I reach out to slap him, and he grabs my wrist. Helpless and furious, I spit in his face. A smile filled with rancor creeps across his face. He slaps me so hard I see stars in the starless night.
He enters me again and renews his vigorous thrusts, one arm pinned to my stomach, and the other above me in the sand as he fucks me viciously. His wrist grazes my temple as he pins my arm, and all I have to do is tip my head back lightly until I can bite it. My teeth sink into the flesh and I feel his pulse beat under the sensitive skin of my lips. I taste blood again, this time Eddie’s, as the warm, sickeningly familiar taste pools on my tongue.
“You fucking feral bitch!” he roars.
My bite only spurs him on and he thrusts hard enough that I fear he’ll split me in half. There will be bruises for sure.
“Next time, I’ll fuck you in the ass and make sure your face is in the dirt where it belongs,” he grits. “You’re good for nothing except this, a worthless cum bank.”
I release my jaw and teeth, and he yanks his arm behind him, wiping away the blood. This isn’t the first time I’ve bitten him, and it’s not the first time he’s chased me down and forced himself on me. I’ve lost count of the bruises and the scrapes and the drawn blood.
After he comes in a roar of explosive testosterone, he cradles my jaw fondly before pulling out.
“Next time I catch you looking at those pictures, I’ll burn the whole fucking house down,” he says before gently slapping my cheek.
He stands, spits in the sand, and pulls on his pajama bottoms without even offering me a hand. I curl into a fetal position in the cold, soft sand.
Part of me wants to cry, but my emotions are dead. Another part of me wants to break his nose or poison his brandy, stab him in the back while he sleeps.
“Don’t wear white next time. At least make it fun for me,” he says before turning away.
I watch his impressive frame grow smaller and smaller as he returns to the house.The wind whips up sea spray, and the waves continue to pound the shore. Maybe when the tide comes in, it will catch me asleep and whisk me away from Wainscott Hollow. The sea in Montauk is benevolent to broken women, rocking them to eternal sleep in its soothing embrace. Just ask my dead mother.
CHAPTER 1
Heath (Long Ago)
“The last one there’s a rotten egg!” Kat calls as she zips past me. Her long brown hair flies out behind her, and she leaps down a sand dune completely out of my line of sight.
“Maybe if you’d actually carry something, we could see who’s the fastest,” I yell. But my pleas are swallowed by the wind as it rushes through the dunes.
I see her flat out running twenty feet below me through the sand barefoot—her shoes are in my hands, along with the big throw Mother insisted we bring and a canvas bag full of homemade cookies, juice boxes, and empty jars for collecting things.
Kat stumbles once and falls all the way to the ground. She recovers fast and kicks up sand as she beelines to the rolling waves.
“We’re not supposed to go in the water,” I call, but my voice is drowned by the thunder of the waves.
Kat has always lived right next to the ocean, away from the city. But I moved here from our small apartment in the Bronx after her mother passed away, and Mr. Shaw needed someone to look after his children.
“Wait for me,” I call to her, jumping the same dune, but with more apprehension.
She’s my closest friend, even though we’re different. Kat doesn’t know how to ride the train in the city, but I don’t know how to swim. Kat can play the piano and knows how to ride a horse, but I know how to get to Yankee Stadium or use my mom’s EBT card at the store.
But we love the beach, spring, summer, and fall, and we come out here to collect things, and look for buried treasure that might have washed up on the shore.
Her long wavy hair is loose, and she bats it away from her face as she wades ankle-deep into the foamy waves. A splash of summer freckles decorates her face
“Mom says the undercurrent is strong enough to pull you in,” I warn her. I drop our things in the sand at my feet and try to regain my breath. I roll up my pants legs as Kat kicks water into the blue sky, where it arcs and falls in a hundred sparkling droplets. The girl herself is equally as stunning as the scenery out here.
I heave myself forward and grab her hand as we scan the shallows, looking for shells or creatures or forgotten pirate gold.
“Where do you think people go when they die?” Kat pulls a strand of hair from her mouth and squints at me in the bright sunlight.
I know without asking that she’s thinking about her mom. My dad has always been gone, so I don’t think about it all that much. An old lady who lived in my building once told me my dad’s in jail. But Mom says he’s gone, and the far-away look in her eyes makes me bite my lip to keep from asking any more questions.
“You mean like heaven?” I ask her.
The water is warm, and the sun and salt on my skin is a feeling I’ll always associate with the Shaw’s estate. I went to the beach a couple of times before we moved here, but it never looked anything like this.
