Chapter 16
May
At first, I think I’m hallucinating. I see Skylar sometimes, which makes me sound crazy. But in those moments, I don’t forget that my sister is dead. I know that seeing her is an anomaly. A mirage that will fade and no reality can replace.
Wren, sitting on my secret beach, isn’t as easy of an image to shake.
Because it could be a hallucination, or it could be real, and the only way to find out for sure is to talk to the seated form.
She’s wearing a fancy, full-length dress, most of the fabric strewn across the sand.
That’s the most compelling evidence this is really happening—I doubt my imagination could conjure the design details of her dress.
Still, I walk slowly down the beach, blinking rapidly, expecting her to disappear at any second.
If it wasn’t for the salt-saturated air sticking to my skin, the constant crash of surf against shore, the breeze playing with my hair, I would have already dismissed this. But those all feel very real, same as every time I walk along this stretch, and Wren is still sitting ahead.
When she glances this way, her eyes that same shade that knocks me senseless every time, I stop hoping—fearing—she’ll disappear.
I sink down beside her without saying a word, leaving a good foot of sand between us.
Wren says nothing either. No explanation, no indictment. She turns her head back to the water, staring at the waves again.
I lean back on my palms, burrowing my fingers deep in the sand.
In the summer, it’s a relief. The sun warms the top layer to a temperature that’s almost painful to touch, so digging deep enough means more comfort.
This time of year, it makes no difference.
The sun never came out today. All the sand feels the same.
“Tonight was my senior prom.”
I don’t look over at her. I fix my eyes on the horizon, too, pretending we’re not close enough that I could reach out and touch her. “That’s not how you dress every Friday night?”
“I mean, most.”
I almost smile. “Bad DJ?”
“There was a band. I left before the dancing.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her pull her knees tight to her chest. She’s probably cold. If I were wearing a hoodie, I’d offer it to her.
“Sophomore year, I started dating this guy. He was new, which never happened at my school. His dad was a hotshot lawyer who transferred to his firm’s Manhattan office.
Most of the guys I knew, I’d known since kindergarten, which got boring.
All the girls had crushes on him, but he only really paid attention to …
me.” She drops her chin to her knees, still focused on the water.
“He asked me to a school dance—Fall Fling. After, we all went to a friend’s to raid her parents’ liquor.
We ended up alone in a bedroom. I’d said—I’d told him I was ready for sex.
But when it was actually going to happen, I panicked.
I told him no, and he got … mad. Then super apologetic.
Asked what he did wrong, how he could fix it.
I left as quickly as I could, told my friends I wasn’t feeling well.
I didn’t tell anyone what had happened because I was embarrassed. I thought he’d be embarrassed.
“I texted him the next morning, saying we were done. He called me. Messaged me incessantly. I blocked his number, but he used an app that kept generating different ones. He started showing up when I was out with friends. They thought I still liked him. They liked him. And he acted so normal all those times. I started wondering if I’d made it all up in my head.
Or overreacted. We’d both been drinking that night. ”
She sucks in a ragged breath.
At some point while she was talking, my fingers curled into fists. I don’t remember it happening. But the tendons in my hands are protesting, pulled taut and tight for too long. I ignore them. There’s more. I know it, even before Wren continues.
“That spring, I stayed late after tennis practice. I had a big match the next week—I remember I was trying to adjust my backhand. He must have been watching me. He followed me into the locker room when I finished practicing and tried to … force me. Said I owed it to him and … other stuff.”
I barely hear her shaky inhale over the sound of blood roaring in my ears.
“A janitor heard me screaming. My parents came to the school. So did his. My dad—I’d never seen him like that.
He was going to sue. Call the police. Press charges.
And I … I wanted to pretend it’d never happened.
Not deal with two years of whispers and gossip and speculation and be the girl who got assaulted for the rest of high school.
His dad was an attorney. They would have fought it.
Dug up all the messages I’d sent him. Everyone knew we’d dated, had seen me flirting with him.
“He got expelled. His parents said they’d send him to a private treatment facility, get him help.
They disappeared overnight, no explanation, and I acted like I had no idea why Third had stopped showing up to school.
And then, earlier tonight, I overheard some of the guys saying they’d been talking to him recently.
Over video games, I guess, or maybe on social media. And I … I froze. I thought I’d fixed—”
I pull a hand out of the sand. Slowly so I don’t startle her, but quickly enough that I can capture her chin and turn it toward me, giving her no choice except to meet my gaze. “There’s nothing to fix, Wren.”
“There is,” she whispers. “I’m—I was never good at intimacy, I guess, but now I’m really fucked up.”
“It was him, Wren. You did nothing wrong. None of it’s your fault.”
“What if he hurts someone else?”
“That will also be his fault.”
“But if I’d pressed charges—”
“As a minor, if he’d been convicted, how much time would he have served? Assuming he had no prior record.”
Her mouth twists. “I don’t know. Probably not much. He didn’t … there wasn’t any physical evidence. Just my word against his.”
I exhale, trying to release the rage in my body at the same time. It doesn’t accomplish much.
Wren sighs, too, running a hand through hair that’s tangled in the wind.
“How’d you get here?” I ask. There weren’t any other cars when I parked.
“Cab.” Her hand falls back to the sand. Her fingers are painted the exact same shade of pink as her prom dress.
It’s such a small Wren detail. “You don’t—I didn’t know you’d be here.
I didn’t come here for you to, like, comfort me.
I just needed … this was the first place I thought of to get away from everything. ”
“How long have you been here?”
“What time is it?”
I check my phone. “After midnight.”
“About an hour.” She sighs. “I’ll go to a hotel. I was supposed to spend the night at a friend’s—at Gia’s. My parents aren’t expecting me back until tomorrow afternoon. If I come back early, they’ll ask questions.”
“Doesn’t your family have a house here?”
She shakes her head. “My aunt and uncle do. I doubt anyone has been there since … since New Year’s. Who knows what the alarm code is now.”
“They paranoid about security?” I joke, not wanting to touch the topic of the last time we saw each other.
“Not really. They were trying to keep me from sneaking out last summer.”
She’s standing before I can decide how to respond to that comment. Does her family know about me? How strongly do they disapprove? Strongly, I’m assuming, if they were essentially locking her in.
Wren reaches down to pick up a bag I didn’t notice in the sand, glancing over as I climb to my feet too.
“Let me give you a ride,” I say.
“Why?” She faces me, handle clutched between both hands.
“Why should you let me?”
“Why are you offering?”
I shove my hands into my pockets. “I want to.”
She holds my gaze for a few seconds, then shakes her head.
There’s this weird dip of disappointment in my stomach, followed by a pinch in my chest that only eases when she adds a sighed, “Okay.”
I scratch my jaw, hoping my hand will hide how relieved I am, then jerk my chin left. “My truck’s there.”
It’s a stupid comment. Wren knows what my truck looks like. Even if she didn’t, there’s only one vehicle in sight.
I forgot how fucking nervous Wren Kensington makes me. How she evaporates all the ease that usually inhabits my body, strips me down to second-guessing, and spins me around in circles.
She glances where I nodded. I catch the tiny divot in her cheek, the indicator that her next words are going to be a tease before, “Almost missed it,” leaves her mouth.
I roll my eyes, at myself more than her, then head that way. Wren follows, tossing her undoubtedly expensive bag into the bed of my truck without a second glance to check where it landed.
That’s one thing about Wren. I have this strange sense of connection, almost kinship with her, because she’s as unpredictable as I am.
She’ll turn her nose up at a marina’s stench, then have sex in a dusty supply room.
She’ll match her nails to her prom dress, then leave her fancy luggage to fend for itself in the bed of my truck, which has been cleaned …
never since I bought it. She’ll share a traumatic, terrifying experience, then treat me like a hired driver she’s never met before.
Wren texts for most of the trip, the ceaseless buzzing of her phone proof that plenty of people have noticed her absence.
I’m about ten minutes from my house when she glances up and says, “You missed the turn into town about fifty turns ago,” making me think she wasn’t as absorbed in her phone as she was acting.
“You can stay at my place tonight.”
I keep my eyes on the road, ensuring I miss her reaction.
“Won’t your parents mind?” Wren asks quietly.
I nearly snort, stifling the sound at the last possible second. “No.”
“They’re used to you having girls over?”
I brake at a red light, drumming my thumbs against the steering wheel. “My dad is in prison, and my mom won’t be back from deployment for another three weeks. They won’t mind.”
Wren doesn’t say, Sorry, in the tragic tone people like to use to talk about my family. Or, even worse, ask what crimes my father committed.
Her next question is, “Will Skylar mind?”
I know she’s noticed the tattoo on my wrist; I’ve seen her stare at it. But telling her about my parents was enough. I’m not in the mood—or the right mindset—to discuss my sister.
“What would she mind?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” she says quickly.
I want to push her—want Wren to admit that she thought something might happen between us because it always had when we were alone—but I don’t.
I feel guilty about letting her believe my dead sister is a girl I can’t get over. And my mind is now stuck on a loop of all the things we could do when we reach my empty house.
I wonder if Wren is still dating someone. Wonder if he knows she called me while they were out together. Wonder if Wren realized what she did—she was thinking about me, not him, that night. I doubt she called another guy to brag after we fucked. Only unhappy people boast about how happy they are.
Bringing her to my house was supposed to be an altruistic decision.
Dumping her off at a hotel, knowing she was upset, didn’t feel right.
She had a chance to demand I turn around, and she didn’t take it.
She still hasn’t suggested I take her somewhere else.
I think, maybe, that means she’s glimpsed the partial apology this is meant to be.
Somehow, it feels like too much and not enough simultaneously.
Wren clears her throat, and I think this is it. Again, my reaction is mixed. Some relief, some disappointment.
But she doesn’t direct me to the nearest four-star hotel. She says, “That sucks, about your parents.”
I nod so she knows I heard her.
What doesn’t suck? The way Wren grasps that I told her that so she knows, not because I wanted to have a conversation about it.
Neither of us says another word the rest of the drive.