Chapter 33 Sea Storm
sea storm
A raging clash of wind and tide that tears at the edges of everything you thought was safe.
The air is thin on the hilltop. I can’t feel my hands.
But I can feel that pull.
The same current I felt the first time I met Trent, when he swept through the doors at the Empire theatre, bringing with him the taste of the ocean and the promise of a storm.
I tasted it again the moment I sat across from him, in his dead-starfish shirt. The same burnt-orange as the dead starfish I’d buried under a mound of wet sand.
Those blue tsunami-safe zones had seemed so far away.
Warning. Warning. Warning.
So many warnings. The storm was coming. It was brewing in the shivers shared between us. Then thickening in our furtive longing, and in our half-spoken secrets.
The print blurs.
Five articles. Neatly cut.
A photo of the wreckage.
I drop them into the box and slam the lid shut.
All along, I’ve felt this storm.
All along, I thought Trent-the-Flooder would be the wave to crush me.
An achy laugh scratches up my throat, and I look all the way down at the paddock. At that splash of orange shirt.
Those warnings. They were never meant for me. They were meant for him.
The truth folds over me.
I’m the one who caused the accident that took Ika away.
The wind lashes across my face. The sea in the sky collapses into one long purple cloud.
The hill is a wave tipped to break over him.
I am the storm.
Pain ripples out of me as a laugh.
How much do you hate the one responsible for taking Ika?
I used to hate them. But . . . how can I? Hate doesn’t change anything.
I haul in a sharp breath.
When did he learn?
After Grandpa confronted him. After seeing this box.
Of course he’d know. My mum’s face in that clipping. He’s seen her. He shielded me from her.
The shared room makes sudden, awful sense. Trent the bottle—my bottle—cracked.
For a few room-smashing seconds, he hated me.
Hated that his right to hate me had been ripped away.
His voice on the phone: hoarse, broken.
And yet he called.
And yet he came.
And yet he kissed me.
What happened here?
I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll run away.
I haven’t run yet.
I’m afraid.
You can tell me anything.
Please let me keep this a little while. Please let me be wrong. Just . . . for a while.
I’ve dragged him out to sea.
And he’s clinging to the wreckage, pleading, don’t leave.