CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10
AFTER GETTING SIDETRACKED BY THE IDEA THAT THE REMAINING food needed to be somehow secured to keep the possibly nonexistent rats away, and then turning the generator on so people could complete their evening ablutions with the luxury of light and running water, Ness walked down the hall with purpose. Her time alone in the kitchen, listening to the others laugh outside, hadn’t helped her mood. She got two doors past the bathroom and decided this was as good a place as any for an ugly cry. Whatever lay behind this horrific metallic silver door would be just fi–
Hayes was lying on a four-poster bed in boxer briefs, a candle on the black bedside table. The mattress was bare but for a vintage floral pattern sheet that seemed completely at odds with the rest of the decor, which was, well, terrible.
Ness’s gaze locked onto the bed, suddenly oblivious to the deep-purple walls and the mural of a dolphin straddled by a nude woman in stilettos.
The dim light flickered over a professionally maintained torso that had somehow gotten better with age. While he still sported a visibly toned physique, Hayes’s abs were no longer defined into eight perfect sections. Ness had the sense that his body had settled into itself over time, becoming more solid. Stop staring, she ordered herself, but her eyes had landed on a small black mark at the top of his ribs.
Her thumb ran over the smooth, blemish-free skin of her hip bone as she remembered how hard she’d cried after getting the tattoo removed once she was engaged to Colin. She’d told herself she was erasing a youthful, tipsy mistake, but it had ended up feeling more like cutting the final tether holding her to her past.And it hurt. She’d always assumed he’d had his dealt with as well, but there it was, a tiny “hi” in her curly script staring her down from across the room. As far as she could see, it was still the only one he had.
It had been a joke between them, the idea that you could say that one teensy word with a million different inflections. It could mean everything from “What the hell are you doing here?” to “This is an unexpected but thrilling surprise!” to “I wish we’d never met” to “I love you.” Every time they greeted each other they’d say it in a new way, trying to best the other with a mountain of (pretend, mostly) emotion behind a single syllable.
Hayes shifted, his tanned shoulders and chest flexing as he rolled onto his side to look at who had come in. His eyes widened for a second when he saw her, then focused, pinning her to the spot.
Dimly, she heard a small whimper escape her throat.
“Oh, yikes. I’ll . . . I’ll just . . .” Ness stammered as she backed out, closing the door as she went, still unable to tear her eyes away. Probably some kind of science thing, she thought. The light’s holding my attention. It has nothing to do with the man-buffet spread before me.
Hayes swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his clothes. “Hey, wait a sec!”
In her final glimpse of him through the slim crack before the door shut, perhaps more firmly than was necessary, he was scrambling a little, trying to put feet into pants while also walking toward her.
She headed toward the stairs, ignoring the sound of her name being called behind her. The light from her candle-powered lantern was completely insufficient but also allowed her to gloss over the safety hazards that would have been undeniable in daylight. Sure, the wood was a bit on the smooshy side, and yeah, there were holes here and there, but she’d scamper up like a light-footed squirrel to find solitude in her metaphorical tree. Easy peasy.
She heard the bedroom door creak open and Hayes’s footsteps as he jogged down the hall toward her.
She had pivoted, ready to tell him to back the hell off, when her foot went through the fourth step.
“Aw, come on,” she moaned, trying to maneuver it back out without driving splinters of wood farther into her ankle.
“Would you hold still?” Hayes said, sounding as exasperated and wrung out as Ness felt.
“Would you go away?” she countered.
Hayes glared at her. She set her jaw and glared back. He’d put on his shirt, she noticed, and she was even more annoyed when she felt a pang of disappointment.
“No,” he said finally.
“I can deal with this.” She put her hands on her hips, the picture of competence. “It’s no big deal. I don’t need help.”
He let his head drop back in exasperation. “There’s nothing wrong with needing help.”
“I never said there was. I said that now, in this moment, I don’t need any. I’m fine. Thank you for your concern. Please return to your naked meditations.”
He harrumphed.
She growled.
“This is stupid.”
“You’re telling me.” Hayes stepped back and crossed his arms, looking at her with one eyebrow raised, like I could do this all day.
Ness was pretty sure she could feel blood running down her leg. Small, rodent-sized feet scrabbled nearby. She wondered if rats were attracted to blood. Beside her, the wall made a thunking sound, as though something large had bumped into the other side. The thought of larger, person-eating things made her flinch, jerking her attention back to the task at hand. She needed to get out of there.
“I can figure this out.” She glared at her foot and the traitorous step.
Hayes took a deep breath in through his nose. “I’m sure you can. My point is you don’t have to do it by yourself. I’m right here.”
Could she just wiggle it, like . . . ? Pain streaked up her calf. Nope.
“Listen,” she said, carefully bending the knee of her free leg to lower herself, sitting on the step above. “I’m strong, independent, capable.” She edged her hand down the crack between the craggy edge of the board and her leg.
“No one’s arguing that.”
“You standing there feels like a silent argument.”
“So you just want me to leave you here, stuck in the stairs?”
She wiggled one finger into the edge of her shoe and started the delicate operation of trying to pop it off her foot without flexing her ankle.
“Yes. I won’t be here long.” She hoped.
Hayes glared at her.
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“Why are you so . . . you?!” Ness bit back a frustrated scream as splinters tore her skin. “You don’t have to save everyone, Hayes.”
He crouched down in front of her, forearms across his thighs. Behind the dirt-flecked lenses of his glasses, his eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have to be so goddamn selfish.”
“Now I’m stubborn and selfish? You haven’t seen me in a lifetime. You have no idea who I am.” She pulled her gaze from his, directing her eyes to the crumbling ceiling overhead. Wires dangled like snakes through the spaces where drywall and plaster had fallen away.
Hayes let out a long slow breath and said, “I see you now, hurt, in an unimaginable situation where we all have to depend on each other. What are we supposed to do with you, Ness, if that gets infected?”
“Sacrifice me to the sea as an offering.”
“This isn’t a joke!” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “It gets exhausting taking care of you,” he said quietly.
“Then stop.”
With her shoe now off, ever so carefully she eased her foot to the surface and flopped back onto the stairs, panting with relief.
“I’ve been on my own for a long time, Hayes. You don’t need to worry about me.”
His eyes drilled into hers as though he was examining her soul.
“But I want to.”
Ness forced a hollow laugh as her insides flip-flopped.
“I don’t need to be saved.”
Hayes’s mouth curved into a sad smile. “Maybe I do.”
* * *
Ness shifted her weight on the lumpy mattress, trying not to move her foot or think about stupid Hayes and his stupid body and how his eyes had a look she knew well from seeing it in the mirror. Feeling lost and afraid was nothing new to her, but it didn’t suit Hayes.
Instead of embarrassing herself by limp-hopping into the living room with the others, she’d retreated to the room where she’d found Hayes sprawled out, pursuing the theory that being alone was almost certainly better than having to curl up next to him in the living room.
Alone was not better.
The candlelight had made the blood oozing from a gouge just above her anklebone look black. She didn’t think anything was critically damaged, but man, it throbbed.
The night before, surrounded by the breathing, grunting, and shuffling of seven other people, Ness hadn’t appreciated the quiet of the island. Now, with only her thoughts to keep her company, she tried to focus on identifying each sound.
She’d heaved the window open to allow some of the cooler night breeze to flow through, and even up on the hill where the house was perched, she could hear the waves. Leaves rustled. It would be peaceful, she thought, if she weren’t so thoroughly creeped out.
If she had to describe the theme of the room it would be reflection, in the literal sense. There were mirrors everywhere. A twelve-foot swath of them covered one wall. In the corner, a set of full-length, wood-framed mirrored panels formed a kind of privacy screen. Ness had been scared to look at the ceiling for fear that another would be lurking above her head, but she’d lucked out—just a plain old ceiling, more intact than the one in the stairway.
The sheet beneath her smelled vaguely of Hayes. She put her hands over her face and groaned as she replayed the evening in her head.
She didn’t want to be the one causing people stress or adding tension to an already off-the-charts dramatic situation. She was the solid one now. Dependable. Calm. Easygoing and low-key. The Ness stuck on this island was not the Ness of 2003 that these people thought they knew.
Except she was acting like a nitwit and couldn’t seem to make herself stop.
Admittedly, she was proud of her independence, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew her limits . . . didn’t she? An annoying voice in the back of her head suggested that she was fooling herself. Something she’d gotten quite good at very early in life.
She’d been a baby when her mom died in a car accident on her way to a beginner tap class for adults. A drunk driver hopped on the highway going the wrong direction and that was it. It was just Ness and her dad. It was the only way she’d ever really known it.
As an adult, she’d spent a lot of time thinking about how he coped in those early years.
A steady stream of babysitters, mostly local high school girls recommended by kindly neighbors, had taken on the majority of her care while her dad worked as an assistant manager at a bank. It was one of those girls, Mallory, a cheery, gratingly optimistic brunette, who had dragged Ness along to an open casting for the Canadian equivalent of Gilmore Girls when she was eleven.
In some tired-looking hotel lobby, Ness sat in a corner, reading Nancy Drew and eating chocolate chip cookies until her stomach hurt, while Mallory took her shot. She was one of the last to face the table of exhausted, grumpy casting directors and assistants and was in and out in fifteen seconds. “Not the look we’re after, thanks for coming,” an assistant said, ushering her out the door with a hand hovering near, but not touching, her back.
One of the people from the table came out to get some water and spotted Ness lying on the floor, legs propped vertically against the wall, while Mallory sobbed into a nearby pay phone.
The woman was suddenly looming like a dark angel with the harsh fluorescent light glowing behind her head.
“How tall are you?” she demanded.
Ness quickly stood up, sure she was in trouble.
“Spin around.”
She twirled like a music box ballerina, covered in cookie crumbs and floor debris.
“Can you see without your glasses?”
This seemed like a stupid question, but Ness pulled the bright-red frames from her face and squinted at nearby signs, reciting from memory. She couldn’t see a thing.
She wondered when the woman was going to call her dad and how much trouble she was in for . . . lying on the floor? Being out and about without a grown-up?
“You’re perfect.” She handed Ness a business card, instructing her to have a parent call as soon as possible.
And just like that, everything changed.
She’d expected her dad to be mad, livid even, that she’d been bused across the city and left unattended while Mallory chased her dreams. But as it turned out, the lure of fame and fortune was hard to resist. The next day he skipped work to go to the casting agent’s office. The day after that Ness went to a go-see and was booked for a two-episode guest spot as the distant cousin of a main character in a show that was a real hit with the Canadian tween crowd.
The rest, as they say, is history. She was on a Times Square billboard for the Gap at thirteen, had a recurring role on the Disney Channel by fourteen. At seventeen she scored a lead role on an edgy new series, Ocean Views, about kids and their questionable choices. She was making what her dad called “real money” and paving the way for a long, solid career in the Biz. Or so she thought.
Part of surviving that life had always meant ignoring the bad parts. Pretending not to hear or see things that might rock the boat. Acting like everything was fine when it wasn’t. Always putting the work ahead of herself, her health, and her happiness.
In the Hayes-scented bed, surrounded by mirrors that had borne witness to lord knows what kind of depravity, Ness made herself stay present. To enjoy a short retrospective of the day and see it for what it was—a big pile of tropical-colored shit.
She wiggled her toes experimentally. The foot didn’t ache quite as much, but she’d kill for a bag of frozen peas.
Thump.
Ness bolted upright, staring at the wall of mirrors.
Thunk.
The mirrors shuddered slightly, making Ness’s disheveled moonlit reflection glimmer like the surface of a puddle.
“Who’s there?” Ness called, her voice scratchy and not nearly as commanding as she’d been aiming for.
She cleared her throat and tried again. “This isn’t funny!” There. Appropriate anger and an edge promising retribution.
Keeping one eye on the door, she looked around for a weapon and, shuddering only slightly, doubled up a pair of novelty handcuffs from the bedside table and slid them onto her knuckles. It would probably hurt her as much as whoever she needed to punch, but it seemed worth the risk. At least the cuffs weren’t furry.
A minute ticked by. Then two. Ness counted slowly to thirty, listening for any hint of movement. She slid out of bed, handcuffs still in place, and hop-stepped toward the door, her ankle protesting at the slightest flexion. She cracked the door open and peered out at the empty hallway. Easing through, she quickly hobbled into the living room, stubbing the toes of her good foot on the way.
Muffling a curse, she eased down onto the mattress beside Hayes. He mumbled something in his sleep, turning to her. His arm came around her waist and he snuggled close, his chin resting just above her head.
She tensed, then let out a breath, long and slow, feeling her body relax.
It wasn’t until she was yawning, already half asleep, that she noticed Ian wasn’t there.