Kill Me Softly

by Sarah Cross

  “Why a prison?”

  Viv rolled over to squint at Mira. “Regina. My stepmother. She’s obsessed with her looks—and obsessed with mine. She hates me.”

  “She probably doesn’t hate you,” Mira said.

  Viv laughed. “Believe me—she does. She’ll say stuff like I used to have a body like that or I used to have skin like that. It’s like living in a cage, being scrutinized all the time. I used to feel guilty, like it was my fault she wasn’t happy; now I just hate her. But I’m stuck with her every day, living way out there. My dad spends all his time on the green, avoiding us.”

  Viv glanced at her seabird-chasing boy toy. “And then there’s Henley. But he’s doomed.”

  “Doomed?”

  Viv sighed, and propped her head on her hand. “We’re all doomed here. You picked a crappy place to go on vacation, Mira. You don’t like Blue, do you?”

  “No,” Mira said, caught off guard by the change of subject.

  “I was worried he was doing his knight-in-tarnished-armor thing and it was winning you over.”

  “No, he’s just irritating. I don’t want to be around him any more than I have to be.”

  “Okay, good,” Viv said, lying back down.

  Mira draped a thick wave of her hair over her face, like it was a shield from the sun. It smelled like Felix’s shampoo. Felix. She’d see him later and Blue would be a bad memory.

  “How are you doomed?” she asked after a moment, hoping Viv wasn’t tired of her questions. But Viv was on a roll.

  “You know when you go to a carnival, and you get to drive an old-fashioned Model T car, but there’s a metal track between the wheels, keeping you on course? So you get the impression that you’re driving, but if you veer too far in either direction, the track jerks you back into place?”

  “I think so….”

  “Our lives are like that. It feels like we can do what we want—but if we venture in a new direction, fate pulls us back. We can rebel, but we all know we’ll fail. Which doesn’t stop us from trying, I guess. Like Blue.”

  “How does Blue—?”

  “Wait,” Viv said, sitting up. She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered out at the water—and at a group of girls, all clamoring for someone’s attention. Someone with Freddie’s honey-colored head.

  “I thought I sensed a flock of girls,” Viv said. “Knight’s here; I bet that means Blue’s here, too. Looks like your sanctuary may be compromised.”

  “Great,” Mira muttered. That meant now would be an ideal time to go—but she couldn’t leave right when she was making headway with Viv.

  Henley started back toward them, his warding job over now that the seabirds were fighting the girls for Freddie’s attention. He ducked under the umbrella, hesitantly, as though waiting for permission and expecting it to be denied.

  But Viv was in an affectionate mood. She extended her leg and touched her toes to his chest; slid her foot flirtatiously up and down. “Henley, would you be a sweetheart and get my camera out of the car?”

  Henley nodded, transfixed.

  “Thank you.” Viv gave him a sweet smile and he slowly got to his feet, like someone waking from a dream.

  “It’s too hard to gossip with boys around,” Viv said, once Henley had staggered away. “Now, where were we?”

  “You were talking about being doomed. And how it’s futile to try to escape fate. You said that hasn’t stopped Blue. What did you mean by that?”

  “Oh. Just that Blue still wants to believe his fate is in his own hands. But it’s only a matter of time before he succumbs.”

  “Succumbs to what?” Mira asked.

  “Instinct,” Viv said, as if that was sufficient explanation. “I’m still waiting for things to happen to me, personally. It’s embarrassing; I feel like such a late bloomer. I had two significant birthdays go by, and yet—nothing. Sometimes I get so fed up and depressed about it that I feel like choking myself just to set things in motion.”

  “Uh, you—what?”

  Viv laughed uneasily. “Uh, I’m probably confusing you….”

  “Yes. But—feel free to explain.”

  “It’s … hard to understand if you’re not from here.”

  That again. Mira was about to argue when a rain of cold water droplets spattered her stomach, jolting her upright. It didn’t take long to see where the “rain” had come from.

  Blue was standing over her, shaking out his wet hair like an annoying blue dog. Beads of water clung to the muscle on his chest. He was wiry, not buff like Henley, but his body made up for size with definition. Nothing could make up for his personality.

  “Stop dripping on me,” Mira snapped.

  Blue pushed his hand through his hair, flicking more water at her. “Move if you don’t like it.”

  “If I move, it will be to assault you. I don’t want to humiliate you in front of Viv.”

  “So considerate.” He sat down, the sand sticking to his skin like powdered sugar, then reached across her to grab a Coke out of the cooler—dripping on her again. He grinned as she glared at him.

  “I’m going to find Henley,” Viv announced, tying her sarong around her waist and crawling out from under the umbrella. “He’s either taking a smoke break or using my camera to photograph skanks on the boardwalk. Either way, he’s in trouble. Remember what I said, Mira. About …” She jerked her head at Blue.

  Mira nodded. Blue squinted after Viv as she left.

  “What was that?”

  “She said before that she’s glad I don’t like you. Maybe she was reminding me to make sure it stays that way—but that’s one reminder I don’t need.”

  “Good.” He drank half the bottle of Coke, then capped it and lobbed it back into the watery slush in the cooler. The water splashed her leg, and she rubbed it away.

  “You have gorgeous legs,” Blue said.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you being nice, or sleazy? Because I doubt that’s a compliment, coming from you.”

  “Always assume the worst.”

  “I can’t wait until I never have to see you again,” she muttered.

  She rolled over onto her stomach, tugged a cheap paperback out of her purse, and let her hair curtain her face so she could read. She’d almost succeeded in ignoring him when she felt his fingertip skim the back of her calf, from the hollow of her knee to her ankle. She flipped over and hurled her book at him, the open pages slapping his face.

  “Don’t touch me!” she yelled. She could still feel the line he’d traced on the back of her calf, cool against her skin, like the seam of a crooked stocking.

  Blue shrugged, shameless. “I wanted to see if it felt as nice as it looked.”

  “It won’t feel as nice when I kick the crap out of you.”

  Blue seemed to consider this. Then: “Are you a dancer?”

  “Yes,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “I thought so. You couldn’t be that sexy naturally. I figured you had to work for it.”

  She was working up a response—something that was more than an accumulation of curse words—when she noticed Freddie striding up the beach. He was carrying something in his cupped hands, water dribbling down between them, and he kept stopping and turning back to respond to his admir-ers—girls who trailed after him in a procession of sun-kissed cheeks and tiny bikinis.

  When he reached them, he dropped to his knees in front of Mira.

  “Mira, have you ever seen a starfish? I brought one so I could show you.”

  She glanced quickly at the purple starfish splayed across Freddie’s hands, then back at Blue. He was like a thorn under her skin, constantly irritating her. She couldn’t have a nice, normal conversation with Freddie when she felt like she was about to explode. “Why are you such an asshole?”

  “It’s a survival skill,” Blue said. “Really? How does being a jerk give you an edge?” “It gives you an edge.” “Of course it does,” she said, fed up. “I think you’re obsessed with me,” Blue said. �
�But that’s

  okay. I’m not going to judge you for it.” Then he got up before she could hit him. Sand speckled his legs and his swim trunks. The sun had wicked the water from his skin; a few droplets dribbled down from his hair.

  Blue turned, and Mira sucked down a bubble of air with her Coke and almost choked—because smack in the center of his lower back, crowning the waistband of his swim trunks, was a fist-size birthmark: wine red like a burn, shiny-smooth like a scar.

  Like hers—only it was shaped like a heart. A perfect, dark heart. “What?” Blue said, turning again. “You’re sad that I’m leaving?” “What—what is that?” she asked, pressing her fist to her

  chest, coughing like she’d nearly drowned. “What is what?” he said. “That mark. On your back.” Blue shrugged. “Nothing.” She didn’t believe him. That mark meant something. “Don’t worry, it’s not contagious,” Blue said, before he ran

  down to the water. The sea ate him up in little bites, first his legs and then his waist and then his chest, until he disappeared beneath the waves. The sun glittered on the water and it was almost blinding; she couldn’t watch anymore.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to Freddie. He was still kneeling beside her, dejected but patient—or maybe just quiet.

  The starfish looked limp in his cupped hands.

  “I’m going to put this back,” he said. “Okay?”

  Tentatively, Mira touched the starfish and then withdrew. She felt bad for ignoring him. “Thanks for showing me. I do think it’s cool. I was just—mad before. I don’t know why it seems like it’s his goal to piss me off. I’d rather he just pick one: be nice, or leave me alone.”

  Freddie nodded. “Well … that would be better. But he doesn’t have the self-control for that, I don’t think. He just likes you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Um, have you been paying attention at all ?”

  “I didn’t say he wants to like you. Just that he does. Maybe because you act like you don’t like him, so he feels a little safer.”

  “Freddie, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Freddie shrugged. “Blue has, um, weird issues with girls.”

  “Because his mom ran away?”

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. Just that, I mean, obviously he likes you, but he doesn’t want to, so he’s going a little overboard to keep you at bay. But I think he’s having a hard time just ignoring you because you genuinely don’t like him. Which is strangely attractive to Blue.”

  “Like he hates clingy girls, but he gets turned on if he thinks you’re playing hard to get?”

  “Uh …” Freddie stopped to think about it, then settled on shrugging again. “I don’t know, Mira. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “You could beat him up for me. That would solve a lot of problems.” She flashed him a coy smile.

  “He’s my friend. I can’t do that.” But he smiled back, not at all offended, like he knew she was kidding.

  She was sort of kidding.

  “I’m going to bring this back now, okay?” Freddie gestured with the starfish, lifting his cupped hands, the muscles in his chest tightening with the motion. She nodded, and he trotted down the beach, relaxed and casual. It didn’t take long for the girls to surround him again, and when they did, he sped up; his footsteps got clumsy on the sand, like a bear lumbering away from an upset beehive, paws full of honey. Except Freddie was the honey and the bear.

  Mira didn’t, as a rule, chase after boys. But when she followed Freddie with her eyes, paperback pressed to her brow like a visor, she saw herself reflected on his skin. Her wheel, her wine-red mark, was imprinted on the small of his back. They could have been twins.

  Twins.

  She shoved up off the ground and ran after him. Pushed through the swarm of admirers and grabbed his shoulders, spinning him around. His face was blank with shock. Sunbaked heat sank into her hands.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded. “You have to tell me what’s going on here.”

  Her fingers dug into his shoulders, too hard. He stared mutely back at her, and she felt like she was touching fire.

  “If you wanted me, if you loved me,

  I could take everything from you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “YOU ATTACKED FREDDIE. You scared him,” Blue said.

  They sat at an outdoor table at Gingerbread House, the café where she’d thrown the knife at him. Just the two of them. Blue had appeared, dripping wet, while Mira was questioning Freddie, demanding to know what their marks were—and he’d pried her away with hands that were cool from the sea. He’d said that if she wanted to talk about this, they needed to do it elsewhere. He’d looked so serious that she’d agreed.

  “I didn’t attack him,” Mira said. “I was getting his attention. I needed to talk to him.”

  The air outside the café smelled like brine and grill smoke. The sound of flags whipping and dinging against flagpoles mixed with the cries of gulls and the rush of cars. Mira rested her foot against the base of the table, then realized she was touching Blue’s leg. She left it there, to see what he would do.

  “He said it felt like your hand was on fire. What’s that all about?”

  “It was hot today,” she said. “I don’t know. I told you that.”

  Mira lifted her head to study his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her—not directly. He was knocking his wrist against the table, rhythmically, like he was trying to make it bruise.

  “I saw that mark on his back,” she said. “You both have one.”

  “And you’re proving that you’re rude enough to keep bringing it up. Maybe he’s embarrassed by it. Just drop it.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not being rude.”

  The wheel spun slowly in her mind, like a windmill set off by a soft wind. The mark connected them somehow. She wasn’t going to just let that go.

  “Is Freddie an orphan?” she asked. “Did his parents die?”

  “The Knight family is perfectly intact,” Blue said. “He has two older brothers, Wills and Caspian. Loving mother and father. They all live together in a swank mansion. Always have.”

  “So he couldn’t be my brother?” she forced out, swallowing hard afterward. Her heart thumped in the interim. Blue stared at her, mouth poised open, not understanding. Finally, he said:

  “He’d certainly be disappointed if he was. Why would you think that? You don’t look alike.”

  “I thought maybe we could have been separated. When my parents died. Like we could have been taken away by different guardians.”

  She lowered her eyes. Blue finally shifted his leg away from her. He cleared his throat.

  “You were taken away? From where—from Beau Rivage?”

  “I was born here. But I didn’t stay long. Something bad happened—a fire—and I lost my mom and dad. My godmothers raised me. I’m here to find my parents’ graves.” Her throat grew tight. “You’d know that if you did more than fight with me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. Then, more quietly, “That sounds … disturbingly familiar. Like a story.”

  “Isn’t everything a story?”

  “Maybe. But that’s not what I meant. I mean it sounds familiar. Like a classic tale.”

  “I’m an orphan,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice. “That’s as classic as it gets—Oliver Twist, Sara Crewe. But being an orphan isn’t a fairy tale. It’s not romantic; it doesn’t make me special. It just means I never had a chance to know my parents, and I never will.”

  “So you hoped you had Freddie?” he said, brows dipping as he tried to work it out.

  “No, I’m just—I’m trying to make this make sense. This.”

  Mira rose from her seat and jerked her blouse up from her waist. She turned so he could see the mark, his gaze like needles in her skin, in the vulnerable part of herself she kept hidden.

  “I think maybe … I’m cursed, too,” she said.

  She shuddered when he touched her, his fingertip tracing the mark at the
base of her spine.

  Blue uttered a word she’d directed at him under very different circumstances. He whispered it, and his touch was like a whisper, too. She felt a fire more intense than the one she’d felt when she touched Freddie. That had been a surface fire, stinging and hot. This one was deeper, embedded in her core. It ignited something dark and secret within her, and she kept smoldering until he took his hand away.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Don’t forget I loathe you,” she said shakily.

  “I know. Let’s keep it that way.”

  She sat back down. His eyes ticked across her face like a pendulum.

  “Well.” He swallowed. “You’re not his sister. For a start.”

  Happy birthday. Happy birthday, baby. You only turn sixteen once.

  The room was full of balloons, the color of a castle at the bottom of the sea, blue and black and silver and green. They were dancing. Jewel was crooning a torch song on a miniature stage, her voice throaty and tender, black pearls dripping from her lips when she stopped to breathe. everyone clapped, ecstatic. An explosion of gratitude, like firecrackers popping.

  He was surrounded by everything he loved. everything good.

  Couples spun off into dark corners, private shadows. His father encouraged it, treated them like adults. Champagne foamed over bottle tops, and paper came off presents with a giddy ripping sound.

  He tried to keep to his kind, he really did. To the girls who knew better. But he got caught up in the moment.

  Tonight, her dress and her lips were as cherry red as her hair. And when she smiled at him—like it was time to stop pretending, stop avoiding each other—he felt too good to believe she could be anything but right.

  But he should have known.

  She led him by the hand to that dark back bedroom, tottering on red heels she could barely walk in, almost tripping over someone’s purse, and she laughed and threw her arms around his neck to catch herself before she fell.

  They froze for a moment. He felt her body against his, warm and wonderful, and his arms went around her to pull her closer. She kissed him, and he kissed her—

  And he kept kissing her until he couldn’t breathe. Until she couldn’t.