Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire

by Willow Winters

  Chapter Two

  FAMILY MONEY

  I manage to avoid him the rest of the day, napping after brunch and ignoring him at dinner.

  Our cabins are on the same floor, below the galley and above the master bedroom where our parents sleep. Thankfully he keeps his word and leaves me alone, even stepping aside to let me pass when I head back to the observation deck at midnight. I suck in a breath to make extra sure no part of my body touches his.

  Wind whips at my hair, salty and cool, as I step out of the hold.

  I grasp the cold metal railing and let it ground me. Why does Christopher bother me so much? In my pocket there are a couple of joints and a lighter. I light myself something to calm down, because I would rather not know the answer to that question.

  In a practiced move I swing my leg over the railing and pull myself up. This is my favorite place to sit, from the time I was six years old and my nanny would fall asleep in the room next door. I can pretend the yacht isn’t here, pretend it’s just me and the ocean, rocking and rocking. The movement bounces me softly, my ass against the metal bar.

  Weed makes it better, more like a meditation. The more drags I take, the more it feels like the whole world is rocking, and maybe I’m the only one sitting still.

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  The question comes out of the darkness behind me, and I jump, almost slipping off the rail. I manage to catch myself, clutching the metal bar with one hand and the joint with another. Survival and sanity, the two most important things in life. “Do you always hide in the shadows?”

  “Whenever possible.”

  I snort, which is a friendlier sound than I want to make with him. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  He takes a step forward and holds out his hand. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “That’s kind of my standard operating procedure,” I say, ignoring his hand and taking another drag. “You get good grades. I get into trouble.”

  “So the death wish thing…”

  “Pretty accurate,” I say, wishing he would go belowdecks. And wishing he wouldn’t. There’s something complicated about him, the way he makes me want opposite things at the same time. “I don’t want to die, but I want to live. People call that having a death wish.”

  With clear reluctance he pulls his hand back and settles his arms on the railing a few feet away from my ass. His eyes are trained on the dark horizon, but I can tell he’s still watching me. “This is what living means? Falling into the ocean with no one around to rescue you?”

  I point at the choppy water. “The captain dropped anchor before dinner. We aren’t even moving. What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Head trauma. Hypothermia. Drowning.”

  “For your information I’ve been coming up here by myself for a decade. No one ever comes with me. Haven’t fallen overboard once.”

  “Then statistically speaking, you’re overdue.”

  “Wow, you really are my dad’s heir.” Part of me is glad to have company on one of my nightly reveries. The other part of me feels the distinct intrusion of having a stranger in my space.

  “What?”

  “Go back down and play with your calculator.”

  There’s a pained pause. “I can’t. Not when I know you’re up here, getting high and hanging off a two-hundred-foot yacht. If something happened to you—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” The sea takes that moment to bump bump bump me, my ass a full two inches off the rail with every pull of the yacht. I’m holding on tight so I don’t go flying, not forward or backward, my perch secure.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather paint a mythical creature on the observation deck?”

  “I know you’re making fun of me right now, but no. I don’t have enough paint for that.”

  “Can you just sit on a deck chair like a normal person?”

  “Do I look normal to you? Don’t answer that.”

  There’s a flash of white teeth. That’s how I know he’s smiling even though the rest of his face is in shadow. The smile is there one second and gone the next, as temporary as his presence in my life but strangely momentous. “I’m sorry I called you a poor little rich girl.”

  “Are you just saying that so I’ll get off the railing?”

  “Is it working?”

  “No, but I appreciate the effort.”

  And strangely that was true. Not many people have ever cared enough to follow me up to the deck at midnight, to make sure I didn’t fall into the ocean. Definitely not one of the stepsiblings, who would probably have given me a little push to get rid of the competition for the inheritance.

  It makes me want to prove myself to him, to convince him that I’m worth saving even if he apparently already thinks so. “Medusa wasn’t for attention. I mean, she was, but not because I wanted Daddy to pay for a new science lab.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  “This girl got roofied at a party.”

  He sucks in a breath. “Harper.”

  “It wasn’t me.” I glance sideways to see his black eyes staring at me, so hard and fierce it almost seems possible that he can go back in time and rip the balls off a frat boy. What would he say if he knew my past? “It wasn’t me, I swear. I wasn’t even friends with her.”

  After a searching look, he turns back to the ocean. “A girl got roofied.”

  “Everyone knew about it, like the next day. One of the football players slipped it in her drink, and then the football team, I mean the entire football team, took advantage of her.”

  “Christ.”

  “They suspended the guy who brought the roofie to the party, one of the players, but not the one who gave it to her—the quarterback. And not the rest of the team. A big game was coming up. You can’t play a game without all your players.”

  He’s quiet a moment. “I’m sorry.”

  For that I pass him the joint and watch while he takes a drag, his lips touching where mine have been. “The honor society set up a protest and everyone who went got suspended. And after all that there wasn’t a single word about the party in the local papers. The morning before the game there was going to be a big pep rally with the cheerleaders and the school’s donors. The press was going to be there. They had the janitors stay late shining the floor. Real press, from a newspaper that wouldn’t take money not to print the story.”

  He passes the joint back to me. “So you painted Medusa.”

  “She was raped by Poseidon, who so happened to be the school mascot.” I have to blink away stupid tears. I don’t know why it would make me cry now, when it didn’t before. Not when I had to walk down the hallway next to boys who would hurt me if they had the chance. When I had to wear my skirt a certain length and my hair a certain way, as if I was the reason they were cruel.

  “Did everyone turn to stone?”

  I look down at the water, where I can see more white crests against the ink. It looks rough for a calm night. “The reporter took pictures and started asking questions, but he didn’t get the whole story that day. A week later the story was printed. The entire team was suspended. The headmaster was ready to suspend me too, but Daddy flew down and smoothed it over.”

  “The science lab.”

  “Which means I’m no better than those players, using my family money.”

  His voice is soft enough I have to strain to hear it over the murmur of the waves. “You’re plenty better, Harper. Don’t you ever doubt that. You’re fucking gold.”

  My heart skips a beat. I should know better than to fall for a line, but this boy has me messed up. I’m caught by his eyes, which are somehow darker than the sea beneath us and infinitely more deep. I’m drowning there; that must be the reason I don’t feel it coming.

  Lurch.

  Dip.

  My hand finds cold metal, and I have a moment of sweet relief—until the slickness of sea spray coats my palm and I lose my grip. For a moment I’m suspended in air, my gaze still locked o
n his, my shock reflected in that black mirror.

  And then I’m falling.

  Chapter Three

  DEADWEIGHT

  My parents both tell the story of when I was two years old. One minute I was standing on the deck. The next I had fallen into the Massachusetts Bay. They both had a heart attack, or so the story goes, until they ran to the edge and saw me swimming around like a fish, more comfortable in water than on land.

  I’m not sure whether I really learned to swim quite that naturally or why I was left to toddle around the docks without someone holding my hand, but I do love to swim. I’ve even jumped off the deck of the yacht into the water, too impatient to climb down the long swim steps.

  I’m falling backward and twisted, unable to see how far I’m falling. Unable to see anything—but I can feel it, the slam of the surface at my back, the shock of freezing cold. And then it surrounds me, heavy weight dragging me down. The air leaves me in a rush; by the time I can take another breath, I’m fully submerged.

  It’s pitch-black, impossible to know which way is up. Any direction I go could be taking me deeper. My throat burns with salt. Panic threatens to overwhelm me. My whole body clenches, fighting the instinct to breathe in deep and fill my lungs with water.

  Something touches my side, and I squirm away in terror. Even stoned and in shock I remember there might be sharks. What if they heard me splashing? What if they sense my fear?

  Except there’s a grip on my arm—a hand, not teeth. It drags me up in a whoosh of water, and we break the surface together.

  The cold night air has never felt so good in my lungs. I gasp and gasp, unwilling to stop breathing after even a few seconds without it, unable to calm down.

  Something is shoved under my arms. The white and red of a life preserver. Christopher must have thrown one down before he jumped in after me. In a kaleidoscope of stars the world comes into focus. The water, lapping at me like a living thing. Christopher, his dark hair wet, his grip on my wrist firm as he tows us toward the yacht. And the boat itself, waves drawing intermittent shadows across the white bow.

  It might have been ten years before we reach the bottom of the swim steps. Or maybe only ten minutes. I’m deadweight on the life preserver, unable to kick even once to help make progress.

  “Can you climb?” Christopher shouts.

  I stare at him, unable to process the words. The cold has done something to my body, made me sluggish and stiff. It’s done the same thing to my brain.

  “Let’s get you through the middle,” he says, reaching for the life ring. “I’ll make sure you’re secure and then go for help.”

  Sudden panic is enough to jolt me out of my shock. “No.”

  “It will only take a minute.”

  He thinks I’m worried about being left alone in the water. More than that I’m worried about the disappointment on Daddy’s face. “I can climb,” I say, my voice shaky and thin.

  Christopher stares at me for a moment, and when he speaks, his voice is softer. “He won’t be mad at you. You should hear the way he talks about you when you’re not there.”

  That’s exactly why I can’t let him know I was smoking a joint and falling overboard. He wants me to be like Christopher—to be the valedictorian and go to business school. That’s something I’ll never be able to do for him, but at least I can spare him this. “Please.”

  “Fuck,” he mutters.

  In that moment I realize he already knows this will be a secret. Our secret. Because he didn’t follow procedure. He should have shouted for help and hit the emergency button first. And he definitely shouldn’t have jumped in after me, not without someone else on deck to pull us both back up. An unbroken sky rises from the metal railing above us. The night is quiet except for our fast breathing and the lap of the water. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “I swear to God,” he says darkly, “if you fall and die, I’ll kill you myself.”

  That would make me laugh if I were capable of doing anything other than pant. He makes me go first, though I’m not sure how he would manage to catch me if I fell. If there’s one thing I know by now, it’s that he would try. So I focus on each rung with every ounce of determination in me, grip the textured metal and pray there’s enough muscle left inside me to hold on. There are a thousand steps up the side of the yacht. A million of them. It’s my own personal journey to the promised land, and it tests my determination with every aching pull.

  When I reach the top, I push myself through the railing and collapse onto the deck.

  A warm body tumbles beside me, but I can’t look sideways. There’s only the stars, unblinking. Then a face appears above me. Christopher, looking wet and strong and grim. “We should go back to shore. The fall. The cold. You should have a doctor look at you.”

  “N-n-no.”

  “Harper. You’re freezing.”

  There’s no way to argue that point, not when I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering. I think that’s a good sign. I read that somewhere. It means the body is warm enough to shiver, but I can’t get the words out through the violent movement.

  He curses again and disappears from my view. I close my eyes in quiet despair. He’s gone to get Daddy, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. The week we would have spent at sea, now we’ll spend it in some fancy emergency room even though I’m fine.

  Not enough time has passed when hands force their way under me. Then I’m lifted, tucked close to a body as wet as mine but so much warmer. Christopher carries me belowdecks, turning carefully to the side so I don’t bump against the narrow walls.

  He lays me down on my bed, and my arms are made of lead. My legs might as well be anvils, that’s how useful they would be if I were in the water right now. I’m helpless in front of this person who should be my enemy. Poor little rich girl, he called me, and I want to cry and rage because he’s right about me.

  His hands move to the button of my jeans, and I suck in a breath. My mind was on sharks and freezing water, but now I’m thinking about roofies. I’m thinking about a girl who can’t protect herself. About Poseidon and Medusa.

  “Christopher,” I whisper, though I’m not sure what I’m asking.

  He glares at me, his eyes black with a strange heat. “You have two options. Either I call your dad here or I make sure you’re warm. You pick.”

  You pick. In those two words he restores my faith in him—strange, because I wouldn’t have said I had faith at all. I know I need to get out of my wet clothes, and my body is too hurt by the freezing cold to be useful. “Don’t look.”

  After a beat he nods, facing away from me. Then he turns off the dim bedside lamp, bathing us only in moonlight from the port window. He undresses me with clumsy efficiency, his fingers clearly numb and struggling against the waterlogged fabric. I feel somehow colder by the time he’s done, the damp clothes in a heap on the floor, my naked skin exposed to the room.

  And then I watch while he undresses himself, faster and rougher with his body than he was with mine. His clothes land on top of mine, and then he pulls us both under the covers.

  He’s naked. The thought is enough to make me blush, even when there shouldn’t be any energy in my body for such an act. But he holds me close, tight enough I can’t make out where his male parts meet my female parts. There are only two bodies here, clinging together for warmth, creating a little cocoon. Exhaustion makes my eyelids heavy.

  “One of my mom’s husbands got into bed with me once.”

  Every part of his body becomes stiff. “What the fuck?”

  “It was bad. Not like this. This is nice.”

  “I swear to God, Harper.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, the words slurred together. “I told Mom the next day and we moved out of his mansion, even though it was really nice. He owned this big job website. Don’t tell Daddy. He would freak out even though it was a long time ago.”

  He holds me tighter, his face pressed to my hair. “I’m not going to touch you. I’m only staying
here until you don’t feel like an ice cube, and then I’m moving to the chair.”

  “Thanks,” I say, the word coming out long and slow.

  He sighs. “Go to sleep, Harper. And for the love of God, don’t die.”

  A death wish, he’d called it. “Want to live,” I mumble before the dreams take me down. It’s only later that I think that everything changed that night. Not because I fell into the bay or because he pulled me out. Because I confessed that in my sleepy-shocked state. It set us on the course to ruin, what made him the white knight to my damsel in distress.

  Chapter Four

  TEMPORARY

  I wake up gasping for air, a nightmare of being submerged in water pressing against my consciousness. My muscles ache as I stretch in the bunk, looking up at familiar knots in the ceiling. What the hell did I dream about? There’s grit in my eyes as if I spent all evening at a bonfire, drinking cheap beer from a plastic cup and ignoring the frat boys on the beach.

  My mind moves slow and careful. I’m not sure I want the memory that happens next, but it comes anyway. Not a nightmare. Not a dream. I fell overboard last night.

  And Christopher Bardot saved me.

  That would be shocking, but not as shocking as the memory of him naked in the moonlight, climbing into bed, his warm skin flush against mine. He’s gone now, enough that I would think it really could have been a dream. Except for the faint scent of him that remains, something woodsy and male that managed to survive a dip in the Atlantic.

  My phone rings from the nightstand, my mother’s picture flashing on the screen. It’s a photo I took when she was laughing at the beach and didn’t think I was watching her. Completely different than the beauty queen smile she uses when looking at a camera. There’s a bittersweet sensation whenever I think about her when I’m with Daddy, a feeling of betrayal I can’t shake for loving him even though he hates her so much.