Even if all it gave you was scars.
I let them sweep me forward, feet skimming across sun-warmed wood, all of us spun together like tangled fishing line. It was almost funny, how easy it was to fake happiness, how none of them would ever see the war in my head.
But under it all—the ocean, the sun, the blur of strangers, there was only one person I wanted to notice me.
And he never fucking did. At least, not today.
The inside of the shack was all noise.
We crowded in, jostling for a table. Shane took charge, corralling Sabrina and Sydney into a booth, cracking jokes about calories and the criminal price of crab cakes. Alex followed me, never far, shadowing every move like he thought I might vanish if he blinked.
I sat down last, body drawn tight, faking a bright little smile.
“Burgers or fish tacos?” Alex asked. His knee brushed mine under the table, a glancing pressure. Nice, but too safe.
“Whatever. Anything’s good.” I blinked grit from my eyes, pretending not to notice the way Caiden crowded the end of the booth, back to the wall, shoulders hunched and broad.
He didn’t speak. He barely looked up. Typical. Sometimes I wondered if he even existed outside my head, or if I’d conjured him from the carnage of my own brain.
I tried to join the conversation, voices bobbing around me. Shane and Sabrina bickered over drinks. Sydney orderedquietly, careful not to draw attention. Alex kept pouring me more water, a solicitous little routine.
The whole time, it was Caiden’s silence that burned.
I searched his face for signs of the boy who used to torture me. Malicious, smirking, always needing to see me flinch. But now, even when he looked at me, there was a vacancy. Like he’d hollowed himself out.
Colorado changed him. I knew it did. Late nights, shivering in the dark, monster at the door. We’d built something there. Or maybe just burned ourselves down to nothing, side by side.
Afterward, I tried to believe we were friends. Tried to trust him again. But every time I let my guard drop, he reminded me why I should never forget.
If he’d changed, it was only to become more dangerous.
I traced circles on the plastic table, picking at a sliver of old ketchup. The ache inside me was relentless. Wanting him was a sickness. I knew it, I hated it. But I fed it anyway.
Alex’s words washed over me, something about real estate, about waterfront property, and how I’d thrive there. If only he knew the truth. Water made me remember drowning. Remember screaming. My skin went cold.
I laughed at his joke, paper-thin.
Sabrina’s voice cut through, too loud. “You okay, Amelia? You look a little…off.”
“I need to use the restroom.” I excused myself and walked the small distance to the women’s restrooms. I pushed the door open and found a stall.
Once I was finished, I turned on the scalding hot water, the steam rising to meet my face as I washed my hands. I stood before the polished surface reflecting my image back at me, and I analyzed it.
A lifetime of pain and fear was reflected in the woman's haunted eyes; she stared back with a quiet intensity that spoke volumes.
My features blurred, swam, melted into something ghostly.
Suddenly, a dark, blurred shape materialized behind me
For a split second, I almost expected to see Lillian there, or traces of my mother. But the face in the glass wasn’t familiar. Eyes black, more void than color. Stare flat and hungry, a death mask.
Blake.
He was dead. He was dead. He was dead.
I was immobile, my heart hammered against my ribs, my face draining of blood, leaving me pale.
He stared, and a chilling smile played on his lips, a silent, predatory expression. That sickening smile, the one that stretched across his face as he taunted us, tor when he dragged the knife across my flesh, appeared on his face. Gaps where eyes should be. Empty hollows, sucking everything good out of the room.
