I ran from Finn. I ran from Sterling. I ran from the past.
I was in a full sprint by the time the full weight of a memory crashed into me like a wave, pulling me under and holding me deep beneath the surface.
Drowning me.
“Does it hurt when he hits you, Mommy? It sounds like it does.”
“No. It doesn’t hurt. I go to my safe place. He can’t hurt me there. No one can.”
“What’s it like in your safe place?”
“It’s warm and sunny. There are birds and alligators and all sorts of animals there.”
“What is your safe place called, Mommy?”
“It’s called Outskirts, but that’s our secret. You can’t tell a soul, not even your father.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Good.”
“Hey, Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Outskirts is a silly name.”
“Yes, it is, darling. Yes, it is.”
“Caroline!” Father called from downstairs.
Mother gave me a kiss on my forehead.
“Don’t go,” I begged.
“Don’t worry. It will be over soon. I told you. I’ll just go to my happy place.”
“Because he can’t hurt you there? In Outskirts?”
“Exactly,” Mother said, getting off my bed. “Your father can never hurt me when I’m in Outskirts.”
The storm rolled in. The thunder boomed. I held the blanket over my head, but no matter how loud the thunder boomed it couldn’t drown out the sound of shattering glass. Whimpers. Angry demands.
The crack of leather against skin.
Defeated cries, that I’d later realize, were my own.
“Sawyer! Sawyer! Say!” My body shook and I blinked rapidly to find a man lying on top of me, his chest heaving. His fingers digging into my skin. I glanced around at the heavily wooded area surrounding me then back to the man.
In my mind, I saw Sterling. My father.
I panicked.
I fought.
I screamed.
“Get off of me!” I kicked my legs and flailed my arms. “I won’t let you hurt me anymore. I won’t let anyone hurt me!”
My fists were caught in the air, bound together in one big strong hand.
“Sawyer, it’s me! It’s Finn. I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice trailed off. “I would never hurt you.”
I slowly opened my eyes and when they finally focused, Finn’s face appeared above me, but the panic was still there, right under the surface like a boiling pot with a flimsy lid.
“Finn,” I stated simply. “Let me up.”
Finn watched me curiously as he slid off me. “He’s gone. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” He leaned in to run his hand down my face, but I tore my head away before he could touch me.
When he tried to help me up I flinched. “I can do it,” I spat. Finn took a step back and allowed me room to get to my feet.
I stumbled and lost my footing. Finn caught me and again I struggled to free myself from his grip, but this time instead of stepping back he only held me tighter, spinning me around and searching my eyes.
“I’m not him,” Finn said, calmly and assertively.
“I know you’re not Sterling,” I said, wriggling from his grasp. He dug his fingers into my arms.
“No. Not Sterling. You know who I’m talking about,” Finn said. “I’m not him.”
I closed my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.” I wanted to disappear. From Finn, from the memories. I needed to be alone. To think.
“I don’t know where you went back there, but I know you weren’t here.” He pulled me in tighter. “I’m not him,” he growled, louder this time like he was trying to push the words into my soul.
“Just let me go!” I begged. “Please!” I didn’t want to face it.
Any of it.
“Sawyer, say it. Tell me. Look at me and say it!” Finn shouted.
Wanting to get whatever it was he was trying to do over with, I opened my eyes, glared into Finn with everything I had and screamed, “You’re not hiiiiim!”
After a few seconds of Finn and I staring at one another, I felt the words sink in. “You’re not him,” I whispered, just as I felt the fight inside me turn from bright to dim to dead.
I collapsed forward into Finn’s arms and made no attempt to get away this time. I felt exhausted. Drained.
Finn spoke into my hair. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I answered, my teeth chattering.
Finn eased back so he could look at me, keeping his hands lightly on my arms. “Where did you go?”
I sucked in a breath. “Home. I went home,” I answered, feeling confused and shaken up. My heart still racing and my head pounding.
Finn raised a hand to smooth some hair from my face but stopped again when he noticed his knuckles. His eyes widened and he dropped his hand.
“It’s okay, now,” I assured him. I reached out and grabbed his hand. I blew air over his wounded knuckles.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Finn said softly.
“Me too.”
Finn bent at the waist and lifted me off the ground with one arm behind my knees and the other supporting my neck. He held me against his chest and carried me out of the woods and back to the clearing.
“When I kicked opened your door,” Finn started, “You were laughing. Why?”
“Because, I knew you’d come,” I said, hearing and feeling Finn’s heartbeat quicken against my temple. “I knew you’d save me.”
“You did?” Finn asked, his voice broken.
I nodded and closed my eyes. “I did. He can’t hurt me here. I’m in my safe place.”
“Your safe place?” he questioned as we approached my house.
“Outskirts. He can’t hurt me when I’m in Outskirts.” I sighed deeply as I echoed my mother’s words from the past. “No one can.”
Chapter 29
Finn
She knew I’d come.
“My mother told me when I was younger that no one could hurt her while she was in Outskirts. That’s what I was remembering. When I zoned out.”
“Did you ask Critter about her?” I asked.
“Yes, I asked him about her. Described her. He said he didn’t know her.”
“Maybe he was getting his wires crossed. No one has been in this town in the last fifty years that Critter didn’t know in one way or another. Maybe there’s a record of her somewhere in the library. That’s where they used to store all the City Hall stuff before City Hall moved to the mayor’s back guest room-slash-home office. I’ll ask around for you.”
“You will?” Sawyer asked, perking up.
“Yes. But are you sure you’re okay?” I asked Sawyer. “You’re surprisingly calm after what just happened. It’s kind of freaking me out.”
Sawyer chuckled and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’m sure. I promise.” We were on my porch, sitting on the old porch swing listening to the bugs chatter in the otherwise silent night.
“I hate that you’ve been so used to being beaten that Sterling trying to assault you hasn’t affected you the way it should.” I felt a new pulse of anger surge through me.
“I hate that too. But I can’t change the past. I can only change my future. And I told you, Sterling didn’t hurt me.” Sawyer met my eyes. “Because of you.”
I wish I’d had the kind of faith in me that Sawyer had just shown. I had faith in her too.
It was about time I showed her just how much.
My hands shook when I pulled the picture from my wallet and handed it to her.
“This is Jackie, right?” Sawyer sat up and examined the picture.
I nodded.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She was,” I agreed.
“Tell me about her,” Sawyer said without a trace of pity in her eyes. I lifted her legs so they were draped across my lap.
I thought for a moment. “Well, when I first met her we were both all elbows and knees. J
ust a couple of lanky kids. She had more energy than a power plant. Always buzzing around and getting into something. We were just friends at first. We had a lot of fun together.” I chuckled at the memories. “Got in a lot of trouble together too. Especially with Josh and Miller.”
Sawyer laughed with me, and the sound was like the best part of a song, the kind you always wanted to sing along to even if you didn’t know any of the other words.
“Jackie was one of those people that walked into a room and every single head turned, and not just because she was beautiful, which she was, but because she had this thing about her that made people want to be around her. Made ME want to be around her.”
“People orbited her,” Sawyer chimed in.
“Exactly, orbited her. I like that,” I agreed, pulling Sawyer closer.
“When we hit high school, we became more than friends. She was never a good sleeper so she used to sneak into my bedroom window at night. Said she always slept better with me, but I don’t think that was true because when I’d wake up in the middle of the night she was always either staring at the ceiling or playing on her phone or pacing the room.” I sighed and my throat started to tighten.
“I should’ve seen the signs,” I continued. “We’d just graduated. Had plans to move in together. We partied a lot, but we were teenagers just doing teenage shit. Then our Friday night partying turned into every single night partying. When I suggested we slow down, she left me.” I shook my head as if I still couldn’t believe it and sometimes I couldn’t. “Four fucking years together and she left me because I didn’t want to party like an 80’s hair-band on a Tuesday night anymore.” I looked down to where my hands were resting high on Sawyer’s thighs.
She sat up and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her cheek to my bare chest.
“Then what happened?” she asked, the moonlight highlighted the freckles on her cheeks. Not being able to help myself, I leaned over and brushed my lips across them before remembering she’d asked me a question.
“Then Sterling happened,” I growled. “I guess he didn’t have a problem with her partying because suddenly she went from drinking every day to being dependent on oxys. “
Sawyer looked at me with a confused expression on her face.
“Painkillers,” I clarified. “She even came around asking me if I could get them for her. Asked Miller too.”
“What did you do?”
“I suggested she go to rehab,” I said, remembering how pissed off Jackie was when I’d brought it up the first time. And second. And third. And every time after that.
“Did she go?” Sawyer asked, sounding as hopeful as I did in the beginning.
I sighed and dropped my head. “No. No, she didn’t. So, I did the next best thing.” I smiled at the memory.
“Which was what?”
“I locked her in my house for a week,” I said, proudly.
“You didn’t,” Sawyer gasped.
“I did. I’d do it all over again, too because after that she was clean. At least for a while. We got back together. Moved in together, and I proposed. She said yes.” My throat started to close up and I coughed into my fist.
“You don’t have to keep going,” Sawyer said, sensing my unease.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just that I haven’t talked about her in a long time.”
I took a deep breath. “She bought all these bridal magazines. She was happy to be wedding planning. We both were. I guess in all of the excitement I missed the signs. She wasn’t sleeping again. Up all hours of the night, and when she did sleep she’d sleep all day. I thought she was just worn out from being up all night. Or that she had a lot on her mind with the wedding.”
I steeled myself for what I was about to say next. Sawyer sensed my unease and sat up, wrapping her arms and legs around me.
“Then one night I woke up and she was gone. Something just didn’t feel right. I called Josh and Miller and we went out looking for her. I was the one who found her.” I took a deep steadying breath that shook on the way in. “At the water park. At the top of the big slide.”
“She…fell?” Sawyer asked hesitantly, her legs tightening around my waist.
“She left a note at the top of the slide.” My voice a raspy staccato. I inhaled Sawyer’s sweet scent, needing to breathe her in, feel more of her so I could continue. “She waited until I got there, like she wanted me to see her do it. She wanted me to see her… jump.”
Sawyer
Finn held me tighter.
“What did you do?” I asked, my own voice a breathy whisper. My heart broke for him. I felt the anguish in his every word as if the story he was telling was my own. And in some ways, it might as well have been.
In others, it was in NO WAY the same. I didn’t witness Mother end her life the way he’d watched Jackie end hers. I couldn’t begin to imagine.
More and more I was understanding the reasoning for the way Finn reacted to things. To the way he treated me.
I was understanding Finn.
He stroked the back of my hair. “She jumped off the back of the slide, the side where the swamp runs underneath. I ran and dove into the water where she landed, but I couldn’t find her. Miller and Josh too. We spent hours after it went dark combing every inch of the water long after the search teams and police had left. When they came to show me the suicide note they’d found at the top of the slide, at first I couldn’t believe it. Even though, looking back on her behavior, I should’ve believed it. The signs were there. They were there long before that day. Years before.”
“Even after all that I still spent weeks on my boat searching for her. I was crazed with this idea that she could somehow be alive in the swamp, but just lost.” He shook his head against me, wiping the wetness of his tears against my skin. “Jackie was born and raised here. She knew those waters better than most. As kids, we spent every hour we weren’t in school in that swamp. But I kept searching anyway. That’s how I got this.” Finn grabbed my wrist and gently guided my fingers to trace the raised white scar above his eye that ran from his eyebrow into his hairline. “Ran my boat so fast without using a spotlight that I didn’t even see the low hanging branch. I was lucky it wasn’t more.”
Every wall I’d ever built to keep him out came crumbling down and as he spoke a bridge was built with direct access to everything I ever had to offer.
“Why did Sterling try and make it seem like her death was your fault?” I asked.
“He blames me for convincing her to get sober and for her leaving him to come back to me,” Finn explained. “He thinks if I let her do what she wanted and stopped making her feel guilty about her extreme upswings and downswings then she wouldn’t have wanted to kill herself.”
“That’s why you came out here,” I said, it wasn’t a question.
“That’s why I came out here,” Finn agreed. “Everything reminded me of her. Every person. I just wanted to be alone, so I came out here,” he said, searching my eyes and cupping my face with his hand. “And then you came around…”
“And blasted a hole right through your plans to be the grumpy hermit who lived in the swamp,” I finished for him.
Finn’s smile was tight as first. Pained. “No, then you came around.” He leaned down and brushed his lips over mine. His smile grew. The pain lifted. The lines on his face straightened. “You made me realize I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Chapter 30
Sawyer
“Hey, wake up,” Finn said, lightly shaking me into consciousness. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
Finn grabbed my hand and yanked me off the bed. “Come on. I want to show you something.” He tugged me through the front door. I squinted under the glow of the sun appearing over the trees.
“I have to get dressed,” I said, sleepily.
“What you have on is fine. Just throw on some boots.”
I brushed my teeth and threw on my boots. I also took a second to pull my crazy bed-hair into a messy bun on the top of
my head.
The second I opened the front door, Finn stepped up to meet me on top of the deck and bent down, scooping me over his shoulders and carrying me over to his Bronco.
Finn looked up to the early morning sky. “Storm is coming.”
“You may not want to pursue a career as a weatherman,” I mumbled looking up at the same sky only to see clear blue and cloud free.
“Well.” Finn hoisted me up into the Bronco like I weighed nothing. I held my breath so I wouldn’t moan at the feel of his fingers digging into my skin. “The breeze is picking up, plus, I have this filling in the back of my mouth that aches when bad weather is about to come through.” He opened his mouth and pointed to something in the back I couldn’t see.
“Really?”
Maybe Finn was more off his marbles than I’d originally thought.
“No not really, but there is this one other way I know, but it’s a secret, you can’t tell anyone,” he whispered, looking around to see if anyone was around to hear him.
“What’s that?” I whispered back.
He crooked his finger and I leaned over the center console and he reached out and turned my head forward so he could whisper in my ear. Only he didn’t just whisper in my ear, he brushed his lips against the edge of it, his voice vibrated down my neck, straight through to my nipples, and ended in a throb between my thighs that had me shifting and crossing my legs before he’d even finished his sentence. “The secret is…” his tongue grazed my earlobe and I was glad I was facing forward so he wouldn’t see my eyes roll back in my head. Suddenly he was gone and his phone was in my lap. He started the car. “This,” he pointed down to his phone which had tonight’s Outskirts forecast mapped out by the hour on the screen.
“Your secret is that your phone tells you?” I questioned, holding it up.
“Yeah, don’t tell anyone. I’d rather people from up north, like you, think it’s just good ‘ole southern boy magic.”
“I’m not from up north. I’m from North Carolina,” I argued. I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest.
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