooting out of my mouth in a furious rat-a-tat. “Don’t you dare say anything nice. In fact, don’t you dare say anything at all. You used me and then you left me. Fifteen years ago, you walked out of that door with your recommendation to the Naval Academy in your pocket. You never looked back.”

  He winced as if I’d punched him in the face. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “No?” I scoffed. “Let’s hear it, then. You didn’t come to Avalon that summer with the precise intention of milking a recommendation from my mother?”

  “Yes, but you knew that, I told you that’s why I came.”

  “Sure, I remember the sad story.” I tried, but couldn’t stop myself. “Your parents dead when you were twelve. The lost years when you skipped school. Your foster mother, Bess, who pushed you to get into the Naval Academy.” Bess had worked as a janitor at Sidwell so that Noah could go to the best private school in DC. That was where he met my cousin Felix. Noah had persuaded Felix to bring him to Avalon that summer, so he could ask my mother, the senator, for a recommendation. “In the end, you got your recommendation from the senator, all right, while you conned her idiot of a daughter into believing that you cared about her.”

  He looked away and shook his head, gaze pained, knuckles white around the railing. “That’s not what happened.”

  I perched my fists on my hips. “Are you going to deny it now?”

  “I can’t deny my story.” His face broke into a grimace. “I did need the recommendation. It was do or die for me that summer. Bess was sick, remember? The academy...” He paused. His broad chest expanded with a few shallow breaths before he was able to continue. “The academy was my best chance to go to college. That’s my story, all right, except for that last part. I wrote to you. But you...you never replied to my letter.”

  My heart stopped beating. “What letter?”

  “The letter.” His grim face looked grayer by the moment. “I gave it to Felix. He swore he gave it to you.”

  The anger burned through me. He’d left me years ago and yet the wound felt raw and recent. “You’re lying.”

  He shook his head and laughed, a tired, bitter sound. “I’ve got my problems, Clara, but I don’t lie. You may remember that. Felix assured me that he gave you the damn letter. Many times. I asked him all throughout our senior year. He said he gave it to you personally. He said you told him to tell me to stay away, that if I ever tried to see you again, you’d sic security on me and press charges. I couldn’t risk my entry to the academy with a misdemeanor or a felony on my record.”

  The ground beneath my feet shifted like quicksand. What was he talking about? I’d asked Felix a thousand times about Noah’s whereabouts. He’d told me that Noah had left as soon as Mother gave him his recommendation. He said that Noah had gone back to his girlfriend, a girlfriend I’d never known existed. Later, when I’d asked him again, Felix had said that Noah had flunked out of the Naval Academy and dropped off his radar.

  “You think I got a letter,” I said. “You think I didn’t reply to it. You think I ended us?”

  His Adam’s apple bounced in his throat. “Felix said you moved on. He said you told him you didn’t want anything to do with a piece of shit like me.”

  Felix. My stomach sank. No, not Felix. He didn’t have the brains for deception. The strength drained out of my legs. My knees gave way. Mother?

  She wouldn’t be so cruel, would she? She’d seen the signs o
f my grief for many months after Noah left, as I went through the motions like a shadow of myself.

  “You need to learn, child,” she’d said one night, reaching across the long, polished dinner table and squeezing my hand, her most expressive gesture of affection. “People like Noah are survivors. They use others to get ahead. Noah got his recommendation and moved on. You need to move on too.”

  “I don’t think I can,” I’d said, tears streaming down my face.

  “Of course you can,” Mother had said. “Love is a hormonal reaction, nothing more. In time, Noah will be a tiny little blur in your rearview mirror.”

  I’d worked really hard at squashing my hormonal reaction. I’d tried to burn the pain with my fury and, when that didn’t work, I’d closeted the memories in the back of my mind and replaced them with a keen sense of betrayal. Until now, when Noah had shocked me by leaping out of my blind spot.

  I clasped my hands together and squeezed until my knuckles hurt. So what if he’d left a letter? It was probably a Dear John letter. He never contacted me afterward. He went on with his life and left me in the rut of mine.

  Fifteen years was a long time. I wasn’t the same person I’d been at seventeen. And Noah wasn’t the same kid who’d stolen away with my heart in his back pocket. Letter or not, the odds that we would’ve made it through the upheaval of the past few years were close to zero. I hadn’t been able to recreate my “hormonal reaction” with anyone else. I’d had no luck in the relationship department, never had the gumption to truly invest myself again after Noah. And letter or not, Noah had left me.

  What was he doing on Avalon anyway? Why buy a house here, from all the places in the world? Nope. I wasn’t going to ask. He was the past. I scoured the road for my ticket out of here. “Where the hell is that taxi?”

  “I have to go,” Noah slurred. “Promise me you’ll be safe.”

  “I’ll be fine.” It was a promise to myself.

  Noah stumbled to the far side of the porch, but before he could go any farther, he leaned over the railing and threw up.