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“Not fair,” he chokes through rough, audible sobs. “Not fucking fair.”
17
JAMESON
This is my worst nightmare, and I mean that as literally as possible.
That was the worst version of my dreams.
Sitting here on the sand with Lily while she comforts me? I’ve given serious thought to digging a hole, crawling into it, and having her bury me. I’m still not embarrassed. Not yet. I’m too exhausted for that. But Iamfrustrated that the tears took so long to stop and that Lily, the angel, the terrifying angel, had to be the one to see this after all these years.
I don’t know what this means for the remainder of my revenge plot. I’m in no state to figure it out.
Lily breathes. Resting my head on her shoulder is like floating on the water. Up and down. Up and down. It would be simplest to give it all up. Stay here, inhaling the scent of her skin, until I’m dead. Anything else is too much work. All the planning and pretending and participating I’ve done since last fall, much less since I was fourteen, is worthless.
“What if…” Her voice hums through her skin. You know what we should do? Stay here in this pause, and never find outwhat if.It’s always a tragedy. “…we called a truce?”
“A truce?”
“You know.” A little shrug moves my head with it. “What if we took a break from the whole kidnapping-slash-revenge process?”
“For what?”
“A nap.”
“No.” I’m saved from shouting it into her neck by the previous destruction of my voice through an excessive amount of screaming and crying. The last thing I want to do in the entire goddamn world is let go of her hair. It’s soft and smooth and cool between my fingers, whole and unburned.
Across the lake, someone starts a speedboat. The engine sputters once, twice, and then the noise buzzes over the water toward us. I can see from the light on Lily’s skin that the sun has risen, and it’s officially weird to be sitting out here with a naked girl wrapped in a blanket.
“Just for a while,” she insists.
“Christ. Fine.”
“Are you—Jameson!” Lily scrambles when I lift her off my lap and into my arms. The blanket flutters over her chest, and she snaps it closed. “A little warning before you launch me into the stratosphere next time, okay?”
“The stratosphere? Please. Did you want to sit out there until the jackass on the speedboat came to look at your tits?”
“I have ablanket.”
Dew and rain cling to the grass. The droplets take most of the sand off my feet, which is convenient, because my face has to be swollen. The nightmare wrecked my muscles. It wrecked my soul. If I have to sit around brushing sand off my feet with a towel, I’ll lose my mind.
We go back inside, and I put Lily on the braided rug.
She lifts her chin, stately. Her hair falls around her shoulders in a windblown mess. I want my hands back in it. Both hands in it. Preferably in my bed. That’s one of the weirdest things I want from her. Sleeping in bed with me is a disasterifit happens, and now I want a witness?
I’ve lost it.
Her face changes as she takes me in. “What happened to your eye?”
“What?”
She takes a step closer, brow furrowed. “You have a black eye.”
“Oh, it was…” What was it? The skin underneath my eye is tender to the touch. “A chunk of hail got me last night. It’s fine.”
“Go take a shower,” she pronounces, tone regal. “Andthenwe’ll get you an ice pack. I won’t leave.”
“I don’t believe you. And I’m fine.”
