He was fifteen feet away on the sand, water dripping off of his beautiful, chiseled body, his soaked shorts hanging low enough to make my pulse stutter. His expression was confused and frantic, like he’d just realized he was standing on a landmine. His eyes darted over me, searching for whatever I was hiding.
One more slow exhale and I let go. My hands fell to my side. I couldn’t look at him but I knew what he was seeing: a gnarly scar spanning the entire right side of my stomach, from right below my breast to the top of my panty line. The skin was uneven—some parts raised and ropey, others sunken and tight, as if the acid had tried to chew its way through me, only to be stopped at the last second. The edges were a deep, ruddy pink, fading into the stark, waxy white of dead flesh in the center.
I made myself look at him. I needed to. So I’d never come back to the place where I mindlessly daydreamed about what a life with him would’ve been like. The horror on his face was exactly what I’d always imagined it would be. Like he was disgusted and broken by the sight and he wished he could hide.
A sob wrenched out of me, ragged and unbidden, echoing in the air. But that sound was a release. It was finally done.
I turned and sprinted for the house. When I got to the deck, I grabbed a beach towel someone had hung over the back of a chair and wrapped it around my body.
“Charlie!” Cash shouted, jogging up the hill. But he was just doing his duty.
And I was already gone.
twenty-seven
Cash
Isprinted up the hill, watching as Charlie escaped through the sliding glass door off the kitchen. My mind was spinning out of control like a two-wheel drive on black ice—words, thoughts, emotions, playing over and over on a loop.
Half of Charlie’s stomach looked like someone had dumped raw hamburger and tilapia skin into a blender and hit the pulse button. Was it purely an accident or had someone done this to her purposely? If Lorne was responsible, there wasn’t a force on earth that could stop me from going after that sorry excuse for a man.
But the one thought that drowned out all the others? The one that shocked me most? She thought this was going to make me stop loving her? Like, she actually thought I was that shallow.
I marched across the deck, barefoot, dropping her waterlogged shoes with ath-thunk. I’d used my T-shirt to stuff the drain hole but it was now at the bottom of the lake along with the boat and my flip-flops. Through the sliding glass door, I could see my parents in the kitchen, backs to me, facing Charlie’s room.
I ripped the sliding glass door open and they spun around, speechless and stunned. Charlie’s wet footprints left a trail across the floor, like a repeat of Hawaii.
“It didn’t go well?” Dad asked as I strode through the kitchen.
“Dad, we sunk your dinghy,” I breathed. “I’m sorry and I’ll pay you back.” Then I jetted past, taking Charlie’s stairs three at a time.
“Ha!” I heard Mom cackle. “That’s what you get for giving him that terrible idea in the first place.”
“Charlie!” I jiggled the handle but she’d locked it. I pounded on the door. “Open up!”
I could hear her crying.
I pounded again. “Charlie, let me in!”
“Go away! Just go live your life and be happy!”
I released a bitter chuckle. She thought I could be happy without her? I ran my hand across the top of the door jamb until I found the lock-popper we kept there. Then I shoved it into the hole and—wallah—I was in.
She shrieked. She was still in her bra, but she’d pulled on a pair of shorts. My eyes ran over her, and I’m not gonna lie, I said a quick prayer of gratitude that the acid hadn’t touched those breasts. Because that would’ve been a tragedy I’d never get over.
I charged across the room until I stopped right in front of her. “Who did this to you?”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m not doing that right now.” She gestured at the open door. “They’re probably at the bottom of the stairs listening.”
I strode back across the room—she was right, they were—shut the door, and stormed back over.
“Please,” she said, her face twisted like she was in pain. “Just go.”
I needed to chill. Needed to focus on her. Not go after the snake that bit her while she stood here slowly dying. At least for right now.
“Is that what you want?” I asked in the calmest tone I could muster. “Youreallywant me to go? To have a life without you?”
She stared at me for a moment, trying to be stalwart. But then her face twisted up in what my mom called The Ugly Cry. But even that was beautiful on Charlie. “No. I want you.” She wiped her cheeks. “So much.”
