9. Chapter 9
Chapter nine
~ZED~
I make it halfway up the stairs before I know she’s coming after me. I feel the same awareness I’ve had of her all day.
“Zed.”
Her sweet voice saying my name almost makes me turn, but I keep walking.
“Zed,” she tries again, louder.
I finally stop because if I don’t, she’ll keep following me.
I know what’s happening to me. I know it early enough to hate it in advance. The warning signs are all there. Every nerve in me is pulled hard over something that wants out.
“What?” I say.
It comes out flat. Maybe she’ll hear it and take the hint.
“What the hell was that?”
No such luck.
I close my eyes and turn toward the nearest window. I look out at the beach and try to keep the scene in front of me. The waves and the low sun moving over the water. Anything but the small body that was wrapped around my leg. Anything but the word hero that came with it.
“Go back downstairs, Lilly.”
She doesn’t. I can hear her breathing behind me. I hear the anger in it. The confusion. The need to know.
And I get it. I do. If I were her, I’d want to know what kind of person drags a kid out of the water and then looks him in the face and says that. What kind of person does that?
Me, apparently.
“I can’t believe you actually said that to him,” she says.
I say nothing because I don’t have anything she’d understand. Nothing other than what I need her to do right now.
Leave.
“What is wrong with you?” she snaps.
Plenty, Snowflake. Pick a drawer.
I turn just enough to look at her.
She’s furious. Her cheeks are hot, her shoulders are tight, and her arms are crossed over her purple tank.
I almost miss that version of this. The one where I could enjoy her anger.
Not today.
“Drop it.”
“No.”
Jesus Christ.
“Lilly.” Usually, her name does something useful in my mouth. Sharpens her. Catches her. Gets me something. This time it just scrapes my throat on the way out.
I can still see the kid’s face when I pushed him off me.
“Get out.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, and she lets out a small scoff.
“Excuse me?”
“Go back downstairs.” I drag a hand over my mouth, trying to reset. “Go do whatever the fuck you were doing before this. Please.”
She stares at me in disbelief.
I push off the window and take two steps down the hall. My shirt feels wrong on my skin, and my lungs have gone stupid.
My body’s gearing up like it’s still there, still about to watch something happen that it can’t stop.
“Zed.”
“Don’t say my name right now.” I turn my head just enough for her to see my face and know I mean it.
I don’t need questions. I don’t need concern. I don’t need anything from her right now except distance.
I feel her judging me with that rigid little moral disgust she likes to throw between us.
“Go down and apologize to Sam.” She lifts her chin.
No.
Absolutely not.
She takes my silence for what it is.
“Oh my God.” Her face hardens all over again. “You won’t even do that.” Her eyes search my face, and she shakes her head once.
Then she steps back with a look of pure disappointment. A part of me knows what’s coming before she says it. She looks at me like I’m something she found dead in a sink.
“I don’t know what happened,” she says quietly. “But if you’re going to take it out on a nine-year-old, I’m not playing whatever this is with you.”
With one last shake of her head, she turns and walks away. I stand there in the hall and let her footsteps echo behind her.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I liked our little game. Her coming to me angry. Me pushing. Her pretending not to like it.
Fucking great.
I wanted her attention. I wanted her curious, pissed off, flushed. I did not want her looking at me like that.
My eyes sweep over her one last time, catching on the bandage wrapped around her finger as she heads down the stairs.
Something came back to me while I was sticking the edges of it down around Lilly’s finger. Something I hadn’t thought of for years.
“Ow.”
“Yeah, no shit. Hold still.”
His tiny hand squirms inside mine while I peel the backing off the Band-Aid. There’s blood on the cutting board behind us and half an apple sitting beside the knife.
“I could do it.”
“Clearly.”
“I wanted to show you I’m big now.”
That knocks some of the irritation out of me.
“You shouldn’t have touched the knives.”
“You use knives.”
“I also drive. You planning on taking the car next?”
A little offended frown. “No.”
I smooth the Band-Aid around his finger and press the edges down.
“Next time you need something cut, you tell me.”
He studies the bandage. “Okay.”
I tap his hand once before letting go. “Let me know if you need me to change it.”
Then the memory lets go as quickly as it came.
I should leave it in the past where it belongs.
Apparently, Lilly’s three-millimeter injury has me digging up graves.
By the time I hit the stairs, I’m down to one thought.
This little camp shit is over.
I cut through the house toward the kitchen, already halfway to my keys with the road in my head. One bottle of water for the drive, and then I’m gone.
I wrench open the fridge when Dom’s voice hits behind me.
“You want to explain what the fuck that was?”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
I grab the first bottle I see and slam the fridge shut.
“Move.”
Dominic’s in the doorway, blocking it with those broad captain shoulders and an expression that says he’s already decided this is going to be a problem.
“Not till you answer me.”
I walk straight at him.
He holds his ground until I’m close enough that one of us is going to have to make this physical.
“Z, talk to me.”
“Move, Dominic.”
His jaw tightens, but he steps aside.
I shoulder past him anyway and head for the stairs, water bottle clenched so hard in my hand the plastic starts to crunch.
“I’m leaving.”
That gets him moving.
He follows me out, then cuts around me at the base of the staircase before I can make it up.
“No.”
I stop and look at him. “You don’t tell me when I leave and when I stay, Captain.”
“Tonight I am.” He braces a hand on the railing, blocking my path.
“Dominic, get the fuck out of my way.”
He shakes his head, puffing out his broad chest to let me know he’ll physically hold me back if he has to.
I’m riled up enough that if I decide I’m done with this conversation, I can absolutely put him through the wall and be on my way to my car.
But that would make tonight go from bad to fucking worse.
“Dark’s about to hit,” he says. “Your head’s gone to shit, and I’m not letting you get behind the wheel and drive like this.”
“You’re not... letting me?”
“Yeah. If I have to knock you out, I will.”
We both know what would happen. If this turns, it’s going to get ugly. He’s strong enough to make me work for it. I’m big enough to make him regret it. We’d both walk away fucked and with way bigger issues than a crying kid.
“I need out.” I start to move again, to go around him this time, and that’s when he grabs my head with both hands. I start to jerk away when I see the desperation in his eyes.
His palms are on each side of my face, forcing me to look at him because apparently words weren’t enough and now he’s down to whatever the hell this is.
“Listen to me.” He says it slowly. “You are not getting in that car tonight.”
I glare at him.
I know what he’s saying.
And he’s right.
“I am not letting you leave tonight, Zed. Please. Wait till morning.” His eyes search my face, the glare gone, replaced by genuine worry.
I breathe out once through my nose. “Fine.”
Dom studies me, making sure I mean it. Then he lets go. And the second his hands leave me, I yank my head back anyway, out of pride more than necessity, like I can still reclaim something just by refusing the softness of the gesture.
I get one step around him before I stop.
“Get another lifeguard tomorrow.”
Dom looks at me. “We already have—”
“Thirty kids. One disappeared without anybody noticing.” I start walking again. “Get two.”
“I will,” he says after a moment of silence. “Don’t disappear.”
I sigh, finally stepping around him, no longer heading for the car but for the pack of reds on my nightstand.
By the time I get away from the house, the cigarette is already between my fingers. The noise of dinner carries across the property in waves. The villas glow warm behind me. I keep walking until the noise dulls, out near the dunes where the sea is louder and the house is just background.
I light the cigarette and drag the smoke in deep.
I don’t want to smoke around the kids. I’m not pretending to be some moral fucking example.
But I’m not sitting there letting them watch me do it and decide cigarettes are cool because a goalie they like made it look that way.
They’ve got enough bad ideas available to them already.
I sit on a low stone edging half-hidden by dune grass, one boot planted in the sand, one elbow braced on my knee, and let the nicotine work on the edges of the anger that still hasn’t fully burned out of my system.
It helps enough to make the inside of my chest stop feeling like it’s trying to claw its way out. I’m still sitting in it, though.
In Sam’s face when I shoved him off me. In Lilly’s expression in the hall. The disappointment. Footsteps shift in the sand behind me, and perfume reaches me before the voice does.
“Got another one?”
Sidney. Or whatever the hell her name is.
She steps around into my line of sight. Her bikini top is hidden under some loose beach wrap she threw on.
I don’t have the energy to tell her to leave me alone. So I take the pack out of my pocket, toss it onto the stone beside me, then drop the lighter next to it.
She looks pleased with herself.
“Thanks,” she says, dipping down to pick one out.
I say nothing.
She sits near enough that I can smell the coconut sunscreen on her skin and hear the little rustle of the wrap when she crosses one leg over the other. She lights the cigarette, takes a pull, and immediately blows the smoke right back out without it reaching her lungs.
Great.
Now she’s wasted one of my cigarettes and my time.
I stare out at the dark water and take another drag of my own.