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My tears are coming quicker now.
“And about the ring,” he says.
I move to stop him. He doesn’t need to explain. I was being ridiculous. I believe him. Lucy must have found his ring and had it with her when she went swimming. I was wrong about all of it.
But before I can, he shifts away from me, reaches his hands into the neck of his T-shirt, and pulls something out.
I suck in a harsh breath.
It’s his ring. Resting on the delicate gold chain around his neck, right where he promised to keep it.
“Cass, Sengphet gave this to me this morning. He said he found it on the beach the morning after the Full Moon Party when he was cleaning up.”
“B-but…”
This can’t be true. I have his ring. I stuffed it into the box of Xanax. I was planning on giving it to him in a few days, pretending like I had found it while I was on the beach. My eyes dart guiltily to the bedside table.
“You might have found a ring,” Logan says. “But it wasn’t mine.” He sighs again, preparing himself. “I know you’ve been going through a lot these last few days, so I didn’t want to say this.”
He looks down, and my breath catches in my throat as I wait for what he’ll say next.
“You need to stop taking the Xanax.”
The words are a punch to the stomach. He shouldn’t know about that.
“You were going through my things.” The coldness in my tone is palpable.
“I was worried about you. First the nightmare, and then all the stress you’ve been under. You haven’t been yourself. On edge. I just looked quickly in your drawer and saw the box.”
I don’t know what to say. It’s not as if I can deny taking the pills.
“That bloody stuff isn’t good for you. It fucks with your mind. I looked up the side effects and they’re crazy. Mood swings, sleepdeprivation, paranoia, issues with your memory, even hallucinations.” He ticks them off on his fingers as he goes.
I knew the side effects, of course. I’d read them thoroughly when the doctor prescribed the pills three years ago. But I never experienced any of them. Back then, my mood was never stable enough to notice a change, and I didn’t want to remember. Plus, I don’t think it qualifies as paranoia when the entire country has turned against you.
But now it’s different. I think of the feeling I’ve had the last few days, that gnawing sensation that someone’s been watching me.
One question keeps niggling at me though. “If it wasn’t your ring that I found, then whose was it?”
We both know the answer before I finish asking the question.
“Cass.” Logan holds my hand up between us. “Where isyourring?”
I look down at the thin, pale strip on my fourth finger. I startle for a moment, but then remember. “I took it off before my dive on Saturday morning. I didn’t want to lose it. I put it in the ring box in my drawer.” I did. I know I did. I remember standing before the bedside table, pulling open the drawer as Logan slept beside me. There was never a question that my ring was there, safe in the confines of that small red box.
But I think of the words Logan just said, the side effects.Issues with your memory, hallucinations.
I yank the drawer open and begin rummaging through it until I find the ring box. But even before I open it, a small part of me knows what I’ll find.
I stare at the open box, at the thin divot where the ring should be. It’s empty.
Frantically, I reach for the Xanax box, buried under some other detritus that I relegated to the drawer, and wrench it out. I dump the contents onto my bed, and sure enough, a slender gold ring tumbles out amid the stacks of blister packs. The ring that I found near Lucy.
And then everything falls into place.
I must not have put my ring back into its box the morning before the dive. I couldn’t have.
Because it wasn’t Logan’s ring I found near Lucy’s body. It was mine.
