Chapter 44 Coco
Coco
Ron takes me home, and as soon as I step through the door, the scent hits me.
The whole house smells like Stone—salty air, pine soap, the faint aroma of ocean wind tangled with something warm and clean.
After I peel off the dress—which I’ll return, of course—I find one of his T-shirts folded at the foot of the bed.
I pull it on and crawl into the side he’s been sleeping on, pressing my face to his pillow like it might hold the last breath he left behind.
I blink at the dark ceiling hour after hour until sleep finally drags me under.
I awaken the next morning and stare at my ceiling for a good thirty minutes before finally dragging myself from bed to get cleaned up. My entire body aches from the emotional strain of last night, and of course the whole scene is on replay in my mind.
It’s like I want to live in this agony. No, not live in it. I simply don’t know how to shut it off and move forward.
Maybe I don’t deserve to. Maybe I deserve to be haunted by what I did to Stone.
Soon as I’m out of the shower, there’s a knock at the front door. My body thrums with hope. Maybe it’s Stone and he’s forgiven me.
I open the door, half praying it’s him, half dreading that it is, because the look of contempt he gave me last night mirrored what I knew he’d feel when he discovered the truth.
But it isn’t Stone. It’s Cristina. She stands in the doorway with a to-go cup of coffee. “Hey,” she says gently. “I thought you might need this.”
“More like I could use a bottle of whiskey.”
She grimaces. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
I move aside as she hands me the cup. I’m hit with the scents of cinnamon and vanilla. I take a tentative sip and sigh. This helps. It won’t heal. But it will certainly help.
“How’d you sleep?” she asks, placing her lower back against the kitchen counter.
“Like shit. As you’d expect.”
She nods. “What are you going to do?”
I shrug. “Hide out here all weekend so I don’t have to see anyone. Put a bag over my head if I have to go into town—at least for the first month. Maybe it’ll all blow over by then.”
Cristina gives me a sympathetic look.
I sink onto a chair. “I made a huge mess of it all and he hates me. He always would’ve hated me, though.”
Maybe I wanted him to, because in the end it’ll be easier to release him if he hates me. It’s a clean break.
Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no easy way to let go of the effect Stone Maddox had on me.
I laugh and it’s a fractured sound. “I ruined everything, Cristina.”
She crosses to the living room and sits on the couch across from me. “I know you really loved him, and he really loved you. I’m sorry how it ended, but if it makes you feel any better, I’m proud of you.”
“What?”
My friend exhales a little whimper of sympathy. “You admitted everything at the hardest time to do it. You could have denied it, but you told the truth in front of the entire town—in front of your parents. That should mean something to you. You should be proud of that.”
I shake my head. “Two nights ago, Stone looked at me like he . . .” My throat knots up and I can’t get out the words loved me, which is what I’m yearning to express.
So I blow out a breath and say, “He looked at me like he cared. But last night, he didn’t even seem to recognize me. There’s nothing to be proud of.”
“Hey.” She bends until our gazes latch. “You told the truth when it would have been easier to lie. That’s brave.”
She hugs me, wrapping her arms around my neck, and I sigh into her. I’m broken, shattered into a thousand pieces that are so scattered I don’t think they’ll ever find their way back to one another again.
But still, I hold Cristina tight. She’s probably all I’ve got left after last night.
When she pulls away, my friend sits and talks to me for a few minutes, but there isn’t much to say.
After she leaves, I lounge in the living room for a while, reliving the moments of horror from last night until I finally shake it off and take the coffee back into my bedroom, stopping by the kitchen window to peer out.
There, in the distance, sit the ley lines. They pulse weakly, as if they, too, have been drained of the best part of their life—like they just lost the piece of themselves that, when it was locked into place, made sense of the world.
I climb into bed and pull the covers to my chin.
All I want to do is disappear.
Maybe I will.