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You really thought you had a chance with him, Sadie? He barely wants to touch your clean undies.
I don’t laugh, because I am not sixteen. I am not going to take one moment’s vindictive pleasure in seeing how deluded Sadie had been. Oh, I would, if I were convinced she was only after him for his money, but whatever else she has done, here she was her genuine self.
After hearing her pain on that call, when she accused me of stealing him, I believe Sadie genuinely cares for Kit, and once again, we actually have something in common. I feel her pain. I won’t say I’d ever want Kit to end up with her, but I can still feel a sympathetic pang.
On the heels of that comes a slap of real pain. Sadie’s luggage is down there. Indubitably her luggage. She did not set a bomb and push the boat out. She did not get to the Fox Bay marina, set a bomb, and push it out.
What happened is this: Sadie argued with me, and she argued with Kit, and in her anger and humiliation, she fled, and some bastard had the boat rigged up to explode in the middle of the night, only she was on it.
Oh God, Sadie.
I’m sorry. I know if you were here right now, after what you did to Kit and Jayla, I would want to throttle you myself. But once upon a time, I loved you. I missed you, and I regretted what happened between us.
If you’re dead…
If.
Tears well.
There is no if, is there? Stop with the fucking ifs, and the fucking alternate explanations, and face the goddamned fact that Sadie—
Something whispers beside me. Not the whistle of the wind, which is loud enough to drown out everything but the surf, and it should certainly drown out a whisper. Yet even as I know I could not have heard anything, I also know I did.
Not just heard it.
Felt it. I felt movement under my fingertips. Under my entire body. A vibration.
Under the rock?
That makesnosense.
“Laney?”
Kit’s lips move, the wind whipping away my name. I barely notice. I am turning my head, following that sound that I could not have heard, the whisper I could not have sensed, the vibration I could not have felt.
And then I see what I cannot be seeing.
I see Sadie.
EIGHTEEN
There’s a bush to my right, maybe ten feet away, and Sadie’s hands are pulling it down, her face peering through, as if she’s crouched there, spying on us.
I blink hard. That face will disappear. It must, because I am hallucinating. I am lying on a rock watching Kit climb as a storm whips up, with my friend’s body somewhere out there in the lake. I cannot be hearing her whisper. I cannot be feeling whatever I felt. I sure as hell cannot be seeing her. I will blink, and she will be gone.
She is not gone.
Sadie is right there. Staring at me. And her face…
Something is wrong with her face.
“Kit?” I say, the sound coming strangled.
Sadie pulls back. She does not disappear. The leaves spring back as she releases them, and she withdraws. Then there’s a blur of motion through the thin branches as she takes off.
I leap to my feet and run after her.
“Laney!” Kit yells.
