Summer Island Sisters

by Ciara Knight

  The tears rolled down her cheeks. It was the first time she’d said the words aloud. Her gut churned and burned. Acid ate away at her insides.

  Dustin released her and opened his door. She knew that her past would open his eyes to who she was and why she didn’t deserve any man in her life. With the back of her hand, she swiped away the tears, and then she grabbed her purse and opened the door. But when she stood to leave him and his ideal of her, he pulled her into him. His arms wrapped around her body like a shield against the pain.

  The heat of him, the strength of him, soothed the battle inside. Her muscles relaxed, and her pulse slowed.

  His lips pressed to her forehead, and he whispered, “It wasn’t your fault.”

  But it was. If it hadn’t been for her, Matt would be alive. And his parents wouldn’t be mourning his death. A death she hadn’t even answered their letters about.

  Coward, that’s what she was, and now she’d even dragged Dustin into her mess. A mess he could never speak about or she’d go to jail. Even if she could get around the gag order, Robert Remming claimed to have evidence linking her to Matt’s death. It wouldn’t matter if he’d made it up. He’d been right about one thing: The courts and world would believe his attorneys over a small-town activist.

  Maybe that’s why she’d told Dustin. She deserved prison. It had to be better than where she’d been living in purgatory.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dustin’s gut clenched tight. A summer breeze cooled his anger for the man who had done this to Trace. He held the woman who curved perfectly into his body. Her wet cheek pressed to his chest and her tiny arms clinging around his middle melted him.

  Trace’s story convicted him. If he could change his past sins, he would, but he couldn’t. He would face them, though. Trace had done nothing wrong and had nothing to be sorry for in her entire life. That man Robert Remming was at fault.

  Dustin wanted to ask if the man had been arrested or if there was anything he could do, but he feared if he moved, spoke, breathed, she’d be gone. So he held her tight, wanting to make it better for her. “You can’t blame yourself.” He regretted speaking the moment she flinched.

  She yanked free and looked up at him, dark eyelashes fluttering back tears.

  He shook his head. “Don’t shut me out. I’m not him. I’m not Robert.” He didn’t know if he said that to convince Trace or himself, but it didn’t work either way. If he let her go now, he’d lose his chance with her. She’d never listen to him if she saw him as a Robert Remming.

  The front door creaked, snapping Trace’s attention. She bolted through the front iron gate, by an angry, cross-armed Wind, and out of sight. Out of his reach. He turned on his heels to retreat to his car. Emotions surged like floodwaters from a torrential downpour.

  “Stop! No man’s allowed to make Trace cry. What did you do?” She charged full-speed, with big hair, big nails, and big attitude. “It had to be bad to make the solid, dependable, fem-fighter cry.”

  Dustin knew he wouldn’t escape Wind’s assault without telling her something. “I didn’t. Not directly.” He eyed the walkway that led to Trace and thought about storming in there and making her see reason, but he knew that wouldn’t work on her. This was her beastly battle with her past.

  “What do you mean, not directly?” Wind huffed. One hand on her hip, the other one held as if to strike him.

  “I can’t say. It isn’t my place.” Dustin wrench open the car door. “Talk to her. She needs you.”

  Wind’s lips relaxed from an I’m-going-to-kill-you line to an I-need-more-information frown. “What about you?”

  Dustin crumbled into his car before his legs gave way. “What about me? I’m just here to fix up a hotel, sell it, and leave.” He slammed the door and took off before he did something stupid. Like march into the house and confess to Trace that he cared about her in more than a business partner kind of way and that he wanted to make up for everything Robert Remming did to her until she believed in something again.

  But he was the wrong man for that job. If anything, he’d let her down and make things worse for her. He was a selfish man. Ask any of his past girlfriends. He could never put Trace through another failed relationship with a man who didn’t deserve her. No. Trace Latimer was better off without him.

  He drove to Trevor’s place. To his relief, Trevor wasn’t home, so he pulled up Robert Remming on his cell phone and collapsed on the couch. The articles sang praise of a wealthy oil tycoon putting back his money into the environment. At the end of the third article, he spotted a picture of Trace working side by side on a beach cleaning up trash. The article created the image of a man helping a local activist for no other reason than to do his part.

  Dustin knew the type. Heck, he’d taken the preschool class of how to manipulate in business, but this guy had graduated the master’s program with honors. Dustin tossed his phone on the table with a thud and grunted loudly enough for his voice to echo around the empty house.

  The front door flew open, and Trevor stormed into the living room. “What did you do?”

  Dustin ran his hands over his head, his fingers tugging the hair, trying to yank the image of Trace crying from his brain. “Nothing.”

  “Then why did I cut my date short with Jewels because she received an SOS from Wind stating you’d done something to Trace? Dropped her off crying. Trace doesn’t cry.” Trevor held his keys tight in his fist, undoubtedly ready to handle this man-style. Dustin would take his lumps if that made his friend feel better. Heck, he’d lean in for a few blows.

  Dustin dropped his hands to his knees and realized the image of Robert still illuminated his cell, so he quickly snagged it and hit the off button.

  “What was that?” Trevor chuckled, but it wasn’t a laugh of humor. “Great. Some girl called, interrupting your date with Trace, and you ditched her?”

  Dustin laughed, a deep, guttural, animal-dying kind of laugh. “Right, because Trace is that sensitive?”

  The lights flickered and a boom sounded in the distance, warning of an approaching storm.

  Trevor tossed his keys onto the table and then sat down. “I know you wouldn’t do anything intentional to hurt Trace. Not since you turned a corner and realized she wasn’t the enemy, but you had to have done something unintentionally.”

  Dustin didn’t say anything. How could he? This was Trace’s business, not his. He wouldn’t betray her. Not to Wind and not to Trevor. “Believe what you want.” He pushed from the couch and climbed the stairs to his little box he called a room. He’d gone from palatial penthouse to pocket-sized pantry.

  Trevor followed him up the stairs. “Hey, man. Seriously. What happened? You look like you’ve been bullied and beaten.”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about me.” Dustin reached his room.

  “Wait. What should I tell Jewels? She’s texting me, asking what I found out.” Trevor held up his cell as if it were waiting for Dustin to speak directly into it.

  “Tell her that Trace is a good woman who deserves better.” Dustin shut the door on Trevor and any possibility of Trace in his life. This entire situation had been a fiasco since he’d arrived.

  He couldn’t go on like this. Tomorrow, he’d return to her father’s place and work harder than he had ever worked in his life. They’d work together in silence. She’d hide behind the manual labor, and that would be okay with him. Because as much as he wanted to admit he could let her go, he’d do anything to see her again. He’d go and punch Robert in the nose if he had the chance. Something had to be done to help Trace understand it wasn’t her fault, but what could he do, after swearing to silence?

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Come on, hon. Tell us what that evil man did to you.” Wind settled on the side of the bed, but Trace faced the wall. She didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it. What had she been thinking, telling Dustin?

  Houdini cuddled up at her side and purred. His soft fur soothed her a bit.

  “I’m sorry,” Kat
said in an un-Kat-like soft tone. “I thought I was so clever, pulling that deal out and making you both work together. It was stupid.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Trace mumbled into the pillow, longing to tell them everything, but she couldn’t. She’d already opened her big mouth to Dustin. She couldn’t bring her sisters into this nightmare, too. Besides, she could never let them know what she’d done.

  Jewels patted her leg. “We’re all here for you, hon.”

  “Even me,” Bri said in her light and happy voice.

  “Nothing any of you can do. I’m fine. Tired, that’s all.”

  Jewels’s hand rubbed small circles on Trace’s back. Humiliation didn’t begin to explain how she felt at this moment. Crying was for the weak, girly girls who needed attention. Not her. She was the one who would console everyone else. This attention from her friends unnerved her, and she needed to escape this friend therapy. “Listen. I’m fine. Better than fine.” She shot up and scooted to the edge of the bed. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to go work on my dad’s place. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Kat blocked her exit, all five foot ten inches of her. “Not going anywhere.”

  “Listen, leggy lawyer, get out of my way.” Trace looked to the others when Kat didn’t back down.

  “We want to make sure you’re okay. Running off to hide in your father’s house isn’t the answer.” Jewels lifted Houdini to her shoulder and looked to Bri as if her daughter could find a better way to trap Trace in the room all night.

  Bri scratched Houdini’s head. “If Trace wants to go work out whatever is upsetting her, shouldn’t we let her go? That’s how Trace deals. Avoidance and hard work.”

  Trace didn’t like being talked about like she wasn’t even in the room. “Avoidance? I’ve taken on some of the biggest institutions in the world on my own or with little support. I’ve always attacked things directly, and I’ve never backed down.” Until Matt’s death.

  Kat stepped out of her way. “We know you’re keeping something from us, but we’re here if you want to talk.”

  Trace grabbed a lantern from her room and bolted from house, the love of old friends. At a brisk pace, she made it to the edge of town, avoiding the path behind Trevor’s place. Crying into Dustin’s arms was embarrassment enough for one day.

  Rhonda strutted out of Skip’s and crossed the road. Trace picked up the pace. “The town’s going to see you for who you really are. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Trace didn’t stop. No way Rhonda knew anything about what happened on that oil rig. The company had paid big money to shut down the talk and avoid bad press. Gag orders issued. Threats implied. Guilt and fear used as tools to silence her.

  Trace’s breath came in short bursts, and her heart hammered against her ribs, but she didn’t stop. Not until she closed herself off from the world in her father’s home.

  Her home.

  She forced the anxiety into submission, flicked on the lanter, picked up a box, and tossed everything from the top shelf in the kitchen into it with one swoop of her arm. She opened up the cabinet under the sink and flung all the old cleaning chemicals into a bag. She yanked the 1970s fruit-faced clock from the wall and held it over the box but didn’t let it go.

  The sound of cars in the distance buzzed like an oboe, waves crashing against the retaining wall like cymbals, chirping of grasshoppers like a flute. Something was missing from the song of years past. She turned the old clock over and wound it.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  That sound completed the childhood symphony.

  She retrieved from the shelf the book her father had left her and collapsed on the floor, setting the old clock by her side to tick away. “Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for not visiting more. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you raised me to be.”

  For twenty wave crashes and four car passes, she remained on the floor, legs tucked under her. “I wish you were here. For decades when you were alive, I never needed you. Now that you’re gone, I’d do anything to have you here. The guilt, regrets, are debilitating. I can’t see through it to know what to do. I need to make this right, Dad. How do I move on with my life if I can’t fix my past?”

  She abandoned the book and clock to open the faux drawer in the desk to retrieve the letter. It was time. She needed to mail it. To tell the family what exactly happened to their son. What part she’d played in his death and the truth about the company that paid them off not to ask questions.

  It didn’t matter if they sued her. She didn’t have much to take. A small retirement plan, but she didn’t need much to survive in this world.

  Prison. That would be horrible, but if physical jail meant freedom for her soul, she’d pay that price, too.

  Still, something kept her from mailing that letter.

  She yanked the drawer open and crushed the letter to her chest. The secret. The truth gnawed at her every thought. The weight of her deception pounded her into submission and silence. She thought it would be less now that she’d unburdened herself to Dustin, but all that had done was add to her fear of discovery.

  How long could she keep the truth from the world? “Dad, what should I do?”

  A light knock at the front door drew her from the past. She shoved the letter back into the drawer and opened the front door to see her three friends and Bri standing together.

  Jewels lifted a pitcher of homemade margaritas, and Wind held out plastic glasses.

  “You don’t have to tell us anything. We only want to be here for you.” Kat marched past her and plopped a radio onto the table.

  Bri held Houdini up to Trace. “He wanted to come, too.”

  Houdini squawked at her as if in warning that he’d still be mischievous but he was here for her.

  In that moment, she didn’t feel so alone. Her lifelong friends by her side without pressuring her to share meant everything to her. Only, she wanted to share, but not with them.

  Not because she didn’t trust them. She trusted them more than anyone, but the warnings and threats from Robert’s lawyers had stuck with Trace enough that she didn’t want to risk any of them.

  She picked up a box and went to work, allowing herself a reprieve from the monster memory of her failings.

  That’s what friendsters did, provided respite from life. She only hoped she didn’t pull them under with her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dustin packed two coffees and waters and hope—hope of showing her that she didn’t need to carry guilt or feel responsible for what had happened to her—into his bag and set off for Trace’s place. They weren’t right for each other, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help her.

  He stopped and put a sign on the hotel’s main door, telling her he’d be at her place, and then took the short walk. It wasn’t long enough to allow him much time to overthink what he’d tell her.

  He didn’t deserve her, but he wanted her. That was the problem. For the first time in his life, he needed to put someone else ahead of his own desires. She was good, despite what she thought. And the accident wasn’t her fault. It was only that. An accident.

  Would she listen?

  He’d make her.

  At the door, he knocked twice, but it didn’t open. He was a few minutes early, so he set his supplies on the kitchen table and noticed everything had been packed and put in different areas of the house. She must’ve worked all night.

  He would work as hard as she was to get this place ready for her to move back into it. The list of inspection items that Kat had provided pushed him to tackle the roof first.

  A tall ladder at the side of the house gave him access to the roof. Unfortunately, it was worse than he’d first imagined. She needed an entirely new roof. He’d start by removing the shingles and tarping it until he could get roofers out here to put on a new one.

  On his knees, arched over, he worked as the sun rose into the sky. No sign of Trace. He worried she’d never show, but he kept working. His arms
burned from overuse and the sun that managed to sneak through the canopy by high noon.

  Sweat poured down his body, and for a moment he thought about jumping into the ocean, but he wasn’t that desperate. Still, he needed a break.

  He didn’t care that Trace was so late, but he worried she’d never come around him again. He’d go check the hotel to make sure she wasn’t working there, but if he didn’t find her there and she didn’t show by midday, he’d go find her at Jewels’s place. For the moment, he could stick his feet in the water and dump a bucket over his head. Sharks couldn’t go in water that shallow, could they?

  Outside, he trudged through the overgrown grass. He eyed the hotel, but there was no sign of Trace, so he headed to the beach near the dock. He could wade in to his knees, splash some water on himself, and then return to work.

  At the edge of the ocean, he removed his work boots and socks. He waded in to his ankles. The cool water soothed his toes and feet. Ankle deep was progress. At this rate, he’d reach knee-deep by Christmas.

  Something floated toward him in the water. He jumped back, sure it was a shark, but it wasn’t. It was a paddleboard. One of Jewels’s.

  A shot of heat seared his body. His breath caught. Mouth went sand dry.

  He scanned the water but didn’t see anyone.

  A splash rippled the waves, and he caught sight of blonde hair before it went under again.

  He trembled at the sight. “Trace!”

  No answer. No resurface. No Trace.

  He didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t wait.

  He dove into the water headfirst and swam like Michael Phelps.

  “Trace!” No answer.

  At the board, he reached around under the water and touched something. It bolted up out of the surf with a yelp.