AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instinctively, my fingers rise to my throat, and I can feel my father’s hands there. As if, in some way, they’ve never left. My mindflicks back to the ghostly bruises I saw on Lucy’s neck, and I shake my head to rid it of the memory. I can’t think of her right now.
“I tried to grab anything I could to fend him off. Anything that would get his hands off me. And then my finger brushed against the knife Robin had been using to chop the strawberries. I grabbed at it and raised it above me, but Dad saw it first. He released his hand from my throat and took it. I never had a chance.”
As if on cue, the overhead lights flicker. I pause, listening to the steady thrum of rain against the roof. I’ve been so absorbed in my story I hadn’t noticed that the storm had finally started.
“He didn’t even pause. I didn’t feel it when the knife went in. It was like watching a movie. When he realized what he’d done, Dad just dropped his hands and backed away, like he was in shock.”
I realize my fingers have moved from my throat and are now tracing the scar above my chest. Logan’s eyes dart there too.
“That’s what the scar is from. Not a car accident,” he says, understanding breaking through the sorrow in his eyes. All I can do is nod.
The doctor told me later it was a miracle, that the knife had missed my aorta by less than a centimeter. He told me I should be grateful. I couldn’t even comprehend the meaning of the word.
“Somehow I managed to pull the knife out with both hands,” I tell Logan. “I swear, it was like it was all happening to someone else. I didn’t feel anything. And before I knew it, the knife was in my hand, and then it wasn’t anymore. It was in my father’s stomach.”
I trail off then, exhausted. I want to collapse, to sleep forever. But I can’t. I need to see what Logan feels after hearing this, the story I was never prepared to tell him. I brace myself for his anger, his disgust from earlier.
But his eyes carry none of those emotions. Instead, he looks at me with a mix of shame and pity. He shakes his head solemnly, and for the first time since I saw Brooke’s letter on my doorstep days ago, I cautiously let myself believe that everything will be okay between us.
“Cass,” Logan says, and I feel my heart rate accelerate. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I can’t believe you had to go through that.”
I want to reach for him but wait for him to give me the signal to do so.
“But I can’t process this all right now.” His words make me shrink back. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me at the beginning? Why all the lies?”
“I just didn’t—”
“You never gave me a chance,” he interrupts. “You didn’t trust how much I love you.”
I cling to that word, the present tense. “We can still fix this, Logan. We can put all this behind us.”
Logan shakes his head once, and it feels like a bullet to the chest. “Brooke’s post is all over Instagram. It’s bloody viral.” He looks down at his hands. “It puts everything we have here at risk.”
He stands up and I want to cling to him. He starts walking toward the door.
“You’re not…leaving?” I manage to ask through the tears stuck in my throat.
I see him open the front door, and I feel so far away, so helpless.
“I just need some time to think this through,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I think it’s better if you find somewhere else to stay tonight. I…I need some space right now. I’m going to take a drive. Please don’t be here when I get back.”
And then he’s gone, closing the door behind him, and all my worst nightmares have become real. He’s leaving. And I’m completely alone.
I rush to the door and fling it open. I want to stop him, but I have nothing more to say. Instead, I watch from the doorway as he pulls on his helmet. As his bike weaves down the hill, the wind whips raindrops onto my arm, the force of it hitting my skin like a dozen fists.
I barely feel it.
31
BROOKE
I pretend to leave when Logan comes home. Confronting him is different from arguing with Cass. I’ve seen the thinly veiled dislike he has for me. As if he’s waiting for me to take one wrong step so that his feelings will be justified. And now I’ve given him that—and so much more—on a silver platter.
The muscles he spends hours working on each day ripple beneath his shirt as he yells, reminding me of exactly what he has the power to do to me. I remember the feel of Eric’s muscles pushing me down flat on his bed. Despite the strength I’m trying to project for Cass, I wince.
So I do what he says—or at least start to. I return to my motorbike and put on my helmet.
It’s begun to rain, a steady drizzle foreshadowing just a taste of the torrential storm the internet has predicted. I should go back to my room. I’ve done everything I’ve needed to do here on Koh Sang. It’s over. I should take advantage of this time before the storm gets going to start drafting a full-length article on the island and plan mynext steps. To follow up with the Czech hotel that owes me money. To make sure I have the cash I need so I can be the first off the island when the ferries start running again.
