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From the outside, Sloane appeared to have the perfect life. She was beautiful, smart, and successful, and she counted some of the most powerful people in the world as either her friends or her clients.
But I, of all people, knew appearances were deceiving, and the shiniest surfaces often hid the ugliest secrets.
“If you had the chance, wouldn’t you go back and change things in your past?” she asked.
My hand involuntarily fisted the towel. Regret swelled and collided with memories I thought I’d locked away long ago.
“Xavier!” The panic in my mom’s voice bled through the roar of the flames. “¿Dónde estás mi hijo?”
He’s just a kid. It was an accident… If he’d been more responsible…
It should’ve been you.
The reek of smoke and charred wood filled my lungs. The beach cove closed around me, the steep cliffs forming prison walls and the glare of sun against sand whitening my vision.
Then I blinked and the nightmare receded, replaced by my friends’ laughter in the background and the touch of concern on Sloane’s face.
I loosened my grip on the towel and forced a smile. “Everyone would change something if they could.” I still tasted ash on my tongue. I wanted to spit it out and drown it with beer, but I couldn’t do that without raising suspicion. “Do you still talk to anyone from your family?”
It was the only topic I could think of that would divert Sloane’s attention. She was sharp enough to pick up on the shift in my mood, but I didn’t want to discuss the reason with her or anyone else. Ever.
As expected, her face shut down. “When I have to. Have you talked to your father recently?”
Touché.
She wasn’t the only one who considered family relations a taboo subject.
“No. He’s not exactly in the right state for friendly phone calls.” Even before he’d fallen sick, he hadn’t been a great communicator. With his business partners and friends, yes. With his only son? Not so much.
Sloane tilted her head, obviously trying to gauge my true feelings regarding my father’s illness.
Good luck, considering even I didn’t know how I felt.
He was the only direct family I had left, so Ishouldhave felt strongly about his potential death. Instead, I only felt numb, like I was watching an actor who looked like my father wither away on a movie screen.
My father and I had never been close, partly because he blamed me for my mother’s death and partly because I blamed myself too.
Every time he looked at me, he saw the person who’d taken the love of his life away—and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it because I was the only piece of her he had left.
Every time I looked at him, I saw disappointment, frustration, and resentment. I saw the parent who’d taken out his anger on me when I’d been too young to understand the complexities of grief, who’d given up on me and made me give up on myself before I even started.
“He’ll pull through,” Sloane said.
She didn’t try to comfort me often, so I didn’t ruin the moment by wondering if, maybe, things would be simpler if he didn’t.
It was a terrible, ugly thought, the kind only monsters harbored, so I never uttered it out aloud. But it was always there, festering beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Sloane’s phone lit up with a notification. I glimpsed a telltale email icon before she snatched her cell off the ground and the moment collapsed around us like a sand castle at high tide.
“No work,” I reminded her.
“It’s not work, it’s…” Her skin took on the hue of bleached bone.
I straightened, concern washing away the remnants of unwanted memories. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She stood, her expression frozen. “I’ll…I’ll be right back.”
Did she just stutter? Sloaneneverstuttered.
