14. Nova
There’s something peaceful about the hammock swinging between the two tall oak trees behind the cottage. I’ve spent a lot of time here over the years, spending summers with Gran and Pap on the island. It’s the perfect place to read, draw, literally do anything because it’s so quiet, you could fall asleep.
After Founder’s Day, I woke up sore and tired and in need of some peace. So, I took my sketch pad, pencils, and a light throw off the back of the couch to my favorite spot and promptly fell right to sleep, Toast at my side.
It’s not until the shuffling of footsteps sounds near me that I jump awake, nearly toppling out of the hammock, my heart hammering in my chest.
“Relax,” a soothing, yet familiar voice says from the tree line. “It’s just me.”
I pause, looking up to find Jack standing above me, his eyes soft and a smile on his lips.
I’m confused, trying to figure out what’s going on. He shouldn’t be here right now.
“Jack?” My voice sounds different to my own ears. Like I’m underwater. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey, baby.” Jack kneels beside me, placing his hand on my foot and . . . I can’t feel it. His eyes crinkle at the corners with a smile, his sandy hair blowing in the breeze.
He’s so handsome. Sometimes it’s hard to look at him.
“When are you coming home?”
Home?
“I don’t know.” I shake my head because I’m struggling to understand what’s happening. Why is he here?
“Well, you need to come home soon . . . we have a lot to do.”
“Jack . . .” I start carefully, sitting up in the hammock. I take his hand in mine and I’m surprised when his fingers are icy cold. “Jack,” I try, again, desperately struggling to wrap my mind around what’s happening. “Why are you here? I told you I needed space.”
“What do you mean?” His face falls, full of disbelief, and it hurts knowing that I’m hurting him. He’s not supposed to be here. If Gran and Pap see him . . . “I can’t come see my wife?”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” I rush, trying to reach for him again, but he tugs himself away from me. My chest cracks, guilt bubbling in my stomach like sour milk. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“You don’t want to see me.” The frown on his face is enough to make my chest ache. I hate seeing him sad. I always have. Even when things are bad between us, he’s still the boy I fell in love with as a kid.
A tear slips down his cheek and my heart breaks for him. I don’t want to send him away, but I know I have to. He can’t be here.
“I miss you, baby.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Jack. I just . . . I told you I need space.”
“But I’m trying, Nova. I really am.” More tears slip down his cheeks and he reaches up, tugging a hand through the light, wispy, nutmeg-shaded locks I always loved to run my fingers through. Jack has always been handsome. His sharp jawline. Blue eyes and the hair of a Disney prince are nothing compared to his smile. A smile that always used to make my heart flutter in my chest.
“I know, Jack. I am too,” I whisper. “We can work on this together when I get home. For now, you just have to give me some space.”
Abruptly, he jerks away from me, pushing the hammock so hard, I almost fall out of it. I clamber to right it, an old familiar fear taking over each and every one of my senses. “Jack, please—”
“No,” he grits, whirling on me with an anger in his eyes that I know all too well by now. “I saw the two of you last night. Together.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, my chest aching at the thought of my kiss with Reid. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want to stop.
So much for friends.
“It’s not like that—”
“Bullshit, Nova.” He kicks the tree in front of us, his hands shaking with suppressed rage. “Why am I never good enough for you?”
I have to get out of here. I need to get to the inn. Get to Pap. Reid. Anyone.
“Jack, stop,” I cry, tears burning in my eyes as they soak my cheeks. I hate when he’s like this. When I can’t calm him or when he flies off the handle for no reason. When there’s no reaching the real him.
“Why do you always have to make me feel like I’m not good enough, Nova?”
I hate when he yells. I hate when he breaks things. I hate when he slaps me.
“Jack, please,” I beg, my chest constricting painfully. I cover my face when he kicks the tree again, as if he can push it over and down the cliff to the water and jagged rocks below, dragging me with it. “You have to stop.”
“Look at me, Nova. See what you did?” He tugs my hands away from my face, forcing my gaze to his tear-stricken one. “You did this.”
I shake my head, clenching my eyes shut as hard as I can. I struggle to stand from the hammock, only my feet won’t move and I’m frozen in place, held down by an unseen force.
“You did this to me!” he bellows, so loud a flock of birds fly from the trees behind us. He keeps chanting the same thing over and over again, his voice growing distorted.
“Stop!”
“You left me!”
I wish him away. I wish I was anywhere else. Somewhere he’s not, but . . . it’s no use.
Not this time.
“This should have been you,” he spits, his voice morphing into something entirely different. Something in human. Evil. “Look. At. Me.”
I chance a glance at him and scream, falling back out of the hammock with a crash as the horribly gnarled face surges toward me. Streaks of thick black mud ooze out of his nose, his eyes, and his mouth, splashing at me with each gnash of his teeth.
“No, please,” I beg, fighting against the unseen hands that grab for me, but when I open my eyes, I’m in the living room of the cottage, my ass sore from landing on the ground and Toast looming over me, whimpering.
I surge to my feet before I can really stop and think about what that was and hurl myself out the front door, only to run face first into a new set of arms. My scream tears up my throat and I fight the hands away, but they don’t go.
“Nova,” a voice bites, struggling against my flailing arms as big ones wrap around me.
Reid.
I stop fighting, hunching over to steady my heart as it races in my chest. “Someone’s in the house,” I manage to croak and Reid releases me instantly, storming through the front door.
He disappears into the quiet house before my mind can really register what’s going on while I sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my stomach to quell the nausea gurgling in the back of my throat.
A nightmare.
I have them often, but not like that.
Neverlike that.
My hands shake when I brush the hair back from my wet face, tears still slipping down my cheeks.
He’s not here, Nova. He’s not here.
After what feels like a lifetime later, Reid steps back on the porch, Toast in tow, who plants wet, slobbery kisses on my damp forehead and cheeks.
“What happened?” Reid asks from above me, his gaze disturbed. He crouches down, reaching out and capturing one of my tears with his thumb on my cheek, looking at it like it ruined his favorite shirt.
“Nothing,” I lie, breathing slowly going back to normal. “It must have been a dream.”
A very realistic dream.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Because I have . . .
“Just a bad dream,” I reiterate, sucking in a deep, shaky breath. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?” Reid asks, brushing a stray curl away from my forehead. It’s so sweet compared to the nightmare I just had that a rush of emotions I don’t understand swirl in my chest.
“I said I’m fine,” I snap.
Reid just fixes me with a bored look. “You want to tell me what it was about?”
I shake my head as my heart begins to slow in my chest, leaving behind an empty ache.
“Did it have anything to do with last night?”
He says it so quietly, I’m almost sure I’ve imagined it. Then his gaze meets mine and I can see the fire burning in their chocolate brown depths and I know, he’s been thinking about it, too.
I can’t get his kiss off my mind. His taste—like tobacco and whisky and something so intense and so Reid, I’m not sure there will ever be a day that I don’t crave it.
“Not in the way you think.”
“Nova—” Reid starts, but I shut him up, surging forward and pressing my lips to his. I guess I just had to prove to myself that it wasn’t a one-time fluke. That I can feel something for someone else. Maybe I needed to prove to Jack that he doesn’t own me.
Maybe I just need to prove it to myself.
“Little bird,” Reid rasps against my lips, his fingers tightening in my hair, but I shut him up with another kiss. I let his kiss chase away the demons of my nightmares, then I let his taste replace them with dirty thoughts I have never, ever thought about another person. He groans when I try to deepen the kiss and slip my tongue against his, grabbing my hand on his face and gently prying me back from him.
“No,” he murmurs, his voice husky, like it was last night when I was prepared to give myself to him in the old, abandoned Whitaker house.
“Why?” I ask quietly, embarrassment flooding through me. I know he wants me; the evidence is clear by the bulge in the front of his jeans. Still, this is the second time he’s denied me.
He scrubs a hand over his face, his eyes dark when he pulls it away.
“Because you’re crying and I’m not taking advantage of that.”
I bite my lip, rejection coiling through me.
What he must think of me. I’m either pushing him away or climbing on top of him.
“I’m sorry.” I start to stand, but Reid catches me around the waist, hauling me back to him and sitting on the porch, back against the side of the house. He deposits me in his lap, turning my chin to face him and the look on his face . . . it’s anything but soft.
It’s harsh. Demanding. Ordering that I look at him and see the ugly truth.
“I want to,” he murmurs roughly, his fingers caressing the skin of my cheek. It feels good, but I know I shouldn’t be enjoying it. Anyone else’s touch should be the catalyst that drives me back to Portland. Normally, another man’s touch would send me into a spiral. It would feel wrong. Dirty.
But not Reid’s.
No . . . with Reid, I want more. I need more. His touch is like an anchor, holding me in place even though there’s a storm raging inside me.
“You never let it get very far,” I grumble under my breath, and he chuckles.
Slowly, carefully, he leans forward, pressing his lips to my ear until the stubble on his jaw sends a shiver through me that lights my core.
“Let me be frank, little bird,” he says, so quiet, his voice is like a tempting purr. “I want to fuck you. Hard. I want you desperate and needy for my cock and my tongue, and when I touch you, I want to watch those pretty little eyes roll back in your head for me. Not because you’re running from your nightmares.”
Gently, he reaches up, wiping the last of the wetness around my eyes away with his thumb and bringing it to his lips, sucking the moisture off. It’s both the most disturbing and yet, the sexiest sight I’ve ever seen.
I try not to think of the symbolism in that. Reid’s not only wiping my tears away, he’s feasting on them. Like he’s showing me he’s bigger than anything that could be in my nightmares.
At this moment, I’m starting to believe it myself.
“Don’t ask me to fuck you with tears in your eyes again, Nova. Next time, I won’t stop.”
Slowly, I nod, my eyes zeroed in on his. Our breathing is heavy in the small space between us and I can feel him impossibly hard at my rear.
“Do you want to go get ice cream?” I ask, before I can talk myself out of it.
He smirks, his hand gripping my hip harder.
“Another date?”
I roll my eyes, my cheeks flushing. “Who said it has to be a date? Why can’t it just be two people eating ice cream together?” I ask, throwing his previous words back at him.
I think he’s going to say no and my ego deflates, like the air rushing out of a balloon when it’s poked with a needle.
But, to my surprise, he smirks, a devious twinkle in his eye.
“On one condition. You have to promise not to fall in love with me.”
“What do you think about that color?” Katelyn points to a tan that couldn’t be more beige if it was called beige.
“That’s horrid,” I mutter, scrunching my nose.
“This sucks,” Katelyn groans, stomping her foot. “Everything sucks.”
I chuckle, surveying the wall of paint choices at the local hardware store. I’ll be honest, it’s not great, but there’s definitely some strong contenders I think she would love if she would just go for it.
“What about this one?” I ask, pointing to a nice baby blue that reminds me of the sky.
She frowns. “It’s too grandma-ish. Why can’t I just be different?”
“Okay,” I laugh, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
She does and I turn her to face the wall. “Okay, when you open them, tell me which one your eyes gravitate toward first. On the count of three.”
“Okay,” she nods, eyes still clamped shut.
“One . . . Two . . . Three . . . open.”
She opens her eyes, pausing and cocking her head to the side.
“That one.” She points to a deep, sea blue with hints of green.
“Then that’s your paint.”
“Wow,” she winces, taking the card from me. “Are you sure?”
“Well, yeah. That’s what called to you.”
“If you say so. If it sucks, I’m blaming you,” she jokes, carrying her paint and color card to the counter.
Twenty minutes later, we’re walking in the front door of the little house where she and her grandma live to find the elderly Ms. Tammy propped up in her old recliner in the living room, a tobacco pipe in her mouth. The thick clouds of smoke waft through the room and Katelyn steps in, waving it away.
“Grandma, Nova’s here.”
“We live in Nova,” she says crankily, not taking her eyes off the TV.
“No,” Katelyn corrects, reaching back to pull me forward. “This is my friend, Nova. Her family owns the inn, remember?”
Grandma turns her eyes on me, perusing me up and down with a disgruntled look before going back to the TV. I used to speak to Ms. Tammy all the time. She used to be a fisherwoman, but since she’s gotten older, her mind’s started to slip and she never comes outside. It’s sad to see her this way, knowing she used to be one of the coolest grandmas in town. Besides mine, of course.
“What’s she want?”
“Grandma!” Katelyn scolds, cheeks flaming red. I try not to chuckle and wave. “I’m so sorry, Nova.”
“It’s good to see you. I’m here to help Katelyn decorate her room.”
Grandma harrumphs. “Used to be my room ‘til she moved back in.”
Katelyn rolls her eyes and I stifle my laugh. Katelyn actually had a decent job back in Portland. She’s one of the few people I used to hang out with back home when I could manage some freedom. Since Ms. Tammy got sick, though, she’s moved back here to care for her. I can’t lie and say it didn’t make me happy, knowing she was also moving to the island. I haven’t spent a summer here since I was eighteen and I just knew after the accident, everyone would either tiptoe around me or have a million questions.
I think, at this point, I would have preferred the interrogation over the worried glances whenever it comes up. Or the hushes whenever death is mentioned, as if I am the only person that’s ever lost someone in this world.
“Well, we better get started if we want to get it done today,” I say, taking Katelyn’s hand before her grandma can throw any more insults at her.
Katelyn leads me through the small house and up to her room. It’s huge, one of those ones that spans the whole upper floor of a coastal house, but I must admit, it does look a bit grandma-ish.
“I don’t know why she has to act that way,” Katelyn murmurs, tossing her purse on the bed. “I think she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. I think she’s just old.”
Katelyn snorts.
“You can say that again.” She shakes her head. “I just don’t know what to do with her sometimes. That pipe will kill her.”
“Yeah,” I agree, readying the paint while she moves some last-minute items to the center of the room. “But so could butter, based on what doctors say. And sugar. Fat. Cheese. Really anything that’s good in the world.”
“I guess that’s true. It smells like ass, though.”
“It does,” I concede. I wait a moment, not sure if I should ask, but feeling like I need to, based on the look on Katelyn’s face. “How is she doing?”
She shrugs. “Some days are better than others. I got her to sit on the porch last night for a little bit. Gave me time to tidy up her room. Well—the living room. She was mad, of course, because it smelled like tropical breeze cleaner and not the asshole of a sailor, but . . .”
“Well, I mean, she was used to sailor ass, before she sold the boat.”
“Ew,” Katelyn gags, shaking her head and kicking off her shoes. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve conceded to the fact that some day, she won’t be here. Some mornings, she will wake up and remember how much she loves me. Some days, she won’t. It’s like constantly being stuck inside a punching bag, not knowing when someone is going to strike.”
I know that feeling all too well.
“Like walking on eggshells.”
“Exactly,” she agrees, but then she winces. “Sorry.”
“Please don’t,” I grumble, kicking my sneakers to the doorway. “I want to be there for you.”
She smiles, her green eyes flashing. “Well, thank you. It’s nice to talk to someone about it. I feel like I’m stuck in purgatory sometimes.”
“Well, if you ever need a break, I would be more than happy to come sit with her for awhile.”
She waves me off. “She’s good on her own for a few hours. Besides, what would I need a break for?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrug. “Maybe a date,” and then slyly, I add, “Maybe a date with Crusty.”
I’ve never seen someone get so red, so fast.
“It’s okay,” I chuckle. “I know he has a crush on you. I know you have a crush on him. I’m not interested. You two are. Why shouldn’t you go for him?”
“Well . . . for starters . . .”
“His name is Craig. Not Crusty.”
“I know, but can you imagine moaning Crusty?”
“Katelyn, I can’t even imagine getting to first base with Crusty. He turns me all the way off.”
She laughs, face brightening further. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t even know how it’s going to go. He asked me out, but I haven’t given him an answer because I’ve been trying to come up with a way to mention it to you.”
“Please. Be happy. Run, frolic through the weeds naked together. I will support you, one hundred percent.”
“You’re the best.”
“I know,” I chuckle, plopping down beside the paint containers to start mixing them. “Maybe you and Tara can have a double wedding.”
“Please. And steal the show from those two?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. Tara and Manto are what I like to call divine intervention souls. Both weren’t looking for something, but they found each other. Now, it’s like they can’t breathe without one another. “God, they’re perfect. Makes me sick.”
“I know . . . By the way,” Katelyn starts while I pour out the paint into two containers for us to start the trim work. “I saw Reid today.”
My face instantly heats up to match the old red rug in the center of the room.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He was on his way to the boat dock.”
After our little afternoon ice cream not-date, we separated, him going back to the inn to look at the air conditioner, while I met Katelyn at the hardware store.
His words replay in my head—in fact, they’ve been replaying since he said them and I can’t get over the sense of need I feel that I’m not accustomed to.
I want to fuck you, Nova. Hard.
How can something so crude, make my stomach twist with butterflies? As if he’d told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world?
Reid doesn’t beat around the bush and I’d be lying if I said those seven little words didn’t make my heart beat just a little harder against my ribcage. He said he was a monster, but every day I spend with him, I’m finding he’s chasing mine away, step by step.
Something like that can get addicting.
And that’s dangerous.
That nightmare was no coincidence.
“So, what’s going on with Reid?” Katelyn asks, trying to sound nonchalant after a stretch of silence. “Sophie still salivating over him?’
“When is Sophie not salivating over something that’s mine?”
“Oh,” Katelyn pauses. “So, he’s yours?”
“No,” I grumble, my cheeks heating to a cool five-thousand degrees. “I’m just . . . you know?”
It’s so strange . . . I know he’s leaving in September, but somehow that draws me to him more. Like a moth to a flame, I can’t keep myself away. Maybe it’s because, for once, it doesn’t feel like there are any lifelong consequences to this. We can kiss and sneak off to the old Whitaker house all we want. At the end of the day, this isn’t forever, and I’ll never see him again after the summer’s over.
Part of me wishes I could be different. That he could be different. Maybe we could just be two people who meet and fall in love and grow old together. There would be no promise from the past holding me back. No guilt every time I kiss him and I wouldn’t have to wonder what could have been.
But we aren’t different people. We’re us and some day, we’re going to have to say goodbye.
I just can’t let myself get too wrapped up in him and forget everything from the past. The ring, same as my nightmare, serve as a gentle reminder to the promise I made so many years ago and one I intend to keep.
“Did you kiss him?” Katelyn asks, side-eyeing me from across the room.
I almost lie, but I know she knows the truth. Plus, it would be fun just to gush like a high schooler for a minute.
“Fine.” I sigh in defeat. “I did.”
Katelyn grins. “And?”
“And it was amazing,” I groan, dropping my paint brush back in the container.
It’s true. Kissing Reid was like something out of a dirty romance novel. Once I kissed him, it’s like I needed to do it so desperately that I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted his taste, his scent, his hands—with all their sexy veins—all over me.
I haven’t stopped thinking about that night after the bar. When he made me come without even touching me. I’m still not sure what happened there, but I’ve had more than one dream about it and I’m starting to grow concerned.
“He’s hot,” Katelyn shrugs, like it’s the truest fact in the world. “You need to sleep with him.”
“Katelyn!” I blush, looking around us like the entirety of Port Nova is crammed in Ms. Tammy’s house. “No. That’s out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I stammer, my stomach clenching nervously. “He’s leaving at the end of the summer.”
“So?”
“Sooo . . . Why would I want to start something with him if I’ll never see him again?”
“We’re not talking about a relationship here, Nova. We’re talking about pure, unadulterated sex with the second hottest man on the island.”
“Wait, you think Crusty is the hottest man on the island?” When she eyes me, blushing harder than I am, I hold up my hands in defense. “Okay, to each their own.”
“No,” she snaps. “You aren’t steering me away that easily. Nova,” she says, fixing me with a look. “Why can’t you just have some fun with Reid? I mean, if you hate each other at the end of the summer, then so be it. You’re going your separate ways, anyway.”
I bite my lip and the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. My nerves are at an all-time high, especially after my nightmare this afternoon.
Sucking in a deep breath, I force the words out of my mouth. Sort of . . .
“Katelyn, what are your thoughts on dating after someone you love passes?”
Her face falls and she looks at me for a moment. We don’t talk about this. We haven’t in years. Once it happened, I just kind of . . . hid it from the world.
She shakes her head, her auburn hair falling around her face. “I think you have been through a lot. More than you’re telling and I also think you deserve to feel wanted. You deserve to be treated however you want to be treated and you certainly don’t owe anyone a damn thing. No one owns you, Nova. Dead or alive.”
A stray asshole tear slides down my cheek and I hastily wipe it away.
“I know. I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Well,” Katelyn says, angrily painting the wall in front of her, as if it’s the cause for all my problems. “I think that after you lose someone, you have to move on. I think it’s natural to want to feel someone else. Even if you’re just having fun.”
“Having fun,” I repeat, picking at a loose thread on my shorts.
“Having fun,” she repeats, nodding her head. “Nova, no one’s telling you you’re not allowed to move on, are they?”
“No.” Just my own fucked up nightmares.
“Nova?” I look up to see her watching me carefully, like she can read right through me.
“I just. I feel guilty, you know?” She shakes her head, but I continue, needing to get this out. I need someone to hear me say it. “There are so many things I didn’t get to do.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I muse. “Anal.”
Katelyn bursts out laughing and I instantly hate myself for saying the first thing that came to mind.
“Sorry,” I wince. “Too much?”
“No,” she squeals, shaking her head through the tears brimming in her eyes. “Not at all.” She sobers up, standing and crossing the room to sink down in front of me. “Nova. You need to experience life. Otherwise, when you’re old and gray, you’ll be lonely and you’ll regret the experiences you missed out on. If that’s anal with a hot fisherman, then at least you’ll have some fun stories to tell the kids later on.”
I blush so brightly that I swear my cheeks are melting off as we speak.
Anal with the hot fisherman. Something about sex with Reid just sounds like I’m going to have a limp the next day. The warmth pooling in my stomach isn’t anything new, it’s just . . . this is the first time I’ve admitted to myself or anyone else, out loud, that I want to sleep with Reid.
“It’s just one summer. A month and a couple days, at the most,” Katelyn explains, knocking my shoulder with her hand. “What can it hurt?”
Still . . .
“If you don’t, I will,” Katelyn smirks and even though I know her interests lie elsewhere and she would never, I can’t help but feel a twist of jealousy in my stomach.
“Reid was pretty good with his tongue last night. I think he took mouth aerobics or something because his kiss was intense.”
Katelyn just shakes her head, confused, but supportive, nonetheless.
“So, go for it. Make a dirty sex list and read off everything you want him to do to you in the next couple weeks and get to humping.”
I clench my eyes shut. “Please don’t ever say get to humping again.”
She snickers. “Come on. No more crying. Let’s get this room painted. I’m ready to never see beige again in my life.”