Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 128211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
There it is again, that tight jaw, that grinding of bone. It’s too dark to see the color of his eyes — are they sea green tonight or more of that ocean blue? — but I feel them piercing through me just as much as if it were high noon.
I wait for a response, and when it doesn’t come, another sad laugh leaks out of me like helium from a pricked balloon. I laugh at him and at myself, too.
Fools, we are.
Love-drunk fools.
Wiping my nose with the back of my wrist, I shrug, the bottle of wine I’d toted to the beach with me making a sloshing sound in my hand. “Go on, then. You came here to say something? Say it. Say what you haven’t already.”
“Ember, I don’t—”
“Say it,” I snap, using my free hand to shove against his chest. My body lights up with longing the second I touch him, even for that brief second, every cell within me yearning to give in, to collapse into his arms and let him hold me — even if just for one more night. “Go on. I’m all ears. Tell me what—”
“Come with me.”
For a split second, the words have me speechless.
Hopeful.
But then anger slides right back in.
“Come with you,” I deadpan. “To Ireland. Where there is no yachting season. Where I walk away from my career, my aspirations, for you.”
“And what, it’s somehow fair for you to ask the same of me?”
I try to sharpen my gaze at him then, to pierce him the way his words were cutting me. But I feel it, how I soften, how my shoulders deflate and my eyes sting with the all-consuming sadness that’s ripping me apart.
“I never asked anything of you,” I whisper. “Except for you not to lie.”
His nostrils flare. “Em, I didn’t—”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t lie. Don’t try to make me feel crazy. I was there.”
“I never said I wanted to stay in yachting.”
“You never said you didn’t!” My chest heaves. “All those times I laid my head on your chest and talked about what came next, all the nights I dreamed aloud of where we’d go, the places we’d see together — you never stopped me. You never told me the truth.”
He closes his eyes as I step into his space, my chest pressing just below his, face angled up as I dare him to look at me and tell me I’m wrong.
But he can’t.
“I… I begged you, Finn. I begged you not to hurt me.” I hate how my eyes gloss with tears when those words croak out of me. “And you looked me right in my eye and told me you wouldn’t — all the while knowing you would.”
“Stop.”
“You wanted to use me up for the summer.”
“Stop.”
“Was it some masochistic game to you? To make me fall in love with you, knowing I meant nothing?”
“Stop, Ember! Jaysus,” he yells, pulling back from me and stalking two feet in the opposite direction. He rakes his hands through his dark hair, and for a moment I’m jealous of those hands, jealous that I’ll never feel those silky strands between my own fingers again.
When he turns back to me, he rolls his lips together, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he stares at me like I’m the one holding the gun.
We both know it’s always been him.
“You… You’re breaking me right now. You’re fucking killing me, Em.”
There it is again, that ache in my chest, that incessant need to throw my arms around him and pretend like none of this is happening, like we’re still the people we were just twenty-four hours ago instead of the ones we are right now.
But I can’t.
I owe it to myself to be strong, to see that his actions are speaking far louder than his words.
“Good,” I say, voice cracking. I refuse to blink, but a hot tear slides down my cheek despite my attempt to hold it at bay. “I hope you hurt. I hope you never forget this pain.” I swallow, stepping close enough that I know he can see I’m not shaking when I say it. “I hope you never escape the rotting death of what we could have been if you’d actually loved me the way you said you did.”
I’d left him on the dark beach with those words.
And when I boarded my flight the next day, I thought I’d never see him again.
The memory had my throat tight and dry. I didn’t trust myself to keep talking about my father now, not with my emotions all stirred up like bay water in a hurricane. Between the booze and the sunshine and my heightened state of emotions, I felt two seconds away from bawling my eyes out.
But that memory held onto me.
Curiosity did, too.
And I gave into it, asking what I’d wanted to since that night in the hot tub.