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I can’t do this. I can’t let her see me like this. I kidnapped her. What is she thinking, comforting me?
“Here. Sit back. You don’t have to be in the water.” She taps on my shoulder, and I’m so destroyed that I go along with it and sit back into the sand.
“Go back inside. Your ankle. Shouldn’t be—shouldn’t be on it.”
“My ankle is fine. I’m not going in.” Contradicting me is a fairly bold move for someone who I kidnapped less than two days ago. The law student-turned-revenge-hostage doesn’t spare a glance for the lake, or the cabin, or for anything else.
She climbs into my lap and puts her arms around me, blocking most of the world out with the blanket.
I have to keep one hand on the ground so I don’t fall over, but I can’t stop myself from wrapping the other one around her waist. There are tons of reasons I shouldn’t touch her at all, ever again, for as long as I live, but right now, none of them matter.
Because for all the control I’ve had over her, I don’t have any over myself. I’m too close to the nightmare. My chest heaves. I have to be out of tears, because they’ve left fiery tracks down my face, but there are still more sobs.
I put my face to her shoulder and stay there while the crying makes a fool of me.
She smells like my soap and her skin. A scent that reminds me of spring flowers and sun. It belongs to her, only to her, and that’s the best proof I have that I’m not back in that apartment.
“You had a bad dream.” Her voice is softer than the blanket, gentler than the rain. “But you’re awake now. It was scary, but you’re safe.”
I shake my head and immediately regret it.
“You’re safe,” Lily repeats. “You’re awake now. I’m awake too. We don’t have to move until you’re ready.”
Don’t, I’m going to tell the sweet dip above her collarbone.You can’t do this. You have to get up and go inside and let me do this myself. You have to make me do this myself, because that’s what I deserve, and that’s all I deserve.
“Say it again,” I tell the side of her neck instead.
Lily runs her fingers through my hair. “It was only a dream. You were so scared, but you’re safe. You’re awake now, and so am I.” She breathes, deep and slow, and my lungs try to follow. They don’t manage it, but I think they will, if she stays. “I’m not going anywhere. We don’t have to move until you’re ready.”
Okay,I say, a silent shape on her skin.
A new summer breeze kicks up over the water, fluttering the blanket.
The sun’s coming up.
16
LILY
I’m sure the unspoken guidelines for dealing with a man who’s kidnapped you include a rule about not feeling bad for him when he has a horrendous nightmare.
I’m a rule-breaker, then.
Because I can’t help it.
I sit with Jameson on the wet sand, not moving except to keep the blanket wrapped around my naked body and held to his shoulders, making a little fort around him. He was so afraid to see anything when he got to the water, and even before that. This way, he can pretend I’m the one hiding him.
Which is true, but he’s doing a pretty good job himself. His face is buried in the curve of my neck, and he hasn’t picked his head up even once since I got here. He hasn’t opened his eyes. I would know, because his eyelashes would tickle bare skin.
We’re quiet for a while.
I’m usually an early riser because a lot of our first-pass studying takes me twice as long as my friends in our study group. It’s quiet in the early mornings, and I can read through our materials multiple times in private.
I’ve been waking up early for months. Years. But I’m always reviewing briefs or books or outlines. I almost never watch the sunrise.
Watching it here on the beach with Jameson is something else.
The storm last night went to town on this place. It shook tiny branches from the trees and drilled raindrops into the sand. Narrow rivers run from the grass to the lake where the heavy downpour carved into the beach. The water in the lake seems higher.
