I shrugged. “I guess so.”
Ben grabbed my hand in his and pulled me away from the room. There was a study off the living room with glass double doors and walls of books—that was where he took me. I wasn’t necessarily comfortable holding his hand, and I tugged my hand away from his just as he started to close the double doors. Okay…if I wasn’t feeling it before, now I certainly was feeling uncomfortable.
Ben sat on the edge of his father’s (or possibly his mother’s) desk. “I feel like I have so much to say to you. I’m not sure where to even start.”
“You really don’t have to say anything.”
“But I do.” He took a long breath and stood up from the desk. At this point, my heart was racing. I didn’t know what this was about. By essentially faking his own death, he’d sent a pretty clear message that he didn’t see a future between us. And I was okay with that. I’d moved on from that. I had Rhett. I was over the past. And in a way grateful for the past since it had led me to my current relationship.
“I want to apologize,” Ben started. “I have a lot of people to apologize to, but I wanted to start with you. You know…that summer…I knew how you felt about me, how you’d always felt about me. And the moment you walked into that community college class, I took advantage of your feelings. I needed a friend, pretty desperately at the time, and I think you were equally desperate for my attention.”
Jeez. Not something a girl ever wants to hear. My stomach—which was already in knots—started to churn. “This is not how I pictured this evening going,” I uttered. Where was Rhett? He had to of seen Ben drag me into this room. Why hadn’t he come to my rescue yet?
Ben cleared his throat and went on. “What I’m trying to say is that…at that moment in time, I didn’t appreciate how much you cared. I was stuck in my own issues, my own problems, and my own depression. I was too focused on those things, and on what I’d lost, to notice you back then. But I’ve thought about you every day since ‘my death.’ Every day I’ve been tempted to contact you and tell you the truth. To tell you that I do care. To tell you how stupid I was. And to tell you how much I wish I could go back in time.” He took a few breaths. “Sydney…because the truth is…I think I might be in love with you.”
Wait. What?
He moved closer across the room.
I only held my coat a little tighter.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I think that my mouth was dry, and that I needed a glass of water. I’d waited years to hear these words. And now that I’d finally heard them, I wished that I could unhear them. I already had someone who loved me. And he didn’t love me as an afterthought or as something born out of his problems. He loved me. Period. And it was Rhett that I should be with right now, not Ben.
“I think…” I uttered. “I mean I know…that you’re too late. I’ve moved on. I have a boyfriend, a very serious boyfriend, the forever type of boyfriend, and to be perfectly honest, it’s just too late for us. Like a year too late. I’m sorry. It’s just—” I stopped myself because I didn’t know what else to say. There wasn’t anything else to say.
He gave me a weak smile. The closest thing I’d seen to a smile since we started this conversation. “I understand,” he told me. There was no anger in his voice, only regret and sadness.
My heart broke for him. What in his life had been so bad that he’d felt the need to graduate early, leave this town, and subsequently pretend to be dead? Something pretty awful, I assumed. “You mentioned you lost something before. What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s in the past, and I’m trying to move on from that. Just poor decisions on my part. Sometimes one wrong choice can haunt you for the rest of your life.” For a moment I thought he was going to spill his guts, but the moment quickly faded and passed. “So who’s the guy?” he asked. “The boyfriend?”
“Rhett Morgan. Ellie and Noah’s friend,” I answered, a little apprehensively. This was the first time I’d been asked this question.
“I know who Rhett is.” He smiled, giving me a pointed look. “I am surprised though. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do. So…I’m gonna go.” I gestured for the door, giving him a small smile. Suddenly it felt like this giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Closure. That was what this was. Everything with Ben was finally and completely over. And I left him before anymore words could be exchanged and before things had a chance to grow awkward. There was somewhere else I needed to be—someone else I needed to be with.
As I left the study and returned to the living room, part of me feared that Rhett might have left the party early. By talking to Ben for as long as I had and being alone with him like that, part of me felt a tad guilty. What if Rhett was pissed at me for this? But Rhett wasn’t really that type of person. He was pretty relaxed with most everything. So a bigger part of me knew he’d still be here. I came into the living room and sure enough, he was still here.
I was relieved and excited to see him. Also, slightly emotional. Cutting across the room, I hurried toward him. We came together, and I immediately fell into his arms. His embrace was strong and sure and exactly what I needed. I held onto him rather tightly.
“You okay?” he whispered against my ear.
“Yes,” I answered.
He pulled back to look down at me, brushing my hair out of my face. “Are we okay?”
“Never better.”
“Okay. Good.” And as easy as that—that was the end of it. The Ben thing would never again be an issue between us. A giant sigh of relief left my lips as I settled in against Rhett’s side. He kept his arm firmly in place around my waist.
“I knew it,” Noah uttered. He stood next to Rhett, shaking his head at us. “You two are the worst liars in the world.”
“No more lies,” Rhett told him. “This is my girlfriend.”
THE END
ADRIFT
ADRIFT
(Kill Devil Hills #4)
SARAH DARLINGTON
ADRIFT (KILL DEVIL HILLS #4)
Copyright © 2017 Sarah Darlington
Cover Design by Sommer Stein of Perfect Pear Creative Covers
Editing by Kamaryn Kretz
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, and events portrayed in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced throughout this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
To my cousin Chelsea.
CHAPTER 1:
BEN
Everyone thought I had drowned. That I’d died on a day in February almost two years ago.
Everyone was wrong.
I hadn’t died that day, and the truth was out now that I was perfectly fine and perfectly alive. But for so long that was what everyone had believed; what I’d deliberately led everyone to believe. My family even had a funeral for me, the real-deal kind where all my relatives had attended, where half the people who’d known me in high school had attended, where my obituary had been published in the paper, and where my family had even buried an empty coffin filled with some of my favorite childhood possessions. I had a grave. And my grave at the local cemetery still existed. It had been a while since everyone discovered the truth about me, but no one had bothered removing the grave yet. Kind of messed up, I suppose. Then again, everything about my life was messed up, so my whole ‘fake grave’ and ‘fake death’ were both just kind of on par for the course.
My ‘fa
ke death’ happened when I’d been out on a rescue mission with my Coast Guard team, somewhere off the coast of California. I’d fallen overboard, stupidly enough. A simple mistake in footing really—or maybe my mistake had been a little bit on purpose. Looking back now, it was hard to say with absolute certainty. Either way, the wind and the choppiness of the sea, combined with the blackness of night, had easily engulfed my body the moment I hit the water’s surface. The ocean devoured me up like a ravenous dog. I was at the mercy of the storm and current, choking on salt water, being tossed around in waves as tall as a two-story house, struggling to keep my head above water.
Despite the odds, and despite the fact that I’m pretty sure a big part of me had initially wanted to drown, somehow I persevered. I lived through the night. Like a switch being flipped, some basic survival instinct inside me clicked—the fight or flight instinct—and I fought for my life that night.
It was the longest eight (or so) hours of my existence. But somehow, I found myself exhausted, terrified, and covered in sand the following morning. Maybe I had a guardian angel out there, or maybe God was punishing me by keeping me on this earth a little longer. Who knows? But I lived. I made it to shore. Not just any shore either, I’d washed up on Malibu Beach.
Carrie Stone, the widow of the late Joey Stone, a Hollywood director who’d overdosed on heroine in the early nineties, found me. Actually, her live-in male nurse, Kale, had found me. The man, all three hundred pounds of him, had discovered me and hauled my ass up the beach. I still remember the moment he flopped my body across the dining room table like a sandy fish.
Giant. Crystal. Chandelier.
Ugh—
Blinking through the saltiness and disorientation, I attempted to open my eyes. Everything was a blur, but I noticed that there was a big chandelier hanging above me. That and two people hovering. One very large man and one very tiny old woman. A strange rocking sensation, like I was still outside in the ocean treading water, consumed my whole body, and I blinked my eyes, checking to see if I was actually awake.
I was. Unfortunately.
Where the hell was I?
What the hell was going on?
Every muscle in my body ached.
“Dear, God,” came the wavery, shaky voice of the elderly woman. She was thin and frail and she held onto a walker as she tried to inspect me. “Is he dead?” the woman gasped. “Did you just drop a dead man onto my table?”
“No,” answered the large man. He had dark skin, was in his mid-thirties, and was possibly Hawaiian. “His eyes are open. See?” He pointed.
The old woman chuckled, placing a leathery hand against her very thin throat. “You’re right, his eyes are open,” she said, scrutinizing me like I wasn’t awake and staring right back at her. “I’m blind as shit, Kale,” she told the man. “Go find my glasses for me, honey. Please. Then let’s call him an ambulance. And then I’m going to need a gin.”
I was groggy. I felt like death. My mouth was drier than a cotton ball and my skin itched. I knew I had to be dehydrated, probably dangerously so because my thoughts weren’t fully coherent, but the last thing I wanted was the ambulance.
“Please, no,” I choked out. “No ambulance.”
“Sweet cakes,” the woman said, glancing down over my body. “You look like hell. Did you have too much to drink and go skinny-dipping last night? Swim out too far from shore? Because that happens to the best of us, but you look like you need some medical help.”
Um, sweet cakes? Um, skinny-dipping? With as much strength as I could muster, I lifted my heavy-as-hell head up off the table to glance down at my body. I still had on my underwear, thank God, but everything else was gone. My uniform, my gear, my shoes—all of it. The ocean had literally chewed me up and spit me back out.
“Ma-am,” I said to the old woman, letting my head flop back down on her hard table, “being on this table, right here, right now, is the best I’ve felt, the freest I’ve been, in over a year. Please. I just—I just don’t want to go back to my life just yet. Can you give me thirty minutes? Please. Anything?”
I was begging. I was pleading.
I couldn’t help myself.
I was desperate.
She sighed. “Fine. As long as Kale says it’s okay. He’s a nurse, my nurse. If he says you’re fine, then you can stay as long as you want. If he says we need to call an ambulance, then we’re calling an ambulance.”
My life hinged on whatever this Kale person would decide.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. Fuck me, I think I was crying. Or at least, if I wasn’t so dehydrated I would have been crying. My eyes burned. Kale came back into the room with the old woman’s glasses. Once they were in place on her face, she had the man inspect me.
“I’ll start an IV,” he decided. “Once he gets some fluids in him and some rest, he should be fine.”
And I was fine. Other than the fact that I was mostly naked, on some stranger’s dining room table, with a large man nursing me back to health, I was fine. Physically, fine.
Mentally…not so much. That was a bit more questionable.
Because I didn’t end up staying only thirty more minutes with the old woman and her nurse. I stayed in Mrs. Carrie Stone’s Malibu beach house for the next nine months.
Me, Carrie, Kale, and her neighbor’s cat (which I soon found she frequently took care of) were all suddenly roommates. It’s funny where life can take you sometimes. And my decision to stay at Carrie’s house (rather than telling anyone I was still alive) was both the worst and best decision of my life.
The Coast Guard searched for me. They had dozens of rescue ships, helicopters, and volunteers off the coast, scanning the water, working desperately to locate my body. Except my body wasn’t out there to be found. Instead my body watched everything unfold on the nightly news, all from the comfort of Carrie’s magenta, living room couch. The three of us—me, Carrie, and Kale—all sat glued to that television for four days straight.
“Lost at sea.” That was phrase the media kept repeating.
Then—on day four—the phrase turned into “lost at sea, declared dead.”
Wow, shit just got fucking real.
The world thought I was dead. My family thought I was dead. People I went to high school with, people I grew up with, my ex-girlfriend Sonya, everyone I had ever known, everyone thought I was dead—that I’d drowned that night. And I let them continue to think the worst.
Carrie Stone didn’t even care. She didn’t care that I was using her house as my hideout, eating her food, and borrowing her late husband’s clothes. I think the old woman was that desperate for more company that she didn’t even try to push me into telling the truth; in fact, she encouraged the opposite.
“Oh honey, sometimes you just have to say, ‘fuck you, world,’ and you do whatever it is you have to do to make yourself happy. Stop living for everyone else.” That was what she’d told me. Maybe, because of her age or perhaps due to the privileged, consequence-free life she’d always lived, she didn’t understand the gravity of my decision.
Kale understood.
“Dude, this will blow up in your face.” That had been his one warning. Beyond that though, Kale stayed out of my business and did nothing to alert the world that I still lived.
So I got away with it.
And for a little while it was really nice being ‘fake dead’. No responsibilities. No pressures. Only a small, sharp-witted old woman to contend with, beautiful sunsets to enjoy on the balcony overlooking the Pacific, and all the Netflix binge shows a person could ever dream of. At one point, I stayed in my pajamas for an entire week straight. It was great taking time off from being…me. Still, there were certain regrets from my past that couldn’t be undone, but for a short while the pain from those mistakes was almost bearable.
But that was then. And this was now. Now everyone knew about my lie. I guess it all came down to the fact that I couldn’t stay dead forever. Eventually I caved and called my sister Ellie, needing to know how she wa
s and how my family was. From there, things spiraled. She told a couple of her friends and then brought my other sister Georgina out to California to see me. Thus blowing my cover. After that I knew I had to tell the rest of my family. I had to man up and grow the fuck up. It sucked, but I had to do it. My secret was out and just like Kale had warned, everything blew up in my face.
It wasn’t just a matter of ‘wow, Ben’s alive’ either. Since I hadn’t died and I was still of ‘sound mind’ (that was the term the lawyers kept throwing around during my trial), the Coast Guard legally found me guilty of being a deserter and I was dishonorably discharged. I faced a sentence of one year in prison, which ended up being reduced to nine months—to match the nine months of my AWOL period. Which kind of felt like an eye for an eye in the end. Then the state of California sued my ass.
So…yeah…Kale had been right, it had all fucking blown up in my face.
Prison was not fun. Neither was probation. Or my parole officer, Jack ‘the hard-ass.’ Or the fact that I was not legally allowed to leave Kill Devil Hills, the town I’d grown up in, the town I now despised, for the next three months. There were hours of community service left to serve and thousands of dollars that I owed my parents. Everyone now knew just how undead I actually was, and everyone hated me for it.
So much time had passed since I’d made my original decision to leave Kill Devil Hills. It had only been a couple of years, but it felt like a lifetime. I’d enrolled in community college classes the summer after my junior year of high school, earned the credits needed to graduate a whole year early, and sacked all thoughts of ever going to a typical four-year university. I’d even given up the possibility of a future playing college football. Because I’d been damn good at football too, maybe even good enough for the NFL one day. But instead of chasing the dreams everyone always expected me to chase, I enlisted in the Coast Guard. It was the quickest way out, and I took it. I got the hell out of Kill Devil Hills.
Kill Devil Hills: A Complete Beach Romance Series (4-Book Box Set) Page 55
