October cold and touching her entire crazy-ass, scattered family.
“Beauty,” Zach said.
“Yeah.” Celeste pulled her sweats down over her hips, unzipped her hoodie, and tossed it onto the sand. She hadn’t worn the bikini in years. She’d kept it on the bottom of her bathing suit pile as a keepsake for clothes that were either too small or no longer to her taste. This suit fit both categories. Purchased when she was fifteen and outgrown by her sixteenth birthday.
The air lashed her bare stomach, raising gooseflesh and tinkling the array of tiny bells and shells dangling from both the top of her bottom and the bottom of her top.
She turned to Zach, the feeling of his gaze as real as his touch. “I know, it’s too small,” she said.
“You’re perfect.” He held her gaze until, for a second, she almost believed him.
“No.” Cloud wisps trailed across the sky, like a streak of colored frosting, white on the edges, pinkie purple at the center. What were they called? Cirrus? Her nonblood sister, Abby, would know. Abby seemed so far away—
I can’t be here.
Celeste made a break for the ocean.
“Hey!” Zach yelled.
The water iced her toes. Her ankles ached, her thighs protested. Then—the worst part—she pushed herself through the birthmark and bikini-zone freeze, an assault on her most sensitive area.
Pretend it doesn’t hurt.
She dove beneath the waves into the hazy green, the murky, salty ice water. Seaweed bobbed beside her. The curve of the sands passed beneath her.Then the cold seized her lungs and squeezed, forcing her to surface. She gasped for air, her heart beating like a war cry.
Zach stood at the water’s edge, as if he were her lifeguard. As if he was guarding her life.
He had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Celeste stood up, her body heavy, rubbery, and numb. “Come on in, the water’s freezing!”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
She started for the shore, and pain shot through her eardrums, like ice picks coming at her from both sides. She tried pretending that the low-hanging autumn sun was midday and August. That the heat on the shore was unrelenting. That her fear of people examining her body in detail hadn’t actually come true.
Zach gave her a sad smile—his chin tight, his lips downturned, probably trying not to alarm the crazy woman.
Celeste dried herself off with her sweatpants and slipped her arms into the hoodie. She held her hands over her ears. Her ears warmed, but the pain held steady. The ocean within her raged. Wasn’t blood similar to ocean water? Abby would know the answer. “Hurts,” Celeste said.
“Your ears?”
“Everything.”
“Let’s go home,” he said, and he wrapped his arm around her and helped her to her car.
Zach plucked her car keys from the driver’s seat where she’d left them. “You think Old Yeller would mind?”
Her teeth rattled, like the shells and sea glass of Abby’s wind chimes. Her knees buckled. Her skin puckered with the fault lines of secondary tremors. She took a shallow breath and hummed.
“The Beatles!” Zach said. “‘Drive My Car.’”
“Baby, you can.” Celeste let Zach open the passenger side door for her.
Maybe she loved him.
Celeste’s eyes watered. “T-t-tell Old Yeller he’s a good old guy.”
“You’re a good old guy and I hope your heat works.” Zach started Old Yeller. Gaze on her, he slipped his fingers into his jeans pocket and then flipped on the heat.
Celeste flipped the heat off. “Give him a few minutes. He’s slow to start, but he always comes around.”
“Like his owner?” Zach asked.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what’s going on?” Zach asked.
She hummed “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“You got it,” Zach said, and he backed from the spot. He turned onto 209 and then, one-handed, took the narrow hairpin turn onto Wilderness Way, back through Hidden Harbor, as if he were a born and bred local.
“Katherine tell you about the road?”
“Figured it out myself.”
“You took a wrong turn?” Celeste asked.
“I took a right turn, for once.” Zach kept his gaze on the winding road, his left hand easy on the wheel, his right forearm leaning in for backup. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she’d been in the driver’s seat, rescuing Zach and taking him home. Less than twenty-four hours since his injury and the cast. Less than twenty-four hours, and he’d adjusted to the new normal. She wished she adjusted that easily.
Back at Ledgewood, the sun hung low in the sky, its rays trailed along the parking lot, shining into Old Yeller, her eyes, and—
“Oh, shit! The ice cream! Here you were trying to do something nice for me and—”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s probably still solid. Let’s not assume the worst,” he said, sounding unlike Zach. Maybe that’s how it worked with superheroes. You had to dangle them over shark-infested tanks, take them away from their comfort zone, and threaten someone they cared about before they’d mature and come out the other end sounding like Katherine’s ex-husband, Barry.
Zach cared about her.
“You should’ve let me go alone,” Celeste said. “I shouldn’t have let you come.”
“I would’ve followed you,” Zach said. Then he ducked into the backseat of Matilda and came out with a brown grocery bag. “Ice cream’s a little soft, but otherwise unharmed.”
Celeste grabbed a grocery bag. Sirloin steaks, potatoes, and, wonder of wonders, green beans and broccoli.
“You need to get inside and get warm. I think you’re in shock.”
She hoisted a second bag onto her hip. “First aid training from your stint as a ski instructor?”
“Instinct.”
Celeste thought of Katherine and her warnings about paying attention to your gut. Celeste’s gut was unreliable at best, telling her to care about the wrong friends, love the wrong lovers.
Justin and Matt had cared more about what they imagined other people thought of them than they’d cared about her.
Celeste stumbled up the walkway steps, readjusted a bag on her hip.
“You don’t need to take two at a time. Leave it there for me. I’ll take care of it.”
“That’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said, her voice coming out chipped from her shivering, rough with fatigue.
“Okay,” Zach said, and offered her the same sad smile he’d given her when she’d come out from her ice bath. He unlocked her door and let her pass before him.
Zach wasn’t just a nice guy. He was a good man.
In her bedroom, she changed into a fresh pair of sweats and a clean, white turtleneck. She unbraided her hair and towel dried it in the bathroom. The sharp pain in her ears was dissipating, diluting to a less potent version of discomfort. Her body had partially defrosted, like the ice cream left in Matilda. And with Celeste’s body’s softening, the focus shifted back to the phone call that had inspired the polar plunge.
Give her physical pain any day.
Out in the living room, Zach was waiting on the couch—his makeshift bed. He held out a mug of steaming tea for her. Green and decaffeinated. A preference she’d discovered on girlhood sleepovers with Abby. “How’d you know?” she asked.
“Found it above the sink.”
“You’re making yourself at home,” she said, her voice regaining a hint of the teasing lightness that Zach inspired. She took the mug from his hands. When she sat down on the couch, he pushed his pillow aside and wrapped his—her—fuzzy yellow blanket around her shoulders.
“Your lips are still blue.”
“I know.” The mug of tea shook on the way to her lips.
Zach nodded and stared her down. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
She hadn’t wanted Zach to sit by her side when she’d phoned Natalie. And
yet if it hadn’t been for Zach, she wouldn’t have made the call. She wouldn’t have ever known. Matt hadn’t only bragged about screwing her, he’d launched a campaign.
“I followed your advice,” Celeste said. “I called Natalie.”
Zach’s expression—hopeful despite the odds, worried, and a little bit psyched Celeste had listened to him—weighed on her. Anything she told him wouldn’t lift him up. Did she want to let him down? Would he pity her? Would he leave?
Would he leave?
“When I was half passed out . . .”
Zach nodded, and his expression went grim.
She inhaled the tea, dropped her gaze from Zach’s eyes to his left hand, set against the thigh of his jeans. His nails were clean and neatly trimmed. A few hairs crossed his slightly tan forearm. His Timex ticked, ticked, ticked.
She made herself look him in the eye. She wanted to catch his unmasked expression, to see herself as he saw her. “Matt took nude photos of me—”
Zach’s whole face widened, as if an open-ocean high wind had filled his sails. And then he battened those sails, a deliberate tightening. His jawline ticked, ticked, ticked.
“And he’s passing them around campus,” Celeste said.
Zach breathed out through his nose, like a bull. “That’s horrible,” he said. “I don’t even know what to say. Other than, you know, wanting to kill the criminal.”
Celeste grinned. “He’s an asshole, sure. I don’t think that makes him a criminal, though.”
“Did you tell him it was okay for him to take pictures of you?”
“Oh my God! Of course not.”
“Then the criminal asshole committed a felony, punishable by a fine of five thousand dollars and up to five years in jail.” Zach sat up taller. “You could have him arrested.”
The thought of Matt in jail, wearing bright orange instead of chef whites, made her want to giggle. “Seriously?”
Zach nodded. “Yeah, seriously.”
The thought of going to the police and having more people look at photos of her naked body made her want to jump in Old Yeller and drive into the ocean.
“Then why do I still feel like it was my fault?”
“I don’t know you well enough to answer that question.”
“That’s okay,” Celeste said. “No one does.” No freaking way was she going to the police. She took another sip of her tea, and her shoulders rose in a shiver. “So, yeah, that’s the end of the big, bad mystery. Matt took photos to prove to the guys he’d slept with me. I’m mad as hell. It sucks. But there’s not much I can do about it. I should put it out of my mind, right? I phoned, I asked, I found out. End of horror story.”
Zach bit his lip, and his gaze shifted sideways. Again he exhaled through his nose.
“What? What is it? You think Matt sent photos of me to newspapers? You think they’re going to hit the nightly news? Because I don’t think I can take any more. Okay. Let it be known. I’ve had enough crap for one lifetime. I’m done. I. Am. Done. In fact, I’m going to bed.” She jumped up, or tried to jump. Her feet didn’t leave the carpet. Her body was too heavy to budge, a dull thing she needed to drag around.
“But you haven’t eaten dinner,” Zach said, as if that were the most horrendous torture he could imagine, as if other things weren’t worse. “I was going to fry up some steaks and—”
Bile rose in her throat, and she held up a hand. She swallowed, took a slow breath.
“Are you a vegetarian or something? You don’t like steaks?”
“I think it was the word fried. You enjoy your steaks. My stomach’s off—I don’t think I can keep anything down.”
“Make sure you hydrate.” Zach stood and handed her the green tea. He took the fuzzy blanket—her fuzzy, winter-warmth blanket—off the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“What if you’re c-cold?” she said, and they both smiled at her unintentionally well-placed shiver.
Zach gave her shoulder a pat, held his friend’s gaze. “You need to stay warm. Due to the shock and all.”
“I think you’re making too much out of this. I’m cold because the Atlantic is freaking freezing this time of year.”
Zach gave her a placating smile. Neither of them mentioned the reason she’d set off for the ocean, her temporary inability to form words, her need to numb out and shut down.
“I’m going to close my door so I can’t smell the—” Her hair ached with queasiness.
Zach nodded. “I’ll run the hood fan.”
“I appreciate it,” she said, and she took her tea to the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed, and the ticker tape of her conversation with Natalie scrolled through her head. When that petered out, the most recent Matt memory played through.
She got up and locked the door. Silly, really. If Zach wanted to get into her bedroom, and her drawers, all he had to do was find a long, sharp object and poke the lock. Zach probably had a pocketknife, right? What self-respecting guy didn’t own one of those? And if she didn’t trust Zach, she shouldn’t let him sleep on her couch.
She walked to the closed door and cocked her head. The sound of running water echoed from the kitchen. A patch of air silence and then chopping, the sound of industry. She unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Something sizzled. Zach’s steak, most likely. As promised, he ran the fan. Above the low whir, Zach’s humming floated through the main room and touched her like a soft kiss. “Slide” again.
Did he know the words? Yes, Zach, she did want to run away. Thank you for asking.
She left the door open and slid beneath the covers. She arranged the fuzzy blankets. Her all-seasons, standby blanket on the bottom. Her blanket reserved for cold weather, unexpected visitors, and unexpected shock went on top. Her throat still ached—that sad-sack concoction of ready-to-run panic and ready-to-hurl nausea. She breathed into her stomach. Her top blanket smelled like Zach. A little bit tart, a lot sweet, with a generous helping of boy-next-door sizzle.
Man next door.
The man cooking in her kitchen and sleeping on her couch. The man who didn’t think she was a whore, despite evidence to the contrary. The man who didn’t believe Matt, the voice in her head that told her she was shit.
When the voice of her eating disorder, Ed, popped into her brain to torment her, she was supposed to fight back. Tell Ed he was stupid and wrong, even when all evidence—her fat ass, her inability to eat like a normal person without gaining weight—pointed to the contrary.
Go back to sleep. I have to do this.
Now that she remembered, she couldn’t get Matt’s voice out of her head. She might not be shit, but she was definitely a shit magnet.
The weight of the two blankets comforted her, but the heat couldn’t get through the icy layers. The bone-deep Atlantic Ocean chill she’d brought on herself. A shiver wracked her body, starting at her center and branching out, the way an earthquake originated from a fault. She sat up and drank down the rest of the green tea. She wiped her mouth with her hand.
Maybe Zach was right. Maybe she was in shock, but considering her history with guys? She wasn’t one bit surprised.
CHAPTER 14
According to Celtic history, All Hallows’ Eve was a time to take stock of the harvest and prepare for the coming winter. A day when the dead came back to life and demons haunted the world of the living. But what about the ghosts from the past that day-in, day-out replayed their story in Katherine’s mind, like the endless loop of a black-and-white horror flick? What about the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve vampires that sucked her precious time and joy?
What about the demons from her childhood she couldn’t exorcise?
The roast and root vegetables were cooking nicely, filling her apartment—the first floor of a Victorian painted lady—with literal and soul warmth. In the living room, she laid out hors d’oeuvres. Dishes of walnuts for cracking, a pyramid of clementines, crudités with a chilled buttermilk-and-dill dip. She filled a black plastic cauldron with assorted fun-siz
ed chocolate bars and set it by the door. She set the dining room table with her seasonal china—a black transferware pattern with happy witches and pumpkins—atop black charger plates. In the center of the table, she arranged a pumpkin she’d carved with scrollwork, reminiscent of ornately decorated cakes. She lifted the jack-o’-lantern’s cap, lit the tea light, and set the cap back in place. Took a moment to inhale the wax and flame and savor the glow.
Her black dress fell to her ankles, the top hugging her chest and torso, the skirt loose and swishing. A swatch of hair she’d secured with a single tortoiseshell barrette. The rest she let fall free, the way she’d worn it in her younger days when she’d hitchhiked from town to town, waited tables wherever by day, prowled bars by night. Despite the gravity of the dinner party—her growing concern over Celeste, her worry over her uninvited guest examining her latest employee—she felt energized and reckless.
A larger than usual glass of Merlot might’ve contributed to her contradictory state.
In her experience, a glass or two heightened awareness. Three or four numbed the senses, an out-of-body experience where you witnessed your life’s traumas, the circumstances real yet seeming not quite so pressing. And five glasses of wine? She hadn’t attempted that degree of debauchery in quite some time.
She was well aware of her father’s alcoholic contribution to her family history.
The doorbell rang, and a satisfying chime played through her house. About an hour and a half too early for trick-or-treaters and half an hour too early for her three visitors. She peered through a sidelight to where the outside lamp cut through the early sundown and lit her doorstep.
Unless that visitor was the uninvited guest she’d been trying to track down for the better part of a week.
She opened the door and tried to set her face into a glare of annoyance but found her face unwilling to comply. “You’re a hard man to track down,” she said, her tone coming out all wrong, way more glad to see you than mad as hell. That made her mad as hell.
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