Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
EWAN
Eventually, I convince my feet to move. Instead of going back inside the bar, I cross the street and slip into the alley between shops. The moment I’m in the dark, outside of the light provided by the streetlamps, my hands start shaking, and I break out into a sweat.
I hadn’t expected any of that to happen when I approached them.
I’d wanted to say hi, and sure, I was jealous that Shiloh was out with someone else.
I wanted to force him to look at me, talk to me.
I’d gone up to them with the express purpose of getting close enough to see the darker ring of blue around the outside of Shiloh’s irises, to hear that rough voice and catch the smell of the sea on his hair.
I did not approach them intending to drop a bomb on their relationship. Hell, I didn’t expect Shiloh to be in a relationship at all.
“Shit,” I mutter, voice wavering as though I wasn’t as successful in fighting the tears back as I thought I was. I walk faster, wanting to get back to the cottage, and feeling like I’m minutes away from a breakdown.
After my mom died, I felt like I lost control over my emotions.
My hormones and feelings were already wild, being only eighteen, but her death snapped that thin string of control and left me stranded.
I’d be walking down the street or sitting and eating an ice cream, and all of a sudden, I’d be crying.
There were mornings when I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t bring myself to shower or eat or care about anything at all.
Twice, I went up to the lighthouse, stood on the cliffs, and screamed until my throat burned.
It took years after I left Siren’s Point for me to wrangle myself back into some semblance of control.
A revolving door of therapy and medications and painting.
Painting, painting, painting. Those early years in LA were awful, but they were also my most successful—art gave me a place to put those emotions, and lucky for me, people seemed to enjoy looking at them.
These past few months, I’ve felt it creeping back up on me—the despondency, the manic desire to do everything all at once, followed by the numb hatred of everything I’d just completed.
I’d paint until my fingers ached, only to come back the next day and trash it.
You need a break, Daniel told me after he found the remains of one such meltdown.
He’d looked so sad, staring down at the ruined remains of the canvas I had destroyed.
I’d laughed at him—only he could see something worth keeping in that garbage.
Fiddling with the key and the damned sticky lock of Kelpie Kottage, I laugh angrily.
A break. A vacation. Not for the first time, and likely not for the last, I wish I’d chosen anywhere else in the goddamned world than here.
Finally succeeding in getting the stupid door unlocked, I push inside and carelessly drop the key onto the table.
It bounces to the floor, tinkling softly.
Unbothered, I kick off my shoes and pull my hoodie over my head.
I need to breathe, and I can’t do that with these fucking clothes on.
Dropping both the hoodie and the shirt onto the floor, I grab a cold water bottle from the refrigerator and sit down on the bed.
Closing my eyes, I put it on the back of my neck and try to breathe.
Relax. Stop thinking about Shiloh’s expression and the hurt in his voice and the smirk on Dryden Roy’s face.
“Calm down,” I tell myself. Threaten, really. I hate this side of myself. I hate feeling out of control.
Eventually, the feverish burn recedes, and I start to shiver in the chill room. Plopping the water bottle down on the bedside table, I slide into bed and grab my phone. I feel not necessarily calm, but calmer than I was, which means it’s time to confront what just happened.
I know about those emails you send him, Dryden had said to Shiloh.
He’d been mocking him. Laughing at something that Shiloh had thought was a secret.
A secret between us, apparently, even though I’ve not received a single email from him since I left.
I click Daniel’s name, putting the phone to my ear and listening to it ring.
“Hey, kid,” he greets me.
“Can I have the log-in for the email? The one connected with the website.” There’s a very pointed silence following this request, and I know it’s not the words so much as my tone that’s probably setting off alarm bells for him. In an effort to be pleasant, I add, “Please.”
“What’s going on?” he asks, voice losing the cheer with which he answered and snapping into something businesslike. A rush of vertigo has me swaying. Curling the fingers of one hand on the mattress, I close my eyes again.
“Do you delete any of the emails? The ones from…fans?” I trip over the last part, unsure of whether to lump Shiloh in with a fan base. But to Daniel, that’s exactly what he’ll be. Sickness claws at my insides as I think of Shiloh sending me a message and Daniel reading it.
“Of course not. I save everything, in case we need to file a police report or obtain a restraining order. What’s going on?” he repeats sternly.
“I need the log-in information. Someone…someone from my past has been emailing me, and I want to read them. I need to.”
Daniel expels a huff of air into the phone. Propping it between my shoulder and ear, I reach for the water bottle and crack the top off. I’m parched and feeling a little bit ill.
“All right, well, I’ll send you the info. Repeat offenders have their own folders. What’s—”
“Repeat offenders?”
“Yeah. You’ve got quite a few people who reach out regularly. One woman sends you a virtual Christmas card each year.”
“Shit,” I mutter. Daniel clears his throat.
“Some of it is pretty weird, though, so maybe if you just told me what you’re looking for, I could—”
“No.” I cut him off sharply. It makes me sick, thinking of him reading Shiloh’s private emails to me. I don’t want him to see those words again. “Just let me do it. It’s fine.”
“You okay, kid?” he asks. I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. I can’t do the nice-guy, dad routine right now. I already feel like crap, and nothing makes me feel worse than him being gentle with me.
“Fine,” I reply, trying to make my voice gruff to cover up the presence of tears. “Text me the info.”
I hang up and drop the phone to the bed beside me, blowing out a shaky breath and pressing my hands to my eyes. This was such a mistake. What the hell was I thinking? Before I can hop back into the panic spiral, my phone buzzes.
The password is ridiculously complex, which usually would make me happy.
Daniel’s cybersecurity only serves to annoy me today, though, as I try to wrangle my clumsy fingers across the keyboard of my laptop.
Three tries later, the inbox opens. Immediately, I can see why Daniel tried to warn me off.
There are a lot of folders. Some are labeled in a way that indicates genuine business inquiries, while others, Daniel took a more creative turn.
Christmas Card Queen is one folder name, and Foot Man is another.
That one almost gets me. I hover the cursor over it for a minute before deciding foot pictures might not be good for my mental health right now.
A strangled noise gets caught up in my throat when I scroll down far enough to see a folder with the simple title: Lobster.
Feeling like the lowest scum of the fucking earth, I click on it.
Messages blink to life, flooding the screen.
This time, the strangled noise comes out as a sob.
Every single email was sent from shilobsterman@, the handle Shiloh and I had set up for him in middle school.
I’d been the one to come up with it, and Shiloh, as he usually did, agreed and went along with me.
Shi was always my nickname for him, and we’d found it ridiculously funny that he was also a little bit shy.
We’d snorted with laughter as we set it up, my mother shaking her head at us in bemusement.
Four hundred and two emails total. Scrolling down slowly, I watch the dates tick down like I’m walking myself back in time.
By my calculation, there are roughly five years of messages.
One email sent nearly every single week, all around the same timestamp, as though it were part of Shiloh’s evening routine.
Haul, shower, dinner, email Ewan. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Five fucking years. Some weeks, he even sent two.
“Goddamnit,” I mutter, finally reaching the bottom and staring at that very first one. I don’t want to read it. I don’t want to know that these are here—have been here—and I missed them. I don’t want to replace ignorance with reality if this is what it looks like.
But I also want to. I want to sit here alone in a dark room—so very alone—and read five years of things Shiloh wanted to tell me.
I want to refamiliarize myself with my best friend.
I want to hurt, because if there is one thing these four hundred and two emails signify, it is that I deserve to.
I deserve to feel like shit, and I deserve every bit of pain and anger that I saw in Shiloh’s eyes tonight.
Five years of emails, sitting here collecting dust. Not a single one replied to, and yet he kept it up.
Kept talking into the wind, waiting for the breeze to bring my voice back.
I click on the first email.