“Just say the word, and I’ll prove it. My tongue can do more than form words, baby. It’ll write its poetry across your skin till you’re begging me to stop.”
My thighs clench in shame and fury. “God, I’m jealous of your keyboard. Of all the girls before me.”
“No girl after you. Just you. Say the word, baby, I’ll pick you up. Worship your body till the sun comes up.”
My chest cracks open. My body aches with want and loathing.
“Whoa, Blake…shit, sorry. I gotta go.”
I shut the screen down just as the sea rises higher, raging like my grief, my fury, my ruin. Every word he plans for Pandora is something he’s already done to me.
And that is the cruellest ache of all.
That’sme. That’sPenn. He’s falling in love withme, again. He just doesn’t know it.
And then he ruins it.
“Broken-hearted is a savage roll of the dice.” a voice whispers low in the sea spray. “But if you drag that hurt from your chest and scream it into your soul-roar, you’ll bring the fucking house down. So, get up, soldier. We still need you.”
I don’t know if the voice is mine or the seas. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
Salt clings to my lashes and crusts my lips. My skin is tight, clothes suctioned to my body like regret. The whisper comes again low, deep, ancient.
“Don’t look back at the ghosts, Penn. They don’t deserve the light.”
It kisses the shell of my ear, warm breath against the coldest part of me.
I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or if madness is finally showing its face.
The cold bites deeper as the sea claws around me, each wave like a slap across already raw skin. I try to move, try to rise. My body doesn’t answer. Sadness doesn’t skim the surface anymore. It seeps in bone deep, cell by cell until even the marrow in me aches.
The sand drinks it all in my sorrow, my salt, my shattered edges as the waves crash over my knees. My shoes are gone. My fingers are blue. I let the sea take the worst of him, the dirty bits, the lies, the betrayal, and begged it to leave behind whatever was still pure inside me if there was anything left.
But I know better.
Nothing will ever erase the words I saw today. Nothing will cleanse the rot of what he wrote to her things he never even said to me, things he never touched me with. He offered a stranger what I begged for as his wife.
“Sadness is a painful purge, Penn.” a familiar voice says, “It’s grief’s twisted way of wringing you out. But it’s still a detox. Let it come. Let it burn. Let it bleed.”
Carrie.
I don’t know how she found me. But she always does.
She kneels beside me, her fingers strong on my jaw, turning my face to hers. Her eyes are oceans too, deep with knowing. “Oh, baby,” she whispers, “your anger’s just your sadness in armour. You’re not trying to drown. You’re trying to exorcise him.”
Tears glue my lashes shut as she wraps her arms around my ice-laced body, rocking me like a mother would.
“You have to dig the bullet out to heal, Penn,” she says, breath hitching. “But it’s gonna hurt like hell. And I love you too much to lie about that.”
I look past her to the bruised sky. The sun is bleeding into the ocean. The moon, half-full and silvered with sorrow, watches from above like a silent witness.
And then a new warmth a different presence. Strong arms cradle me, lifting me from the cold sand like I’m weightless. Like, I still matter.
Carrie looks at the man holding me. Dane.
“Take her,” she says, voice breaking. “Protect her. I don’t even recognize her anymore.”
My teeth chatter. My lips crack.
