“Yes,” I moaned. “Yes—”
He eased into me. I wanted to fold my legs around him and pull him in deeper, but he was still pinning my legs to his chest, kissing my ankles. I was so close to the edge already; having him inside me was almost too much to stand. When his fingers found me again, I realized I was going to lose control completely. My hand flew to my mouth, trying to stifle the cry I knew was coming—but there was nothing I could do. Outside or not, I couldn’t repress a tortured, panting scream, while the orgasm wracked my body. It was him: the way he responded to my touch, the way he held me, his kindness, his gentleness, his strength. Everything about him.
I heard him groan and forced my eyes open, wanting to see him. He set my hips back down on the cool granite and braced himself between my legs, with his hands on either side of my shoulders, his muscles standing out even under his sleeves. “Corazón,” I murmured, because I knew he’d like it, “come inside me, amor mio.”
He groaned again, deep and guttural, and the muscles in his jaw clenched as he pressed harder into me. “Miranda…” I arched my back up to meet him as he found his release. His head bowing, he shuddered.
I drew his mouth down to mine for a kiss, and when we broke apart, he was smiling.
“You have some pipes,” he told me, his smile widening. “I’d like to hear you sing properly sometime.”
“Oh, God.” My entire face flushed. “I hope nobody heard me.”
“Lucky them if they did.” He kissed me one last time, then climbed off me and fixed his jeans. He sat down beside me and drew his knees up to his chest.
Still blushing, I pulled my jeans back on and adjusted my shirt. “That was a first for me,” I said, with a sidelong smile at him. “Doing that outside, I mean.”
“Really?”
“You’d probably get eaten by an alligator if you tried it in Florida.” Something occurred to me, and my mood clouded over slightly. “So…that means you have?”
“Yeah, occasionally.”
“The cave by the beach?”
He laughed. “No. Why, did you want to?”
“Kind of.” I smiled, but the smile faded just as quickly. “You haven’t been here before, have you?”
“Um, no.” He gave an embarrassed cough. “Well, I’ve been here before, but not for that.”
So where? And with who? But I didn’t really need to wonder about that part. I knew it wasn’t Jenny—she was far too proper. Suze, on the other hand…
How could I be so jealous of a dead girl?
“Sorry,” I told Owen, partly apologizing for my thoughts. “It’s none of my business, what you’ve done and where…” And with who.
I got to my feet, brushing off my jeans. It was time to head back to reality.
“It’s your business,” he said mildly. “Hey. M.” He stood and caught me by my good wrist, turning me to face him. “It’s your business, because we’re…” He gazed down at me, his eyebrows drawn together. “If you want to be…”
My heart skipped a beat. “Dating?”
“If you’re not ready—”
“I’m ready,” I said at once. “Definitely.”
His expression softened with relief, and I grinned at him, my chest tight with sharp, sudden joy.
Back at Owen’s house, we realized we had forgotten about lunch.
“Stay for dinner?” He glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled. It was 3:00. ”An early dinner?”
Somehow, he managed to whip up penne vodka and a pretty little salad, as happy as I’d ever seen him. He let me help by chopping some of the vegetables for the salad with my left hand, and when I apologized for cutting one of them wrong, he looked at me like I had three heads. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. Come here.” And he kissed me until I forgot what I’d apologized for.
After dinner, which we’d drawn out for as long as we could, I noticed him stifling a yawn.
“I should go,” I said, trying to hide my regret. “You have to work tomorrow, and you must be exhausted. You’re probably still jet-lagged from your trip to California.”
“Almost forgot I went there,” Owen remarked, stifling another yawn. “Seems like months ago.”
“Were you mad at me?” I asked him. “Is that why you went?
“I wasn’t mad, I was just…hurt. I thought I’d been so stupid… You know, to think it would work out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I never explained about that. It wasn’t that I’d heard about Suze—it was Rhys.” I told him about Rosa’s phone call.
“Wish I’d realized. I would’ve called Lacroix right then and there.” Owen shook his head. “Sorry I was such an ass. I bailed on you that morning, and then I was too wrapped up in myself to listen to you that afternoon. I should never have tried to talk to you about that stuff at the pub—”
“You weren’t an ass.” I smiled wryly. “We were both kind of freaked out that day. It’s all right.”
He reached around the table and squeezed my knee. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He sighed. “Better drive you home, then.”
As we climbed into Owen’s truck, his smile slipped away, until he was once again the grim, silent man I’d met in the coffee shop that morning, months ago. The passionate, expressive version of Owen had been locked away, until—when? Until he saw me again? There was too much depth to his personality for him to be contained like this all the time.
“What if you talked to them about it?” I asked, turning towards him in the front seat. “The people in town. You could tell them some of what you’ve told me about Suze.”
“It wouldn’t help.”
It was the answer I’d expected, but it still made me unhappy. “Maybe if everyone knew about what you’ve done for me, how wonderful you’ve been, then they wouldn’t think—”
“You know what everyone’s going to think, M.” He didn’t sound angry, just tired. “They’re going to think I did it to you.”
“No—no. They won’t think that. I’ll tell them about Rhys—”
“It won’t matter what you tell them.”
I frowned at the floor of the cab, trying not to be hurt. I’d known he would think that, and I almost couldn’t blame him, because I had a sinking suspicion that he was right. Officer Lacroix had practically said so. If any other cop besides Nick Lacroix had showed up, would Owen be in jail right now instead of Rhys? A different cop would have taken Rhys’ side, just like everyone always did, and they would have blamed Owen, like everyone always did.
It wasn’t right. I wanted to fix it, to change things. I’d never felt so strongly about anything before; it was like a tidal wave.
“M.?”
I looked up. I’d been so deep in thought I’d almost forgotten where I was.
“You aren’t mad?” he asked.
“Well—no. Not really. Not at you.”
“‘Not really,’” he said. “All right.”
“I’m just thinking. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
I leaned across the console and kissed him again, a goodbye kiss this time. His fingers clenched in my hair, as if I might evaporate into the night.
“I’ll call you,” I told him.
He nodded, looking away.
I walked up the driveway. As I opened the front door, I realized he was still there, watching me go inside. He was worried about me. I waved to him from the front stoop while he started up the truck, and I worried about him, too.
Chapter 22
When I walked in the front door, Kaye was chopping vegetables at the breakfast bar while Andy unloaded the dishwasher.
“All I meant was that you should trust her to make her own decisions—” Andy was saying.
Kaye looked up at the sound of the door closing. “Miranda! You’re back!” She dropped the knife on the cutting board with a clatter and ran over to me, throwing her arms around me. “Oh, your face!” s
he added in dismay, pulling back and peering at the ugly bruise on my jaw.
I laughed. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry—I just can’t believe someone would do this to you! So it was your ex? Is that what this was all about—the way you just sort of showed up here? You were—?”
“Running away from him,” I supplied. “Yeah.”
Kaye sat down on the arm of the couch, her fair eyebrows furrowed with concern. “He found you, just like he said he could in that text.”
“Yeah, he did.” I sighed.
“I’m so sorry we weren’t home. I feel terrible.” She paused, tugging on a spike of white-blonde hair. “I heard that Owen Larsen came over.”
“Yeah.” I plunked down in the chair by the couch. “My phone called him, somehow.”
“Your phone called him?”
“Yeah, Rhys grabbed it from me and it fell, and it must have dialed Owen somehow. He said he could hear Rhys and me…so he raced over here, and he tackled Rhys. It was…” The most amazing thing anyone has ever done for me.
“Wow,” Kaye said. “That’s weird. My phone doesn’t call people when I drop it. It just breaks.”
I hadn’t gotten a chance to think about the mysterious phone call much, what with everything that had happened, but she was right, of course. An uncomfortable feeling prickled at the back of my neck.
“Can I help with dinner?” I asked Kaye, trying to shake it off.
“If you want to.”
I insisted that I did, so eventually she let me help bread the chicken. I tried to act normal, but I couldn’t focus on their sprawling conversation. My mind kept going back to what Kaye had said—how strange it was that my phone had dialed Owen when it had hit the floor. As if it had read my mind. Mechanically, it didn’t make any sense: the phone hadn’t been opened to my list of contacts or recent calls. It had been locked.
Once again, I had that squirming, unsettling feeling of being scooped up, played like a chess piece. It wasn’t just the mysterious phone call to the person I’d wanted and needed most. There was the cut on my leg that came out of nowhere, on a day when Owen just happened to feel like walking up a path that normally he never used. Then there was the door leading into Suze’s room: how could it have been locked one moment and unlocked the next? I hadn’t done anything but turn the knob; it was as if someone had let me in.
And finally, there was Jenny’s split lip at the party. She had said something about Suze, and Violet had snapped at her, and then her lip had just started bleeding the exact same way my leg had bled—out of nowhere.
My skin crawled, and I had to stop myself from making the sign of the cross with a piece of breaded chicken.
I had to be imagining it. The phone call was just a freak accident. Owen walked everywhere, so it wasn’t too surprising he’d wandered across me in the woods, and Jenny must have been so angry that she’d bitten her lip.
And the doorknob?
It must have been broken, that was all. Just a busted lock.
The next morning, I went in early for my first shift as a hostess so Emily could show me the ropes. Ten minutes later, we had already finished and were making a pot of coffee in the back. “You’ll be fine,” Emily told me, pouring herself a cup. “This isn’t exactly the Ritz. Anyway, I’m the one who’ll be screwing stuff up.”
“No, you won’t,” I assured her. “Kaye will be here to help you.”
“Yeah, and so will—”
Before Emily could finish her sentence, the doors to the kitchen slammed open, and Miserable Margot stalked inside. She scowled at me, her gaze settling on the bruise on my jaw. “Looks like somebody got what was coming to her.”
I gaped at her. “I’m sorry?”
“I tried to tell you. Even you should’ve thought twice about hanging around with Owen Larsen.”
My heart pounding in my ears, I placed my coffee cup down before I could smash it in a rage. “Owen did not do this to me.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever. All I want to know is—do you still like him? Maybe you like him more because of it, is that it?”
I straightened up from where I’d been leaning against the counter. “For your information, my ex-boyfriend did this, after stalking me for months. And he would’ve done a lot more than this, if Owen hadn’t stopped him. So, Margot,” I added, stepping closer to her, looking her straight in the eye, “maybe you should shut the fuck up about something you know nothing about.”
“Wow,” Emily said from behind me, sounding impressed. “Go, Miranda.”
Margot’s face flushed, but she didn’t say another word. She stalked back out onto the floor—probably to tell on me to Bill.
“You are awesome,” Emily said. “That was a horrible thing to say to you.”
I glanced at her. “Your dad’s going to be pissed that we were fighting again, isn’t he?”
“Nah,” Emily said. “He knows what Margot’s like.”
I exhaled through clenched teeth. “So why does he keep her?”
“Feels bad for her. She’s nuts. Like, properly nuts. Dad hired her on a few years ago as a sort of favor to her folks. To give her something to do, you know?”
“Oh. That’s…kind of sad.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be part of Margot’s therapy anymore. She’s horrible to everybody, even the customers.” Emily paused, a sly grin spreading across her face. “Are you really dating Owen Larsen?”
“Yeah.”
“Hot,” Emily said. “He looks like a Viking.”
I laughed sheepishly. “God, I know.”
Emily excused herself and wandered off, leaving me standing awkwardly in the back room by myself. Margot’s awful comment had hurt—and yet, despite everything, I felt sorry for her. I couldn’t help it. There was so much sadness to Margot, underneath her icy exterior.
The door swung open again, and Kaye walked inside. “Emily said you and Margot had another argument?”
“Yeah, she is…”
Kaye started to say something, but her phone buzzed. She frowned at it. “Scott wants to know if you’re okay. He’s convinced—” She stopped herself.
“He thinks it was Owen.” I sighed. “So did Margot.”
“He’s just worried about you.”
I shook my head irritably. “I should go.”
Kaye watched me leave, looking anxious.
At the hostess stand, there was literally nothing to do. I had no idea how Emily could stand it. I stacked and re-stacked menus, made a neat line of pens on the stand, doodled—with my left hand—on the back of one of the daily specials print-outs.
But once people started coming in for lunch, I wished I were still bored to death. Every single person looked at the bruise on my face and the brace on my right wrist, and muttered Owen’s name.
After six hours of standing at the hostess stand with a smile so forced it ached, I was ready to snap. I just had a few more minutes to get through before I could go home, and…
And face the whole thing again tomorrow. And the day after that. And every single day for as long as Owen and I were together in Fall Island.
Chapter 23
When I got home, the house was dark and silent. Andy had gone into work about an hour ago, and Kaye was working a double. Scott’s truck was in the driveway, but if he was home, he hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights.
I stepped inside and switched on the floor lamp, bracing myself. The space between the breakfast bar and the living room lay vast and empty, and even though someone had scrubbed the pine floor until it shone, I saw drops of wine and blood splashed across it every time I blinked. I could still hear his voice, feel his grip on my wrist, see that light in his eyes.
I’d been so eager to leave work, but now I wished I were anywhere else. I could text Owen—he was probably home from work by now. But first I had to shower off that restaurant smell of pickles and stale beer, which had somehow attached itself to my clothes even though all I’d done was stand in the front
all night. Being stared at. Being judged, or pitied, or both.
I tried to fix myself a quick snack before my shower, since I’d skipped lunch, but everything tasted like ash. A sense of foreboding pressed at my ribs.
Maybe Scott’s home, I thought, glancing up at the stairs. Truthfully, I didn’t know if Scott being home would be better or worse than being alone. It had to be better, right? He was my housemate; we were friends, sort of, even if he didn’t understand about Owen.
But with each step, my sense of foreboding increased, like a thorn digging in deeper with every breath.
The death threats.
The words materialized as if someone had whispered them in my ear, but I knew instantly what they meant. Everyone thought Owen had hurt me. That wouldn’t just bring more gossip and stares and interfering comments. The death threats he got would get worse.
Scott’s door was cracked open, though his room was dark. My stomach clenched. “Scott? You here?”
I knocked. Keeping up the pretense of normality felt important.
He didn’t answer, so I pushed the door open. The days were still short enough that his room was in almost complete darkness, with just the faintest wisp of twilit clouds outside his window.
“You in here?”
When I flipped on the light, his room looked normal. A typical guy’s room—band posters on the walls, an unmade bed, laundry scattered on the floor. Only one thing struck me as strange: the top of an ornate, scrolling picture frame in the narrow space between Scott’s bed and the far wall.
I crept across the room and tilted the picture frame backwards against the wall. All of the breath left my body.
It was one of Suze’s paintings from the Artist’s Lodge. It hadn’t been destroyed in the fire after all.
There had to be some kind of rational explanation. Scott must have bought it or borrowed it from Matthew, sometime between when I had seen it hanging at the Lodge and when the Lodge had caught fire.
The thing was, Scott didn’t strike me as an elaborately framed oil painting kind of guy. And even if he was, why had he left it on the floor, half-hidden behind his bed? And why this painting, out of all the ones at the Lodge?
Set Me Free Page 18
