He’s hiding something.
“I can’t tell you. Not right now. It’s not a good time.” His voice is expressionless, solemn.
“Will there ever be a good time?” I ask. He shrugs.
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
I don’t like that answer.
“We just… I… I trusted you,” I tell him limply. “And I know you’re keeping a secret and I know it affects me. I can’t…I can’t.”
My heart is racing and I suddenly feel weak, and I crawl off the slippery rocks and walk quietly back to the boat without another word. Lately, I feel more and more like I’m the crazy one, like I’m losing my mind, like the whole world is composed of secrets and I don’t have the slightest clue how to figure them out.
Dare follows me and lifts my hand to help me into the boat.
The quiet between us is loaded and charged and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I feel like I’m standing on a precipice and if I make one move, I’ll fall.
When we’re halfway across the bay, Dare sits straight up.
“Let’s go to your little cove,” he suggests softly.
He sits on the hull, his shirtless chest gleaming in the dying light, his eyes vulnerable and hopeful and I can’t say no.
Instead, I just wordlessly steer toward the cove and wedge the boat on the sand. I don’t know why, I just don’t want to stay here. I have to move. I have to think. I have to try and stay sane, because it feels like I’m fraying.
I don’t know why.
All I know is… I suddenly feel lost.
Dare holds my hand as we walk through the water, to the enclosed little inlet that I so love. Without a word, I dig out the little bag holding the lighter and I make a little driftwood bonfire.
With the violet light surrounding us, we sit facing each other over a tide pool. The moon rises over the edge of the water and this place seems ethereal and peaceful and infinite.
“Do you trust me?” Dare asks seriously, his eyes ever-so-dark. He brushes a tendril of my hair behind my ear. “I mean, really trust me?”
I’m puzzled by that, by his uncertainty.
I’m scared by the hidden meaning of his words.
I reach up and trace the lines of his face, the cleft in his chin, the strong jaw, his forehead.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask finally. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”
“That’s not an answer,” he replies.
“Then yes,” I tell him quickly. “I trust you.”
Don’t I?
He stares into my eyes, his hands on my knees. “Would you still trust me if I told you that I want to tell you everything. That I want to spill all of my secrets, everything that you’ve been wondering about… but I can’t?”
There is genuine angst in his voice, and his face is pained and I can’t figure it out.
“Are you a mass murderer?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood, but it doesn’t work. His face doesn’t change.
“No. But there are things… that I wish I could say, but can’t.”
I drop my hand, stricken by the look in his eye.
“Like what?” I ask bluntly. “Just tell me right now. Tell me all the things, Dare.”
He ignores that.
“You have so many moments when you think you have memories, right? Memories that seem impossible?”
I nod my head, because I’m suddenly terrified to speak.
“Maybe I’m the same way,” he says quietly, his voice husky and low. “Maybe I have the same memories, and maybe that’s because they’re real, only you’ve forgotten them.”
This stuns me, freezes me, catapults me from this moment and I sit up in the sun.
“What?” I ask stiltedly.
Dare sits up next to me, and his beautiful face is troubled.
“There are things about me that you don’t know. And if I don’t tell you about them, if I don’t tell you about them right now, terrible things might happen, and I’ll be the reason why.”
“Then tell me,” I whisper, and the words pain my heart and my heart pains my chest. “Tell me.”
He reaches over to me and his ring shines in the light and the silver touches my face and everythingeverythingeverything swirls.
The world tilts and spills.
Fragmentsfragmentsfragments
Piece together and come apart,
Like my mind,
Like Finn’s.
I grasp at him, trying to right myself and all that matters all that matters all that matters is his warmth. He grounds me, he holds me, he keeps me safe.
My fingers reach for him, then I kiss him.
His lips are warm and firm and there’s so much familiarity here… so much want and we can deal with the craziness later, after after after. Right now, I just need him. To ground me, to keep me sane. To be with me.
His hands trace my collarbone, running down my arms, setting my nerve endings on fire. They burst into flame, burning away anything else but the desire to be with him, right here and right now.
“You think you don’t deserve me,” I whisper against his neck. “But that’s not true. I’m the one… I don’t deserve you.”
I kiss him again, and he groans in my mouth, the sound of it driving me to the brink because I know he wants me too.
“You want me,” I tell him urgently, pulling at him. “I know you do.”
“I’ve always wanted you,” he tells me roughly. “Always.”
“It’s just you and me now,” I tell him. “You and me. That’s all that matters.”
Make me feel something besides pain.
I kiss him again and his hands splay around my hips, positioning me so that I’m lodged against his hardness. I suck in a breath and look up into his eyes, eyes that hold a thousand secrets, but eyes that I love.
I love him.
“No matter what,” I whisper. He pauses from kissing my neck and looks at me questioningly as he lifts his hand to brush my hair back. The light glints from his ring, again and I’m frozen.
Because fragments come flying into my mind. Memory fragments. Images of that same exact expression, of his ring glinting in the moonlight as he tells me something. It’s a confession and he’s alarmed, upset, anxious.
It’s the night of the accident. Before the accident. I see his lips moving, but I can’t hear the words. It’s like he’s in a wind tunnel, the words are static, and I’ve seen this exact scene before in a dream.
I strain to hear the words from my memory.
“What’s wrong?” Dare asks me now, lowering his head once more, sliding his warm lips across my neck as he leans me back.
At this exact inopportune moment, as Dare’s touch lights my skin ablaze, the fragments finally fit into place. The puzzle pieces fit together. At last.
The memory forms and I suck in an appalled breath as I yank away from him.
“I remember,” I whisper. Dare pauses in apprehension, his onyx eyes glittering, his hands frozen on my arms. “I’ve known you…for so long…you…you were here for me all along. You came here for me.”
His eyes close like a curtain and I know that I’m right.
His breath is shaky and his hands tremble as he touches me, as he refuses to pull away even now.
“You have one question left, Calla,” he reminds me, his voice somber. “Ask it.”
So with fear in my heart and ice in my veins…I do.
“What is real?” I finally ask, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t know anymore. My memory has holes, and the memories I do have seem impossible.”
“They aren’t impossible,” Dare tells me. “Trust me.”
“Can you explain?” I ask him. “Please, please. I can’t take much more of this. I just need the truth.”
“Where do you want me to start?” Dare is resigned, and he’s sad.
“Start with the night my mom died,” I suggest.
Something wavers in Dare’s gaze, but he gathers himself.
“Do you remember it? Do you remember how bloody I was?”
I’m already shaking my head from side to side, slowly, in shock. Not because I don’t remember, but because I don’t want to.
“There was a lot of blood,” I recall, thinking about the way it’d streaked down Dare’s temple and dripped onto his shirt. It’d stained the t-shirt crimson, spreading in a terrifying pool across his chest. “I didn’t know if it was yours or… hers.”