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Crone meets my eyes, and we bob like two fishing floats on the surface, just staring at each other.
He looks like hell. Worse, actually. One of his eyes is bruised, so are his lips. He has dark circles under his eyes like he’s been starving and staying up for weeks. When he strips off his arrogance and theatrical cheer, he looks like a man at the end of his rope.
The thought is fucking scary.
We’ve been through a lot together back in the day. We’ve shared our traumas. And we shared the biggest one yet—betrayal.
I’ve never seen Crone so undone. The meticulous, always perfect Crone…
“Come back to the island, Droga,” he finally says. “I won’t touch you or your girl.” His voice is calmer. There is familiar coldness in it, though it’s not arrogant.
“Why?”
“I am over this game.”
“Game?” I chuckle. Un-fucking-believable. “Yeah, Crone. Precious.”
“Not a game!” he shouts. “Fuck!” He wipes the water from his face. These jumps in his mood are too weird. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quietly. “Fuck…”
I know exactly what he meant. For him, all this fuckery was pure entertainment and sadism. Masochism in a way too, because he was emotionally involved, which he just admitted without knowing it.
“Let us go,” I say quietly but with an edge in my voice. If he wants to apologize, that will be the right way to do it.
“Stay,” he argues, “and you will have anything you want.”
I shake my head. “Why, Crone?”
“Why not?” he asks much louder. His insistence is irritating.
“Why won’t you fucking let go?” I snap at him.
“Because there is nothing out there!” he snaps back, spitting out saltwater, his eyes glaring. “There is nothing there.” He stabs his forefinger in the direction of the mainland and slaps his hand on the water. “You havenothingthere.Shedoesn’t either. Your home country is a shithole unless you are rich. And unless you are rich, you can’t escape anywhere else.”
“And what doyoufucking care?”
He stares at me, and it’s the first time I know the answer. His gaze is so vulnerable that I want to roar in anger, because that’s precisely how I felt years ago.
Fuck, Crone, don’t do this to me. Don’t fucking pull at me with your past trauma to cover up your nasty tricks.
He never plays a victim. So this isn’t a trick, and that makes me feel so much worse.
And that—that—how I know that he is going to snap, or did, and is barely keeping it together.
Especially when the barely audible words escape him, “I do fucking care. How do you think you ended up on this island?”
And the words annihilate the four years between us.
38
KAI
Crone gets to me.Always did. It was easier to hate him when we were loud and angry. But it’s harder when he is quiet and I can tell it’s not salt fucking water burning his eyes.
I dunk myself in the water, trying to calm the storm inside me.
Did his Dad know about the nuclear attacks before they happened? Did he ask Qi Shan to bring me here during spring break? I don’t understand what he just said, except deep down, I think I know.
He won’t look at me.
