Chapter Thirty-One
THIRTY-ONE
Hailey
There is no shower hot enough or long enough to erase the memory of a stranger’s disgusting sweaty thumb in my mouth.
Especially when I had asked him to put it there.
The steam makes me uncomfortable. Suffocated.
In need of air. I only last five minutes before I exit into the small bathroom.
I can’t escape the vapor. It fogs the mirror and cocoons me in unpleasant heat.
Where’s Phoebe? It’s a panicked thought until I remember, She’s with Rocky.
He carried her to the primary suite. I relax.
I run my fingers through my tangled wet hair.
I should know how many hours have passed since we’ve all arrived on The Ithaka, but I don’t.
Time slips between my churning thoughts.
Replaying tonight’s events. Where I went wrong.
Where I could’ve gone right. Why had I relied so heavily on someone finding us?
And what would have happened if Jake didn’t come to the beach at that exact moment?
I think about everything. The reality and the wasted opportunities.
“Stop thinking,” I mutter. “Stop it.” I catch myself picking at my cuticle.
Normally I’d just camp out with Phoebe in her stateroom.
We’d eat a melting pint of Moose Tracks and watch some vintage slasher flick.
Or she’d put on Never Been Kissed for me.
A favorite of mine mostly because Drew Barrymore essentially cons the whole student body into believing she’s a teenager when she’s really an undercover reporter.
Phoebe always makes faces when David Arquette’s adult character seduces a high school senior.
“Gross!” she would yell at the TV. “He’s not even that hot!”
“He’s not even that smart,” I’d add. “But he can play baseball.”
“Okay, but can he wield a crossbow like a fucking baddie? Unless he turns into a vampire hunter or is a vampire and stops creeping on high schoolers, then he’s a solid one-point-two on the hot meter, Hails.” She’d flip off the screen every time he’d appear.
I’d laugh as each middle finger would get progressively more animated and closer to the TV. My cheeks would strain into an ache.
I want to smile now, just thinking how we decompress from emotionally taxing nights. With junk food and movies that transport us out of our lawless lives.
I love consuming knowledge, but it’s not entirely why I love films and books. I crave the escape. To be carried to a faraway place, to visit a thousand different destinations and lose myself among lives so unlike mine.
It’s why I also loved being a grifter. Traveling, being a voyeur who slips in and out of cities, never residing long enough to be called “the easy one” or “the town slut.”
I don’t really care about being labeled.
I don’t care about my reputation in Victoria.
Because even if it’s bad, I like having one.
I like being real. Most of the connections I’ve made here aren’t forged from fictitious threads I’ve created.
I have more purpose than just being a master puppeteer who’s scared of dropping a string, causing harm to those I love.
More than just being Phoebe’s best friend.
I have the simple purpose of being me. Of figuring out who I am.
And I’m honestly Hailey, a country club server. Hailey, a girl who has fallen epically hard for two men. Hailey, a girl who doesn’t know what the future holds. Who, for the first time, can’t see that far ahead.
I think I’d want my baby to feel multidimensional. To find simple purpose in life before wading into the deep.
I’ve done it all backward.
“Inside out, outside in,” I mutter to myself, my thoughts spinning.
I blink a few times before I enter my guest cabin in a cotton towel.
The small space only has room for a king-sized bed, two end tables, a television on the wall, and a long button-tufted bench at the foot of the bed. Warm lighting bathes the suite, and it’s not empty.
Jake and Oliver sit on the bench. Side by side. Waiting for me.
Their whispered conversation dies as soon as I step onto the soft carpet and shut the bathroom door behind me.
Instead of prying into that, I ask, “Is Trent coming onto the yacht tonight?”
“No,” Jake says, his brows furrowed. “No, he’s not stepping a foot on here. Varrick already picked him up in the dinghy and took him back to Stonehaven.”
My stomach curdles. Varrick being nice to him, not a revelation. I understand why he has to be. Trent is the mark. It just sours every part of my insides that Trent gets to roofie Phoebe’s drink and then walk away unscathed.
Not unscathed if we can complete the job.
Which still relies on me getting Trent to marry me. A shiver skates across the back of my neck. “How do I make him want to marry me if I’m going to want to stab him every time I look at him?” I say more to myself than to them.
But they obviously hear me.
Jake grimaces. “You’re still thinking about the job?”
“She’s always thinking about the job.” Oliver rises to his feet, television remote in hand.
“It’s easier thinking about that than what happened tonight…” I turn to a stack of clothes on the end table. Their eyes trail my body as I tug on a clean baggy Metallica tee and black cotton shorts.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but Jake said he found you on the ground,” Oliver says hesitantly like he’s gauging how hard to press his finger into an open wound. So this is most likely what they’d been whispering about before I came in.
“But I don’t know how you got there,” Jake adds. “Whether you were pushed or kicked or dragged—”
“I don’t have an answer to that. It happened too fast.” I spin to face them. They look at me with such heavy concern, it nearly steals my breath.
“Do you need to see a doctor?” Jake asks. “For you or the baby?”
I shake my head. “I’m not bruised or bleeding. I think we’re okay.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, crawl onto the middle of the bed, and glance up at the television screen.
“You want to watch a movie?” Oliver asks, already holding out the remote for me.
My heartbeat hammers in my chest. “I-I have to…I have to tell you both what happened first. Because if you think it constitutes as cheating, I think you both should know before we continue the night…”
My words drain the energy out of the room. Jake rubs a tensed palm over his mouth, despair already written across his eyes.
Oliver doesn’t blink, his hand with the remote dropping to his side. “You were protecting my sister, Hailey. It won’t change anything for me.”
Jake lifts his head and sends a challenging look to Oliver. A combination of a grimace and glare lances his face. “And you think it’d change something for me?”
Oliver shrugs. “You tell us.”
Rising to his feet, Jake faces me while I sit cross-legged on top of the comforter. His expression excavates the vulnerable parts of me. I try my best to breathe when he starts talking.
“I know we said we’d all be exclusive, but you could sleep with a hundred people, Hailey, and I would only care if your happiness was intact. I fell in love with you not because you’re mine, but because I don’t want a future where I’m not yours.”
My eyes well with an onslaught of emotion. “This isn’t real,” I mutter under my breath.
“This is very real, Hailstorm.” Oliver’s words come out choked. “He loves you…I love you.”
I shake my head on repeat. Over and over. Damp hair starting to frizz in my face. I pull my knees to my chest. “Then you both are out of your minds. You should hate me.”
“We can’t hate something we understand,” Oliver tells me.
It touches the most sensitive parts of me. I cry, and they both come onto the bed like I’ve beckoned them with my tears. Before they touch me, I blurt out, “I told them to put anything in my mouth.”
I think this will stop them from touching me.
It doesn’t.
Jake wraps an arm around my shoulders, his hand atop my head. Oliver has an arm around my waist, his hand against my thigh. Tears cloud my vision and slip down my cheeks. “I-I let him put his thumb in my mouth.” I release the truth.
Jake kisses the top of my head.
Oliver rubs the tears off my cheeks with his hand.
“I sucked it…” I wince. “And then I bit it.”
Oliver’s lips quirk. “Burying the lede there.”
“It doesn’t change anything.” I sniff and curl my knees closer to my chest. “Other than the fact that I had his blood in my mouth.” My grimace hurts my face at a harsher realization. “Fuck, I might actually need to see a doctor. Wh-what if he had diseases…?”
“You don’t need to worry about that tonight.” Oliver wipes off more tears, his familiar affection calming my speeding pulse.
“We can take you to the doctor in the morning,” Jake offers. The plan eases my uneven breathing. Plans, I like those. Jake rubs soothing circles with his thumb against the back of my neck. “Is that why they pushed you to the ground? Because you bit him?”
I nod. “Yeah…they were…they threatened…they might’ve…”
“But they didn’t,” Jake tells me.
My eyes well with tears. “Because you showed up. And I keep wanting to be grateful—I do—but all I can think about is the Fiddle Game. When all she had was me. And it wasn’t enough. No one showed up to save her.”
“Hey, you saved her tonight.” Oliver nudges my shoulder with his.
“You, Hailey. Not Jake. Not me. Not Nova. Not even Rocky. We weren’t on that beach.
Tonight, you were enough.” His eyes deepen into mine.
“I know it feels like things went wrong, but a lot of things went right, too. You have to find a way to focus on that.”
This is how they cope. Oliver, Rocky, Phoebe. There’s too much darkness in what they do to hang on to the shadowed parts of their lives. It’s about driving toward the light. I want that.
More than anything, I want to figure out a way to forgive myself for what happened in Carlsbad. I thought bringing Phoebe here was a start to that, but I know I can’t fully repent until Victoria is safe. No Trent. No Varrick. No darkness.
I focus on that future. The peaceful vision of it.
—