I just stand there, numb, the words rearranging themselves in my head, looking for a different explanation for what I’m hearing. But I keep spiraling back to one.
One horrible truth.
I know I need to move, to run, to do something.
I have to make it back to camp, right now, because my heart is a wild, terrified thing and if I don’t keep moving, I’ll collapse on this path and turn to mulch in the dirt. But my legs walk me forward, not toward the fire or the circle where everyone waits, but toward the sound of those voices—the men I trusted,the men I was starting to think of as family. The man I am so hopelessly in love with.
They’re still talking, and I half-walk, half-stumble out of the jungle, leaves scratch my shins, and I almost trip on a gnarled root, but I need to know, I need them to see me like this, because I am hollowed out and shaken all the way to my core, and even then, I am praying I’m wrong. I need to be wrong. Kellen sees me first, he goes rigid, like a statue, and Ace turns, his entire body going tense.
I can see it in his eyes, even before his mouth opens.
Everything I heard is true.
“Gracie—” he starts, voice low, caught.
“Don’t,” I croak. My voice comes out a ragged gasp, but I don’t care. “Don’t fucking say my name. Is it true?” I’m shaking so violently a numbness climbs up my fingers to my shoulders. “Tell me right now, is it fucking true?”
He tries to close the distance, but I stagger backward, nearly falling. “Don’t you fucking come near me,” I scream, so high-pitched even Kellen flinches.”
Kellen steps away, gives us a wide berth, but doesn’t run. He stays around, why I don’t know. Maybe moral support. Maybe he knows that this is the only way it could ever go. Ace looks at me, and there is something in his eyes I have never seen before—maybe he’s always had it and I was just too blind, too desperate, to see. It’s shame. It’s regret. It’s knowing that everything you touch gets stained.
He opens his mouth, closes it, but he doesn’t look away. Eventually, he speaks.
“Your dad hired us.” Each word is grit, pain, and truth. I flinch with every one. “Your dad paid us, a lot, to get you girls to the location where you would be sold. We were supposed to keep you safe and alive, deliver you all and then walk away.”
Keep you alive. Deliver you. Like fucking livestock. I feel it then, the nausea, bitter and thick, rising up so fast I have to bend over and pant through it so that I don’t vomit all over the ground. Ace keeps talking, but the world is a tunnel, the sound rushing in and out, the blood roaring in my ears. “I didn’t know you, Grace. It was just a job. Once I got to know you, I never would have...”
“It wouldn’t have gotten to that,” I scream, my head whipping up. “We only had days left on that boat, and there is no way you ever would have known who I was in that short time.”
“That’s not true,” he rasps, voice low.
“And you?” I hiss, turning on Kellen.
Kellen looks defeated, like he has reached the end of his rope. “None of us liked it, kid. But we didn’t have a fuckin’ choice. We had our reasons for doin’ it, we didn’t know the kind of people you all were.”
“What a fucking cop out,” I cry, the tears flowing freely down my cheeks now. “We’re fucking young girls, human beings, that alone should have been enough.”
“Grace,” Ace tries again.
I look up at him, and he flinches at the pain written all over my face. “I told you about my father. I told you everything, and you—” My throat closes, and I have to force the next words out. “You made me feel like I finally wasn’t alone. Like we could be... something in this shit world. And all that time, you knew that you were there to fucking sell us. You let me take on the guilt of that shipwreck, the guilt of us being stuck here, when all along, it was your fucking fault.”
Ace moves forward, maybe to touch me, but I flinch again, and he stops. “That’s not what it is. Things changed after we met you. We were already reconsidering when the yacht went down.”
“Oh, well in that case, everything is fine,” I croak, sarcastically. “You’re fucking delusional if you think that makes it any better.”
He shakes his head. “Grace, please, just fuckin’ listen to me.”
“No!” My voice rings through the trees. “Don’t you fucking speak to me. You let me fall...” I clutch my chest. “You let me fall in love with you, you self-centred pig.”
I want to punch him, to scream, but all I can do is wrap my arms around myself and back away, step by step, until the green closes over and I can’t see his face anymore. I walk until my legs give out. I shed so many tears there on the cold, wet ground. For every time I let him touch me, every time I let myself believe he was different. I want to dig my nails into my skin and scrape out every ounce of him.
I want to go back to before, to when I was numb and could at least pretend I was untouchable. But even here, pain finds me. Even on an island at the end of the world, I can’t outrun this.
I think I stay there, sitting on the cold jungle ground, for hours. I can hear Aggie and Tatiana calling for me, I wonder if they know? Or if they’re just worried that I haven’t come back. Did Ace and Kellen have the guts to tell them the truth, or are they waiting for me to do it for them?
Eventually I stand. I wipe my face, and I pick some coconuts and start the walk back. Because I have no fucking choice. Out here, survival is the only option.
The camp is gold-stained with sunset when I make it back, clutching the coconuts in a death-grip. My skin is sticky from tears and whatever comes from breaking when the inside of you is finally, actually, irreparably damaged. Aggie and Tatiana are hunched by the fire, cooking something on the pan. Rachel is helping Adrian, adjusting his bed again so he can sleep.
