Page 33 of Hate Wrecked

RILEY

After a week of nonstop rain, the storms that prevented us from our daily tasks finally relent, leaving behind a world drenched and glistening under the newly emerged sun.

The air is thick with the scent of rain-soaked earth, a refreshing change from the musty dampness that filled every corner of our tent in the Hilton—shrouded in darkness.

The week spent in the building forced me to relive our past less and our recent interactions more—I saw myself singing, and I heard Rowan admit he wanted me.

I lie awake at night, grappling with the reality that none of that matters.

When I want to escape that voice, I turn to the papers in my suitcase: my mother’s book. I hold it close, consumed with wonder, but I never open it. Instead, I write in my journal, capturing every feeling I experienced in that house, in the years that followed, in the hollow.

Today brings change. Rowan and I decide to move to the other end of the island to fish. I don’t know if it’s cabin fever or a desperate plan to be in another place—any other place than where we were sequestered for a week.

When we find our spot, Rowan gets out his pole, and I tell him I’ll join him soon. When he sees what’s in my bag, he doesn’t question it. I flip through the pages, the sky overheard warm, lulling me to a sense of safety as I hold danger in my hands.

Will I forgive her? Will I stop lying to myself and admit that I miss her?

Who will I meet on these pages?

Before I can crack the spine, Rowan walks back to me. His eyes wander over my legs and the book in my hands. “How’s it coming?”

“I haven’t started,” I say, laying it next to me, stretching out. His eyes devour me, and his jaw ticks, but he looks away. I pull his gaze back with my next words. “I want you to tell me about the time you spent with Asa after he and my mom split up. I heard you came back.”

“I didn’t know they’d split up when I agreed to it. It wasn’t pretty.”

I shrug, looking out at the ocean. “It’s not like I don’t know him.”

“Do you keep in touch with him?” he asks.

“No,” I grind out. I was loyal to my mother then, despite my anger at her.

“He was doing what he always was, except he didn’t have to hide. He could fuck whoever he wanted.”

I let out a breath.

“At least when he was with your mom, he was a little… more reined in.”

I glare. “It’s not like she kept a tight leash on him.”

“You’ll understand more when you read the book.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. There’s too much to focus on here, and I won’t have time. I don’t know why I brought it out here.”

Rowan looks at me. “We’re lost. You have all the time in the world.”

“There’s too much to do. I should be fishing right now. Like I said, I shouldn’t have brought it.”

“You know how to do everything. Fishing, starting the fires, gathering water. If anything happened, you would be fine. You can take the day off. I’m giving you the day off to start that.” He points at the papers.

“If anything happened to you?” I ask, ignoring him.

“Yeah,” Rowan nods, looking back into the water. “You never know, Riley. Time to grow up.”

I close my eyes. Those words—I remember them—his plea, his desperate need for me to just give in, be brave. I couldn’t do it. Not then, but now I don’t have an audience. I have this endless abyss before me—time that means nothing.

And a corpse in the jungle with our fingerprints on his clothing. The last touch he felt.

I don’t want to bury Rowan in that jungle.

I look at Rowan. “Nothing is going to happen to you. Stop being dramatic. Save that for me.”

A hint of a smile dances across his face, but I blink, and it’s gone. “I’ll leave it to the professional, then.”

I smile, my eyes flashing forward when I see the pole Rowan rigged up move.

Before Rowan can speak, he sees my eyes, rushing to the pole.

Slow and steady, he reels in our catch. I leave my mother’s book behind once more, joining Rowan at the shore. When I glance over at him, I see a smile that isn’t fleeting, a whisper of hope in his blue eyes.

And I feel, for a moment, the hard fist of despair lessen its grip on my heart, if only for a moment.

I know I should be focusing on the fact that we’re stranded on an island and don’t know when or if someone will come to rescue us, but I can’t.

All I can focus on is Rowan. All I can focus on is his red hair, the white streak at his brow that he is self-conscious about, but I find incredibly sexy.

He has no idea how devastatingly beautiful he is, his full lips and the wrinkles around his eyes.

He’s grown into a beautiful man. Gone is his baby face, the softness of his eyes. Instead, they are strikingly blue, and though the gaze he often aims at me is annoyed and piercing, I don’t mind. I heat under it—flush.

Rowan blinks. “What?”

“I just don’t understand how you don’t have someone waiting for you back home.”

He looks back into the water, eyes squinting. “What are you on now?”

I briefly glance at the water before returning to my preferred view: Rowan. “Look at you, with your fishing pole, your arms, and your shoulders—all of it.”

Rowan clears his throat. “You’re different, you know.”’

“Than?” I challenge.

“LA. You’re…you always said what you thought to me. But I don’t know. Maybe you have grown up.”

“You said I needed to grow up two seconds ago.” I arch a brow.

“Being an arsehole comes a little easier to me now. And it’s easy to be scared here. It was easy to be scared back in Hawaii when I saw you like that.”

“Scared of what?”

“Losing you. You can’t spend your life mad at your mom for her mistakes and then repeat them.

” He looks away from the water, straight into my eyes.

“You’re better than that. Smarter than that.

We both know it. So, to see you again, after all those years, doing dumb shit.

I hated it. And I let myself fall into it again. ”

“Fall into what?”

“The drama. You. You were always a magnet to me, Riley. I couldn’t go there again.”

“Couldn’t or can’t?”

He looks away. “I can hardly escape you on this island, now can I?”

I don’t know if it’s an invitation to get closer to him or not. I never know with him. But I plan to test the theory, and my wants, as soon as we cook these damn fish.

I’m warm from the sun, from his voice changing, warm from everything.

Life comes at you hard and fast, and this island has woken me up. I feel alive in ways I haven’t felt in years.

“I don’t want you to be any way toward me here that you don’t want to be when some boat or plane takes us away from here.

” I hate admitting it. But I have to. Dirty secrets are hard to walk away from and own up to.

I treated him like one, and maybe I deserve to be his, but I can’t be that.

I want what he begged for back in the city.

Something real. Something we aren’t afraid of.

I’m not a young girl anymore. And the ghost of this man before me has made me keep every man who has found his way into my bed and heart at arm’s length.

“I can be your friend again,” he says, breaking my heart with his simple declaration and opening up.

We were never friends. Friends didn’t bare their souls the way we did. Friends didn’t touch each other the way we did.

“Friends?” I say the word like a curse.

“That’s all we’ve ever been,” he replies, his eyes trained on the ocean before us, the blue unable to compete with his eyes.

“Ah,” I agree, surrendering. He’s caught me. His words were always scarce, binding, and blinding in their honesty. It’s why I clung to him.

“He was your choice,” he whispers, finally bringing it to the surface.

The other man. The perfect vice, the drug.

The antithesis of what any good parent would want for me.

But on paper, he checked all the boxes. Another person in the business .

A name in lights. Someone who could elevate my status.

Who the press should have damned for touching someone over ten years his junior.

You shouldn’t fall for your stepdad’s friends, but he leveraged his influence well, said all the right things, and made all the right promises.

A snake in the grass.

“He shouldn’t even have been anything to me.”

“No.”

My eyes flash to Rowan, and just as my mouth opens to curse him, his pole moves again, and I close my mouth. I watch him reel the fish in, and just as it emerges from the water, my own pole moves. The argument can wait; dinner needs to be reeled in.

I remember lessons on our needs. First, we ensure we are fed, watered, and sheltered. Then, we can tend to the emotional wounds between us.

It’s survival. The hate can wreck us later.

* * *

After lunch, tired and dirty, I collect a pile of our dirty clothes and find the bar of soap.

While Rowan is busy clearing the Hilton of our sleeping bags and tent, I head toward the water and start to clean the clothes on the dock.

I soak one item at a time, lather it with soap, and focus on the stained areas, using the soap sparingly.

I hate feeling this dirty. All I want is a fucking shower back home and to sleep in a cool room with air conditioning and no bugs.

After cleaning each item, I lay them on the dock to bake in the sun, grabbing rocks to anchor them down.

The last to clean is me. I glance over my shoulder at the Hilton, then turn back to the lagoon as I shimmy my bikini bottom down, untying my top next, tossing it on the shore.

Slowly, I walk into the water, my bottle of body wash in my hands.

I squirt a tiny amount, immediately going to my armpits, and then venture down.

I clean between my breasts, though I have no cleavage and sweat hardly pools.

I quickly pass over the rest of my body, the suds sparse and barely there.

When I turn back to where my bottle and shampoo bottle sit, I glance at the Hilton. Unfortunately, I don’t see Rowan.

I dip my hair into the water, submerging it, then stand, reaching for the shampoo bottle.

I pour out a tiny amount and focus on my roots.

My hair is dry from the sun and tangled from the wind, and the small amount of shampoo does little to clean it.

Still, I’m satisfied that my roots no longer feel disgusting.

When I swim out into the lagoon, I turn onto my back, letting my hair soak in the water.

My small breasts break the surface of the water, and it’s strange to have the sun touch every inch of me again.

I haven’t sunbathed in the nude in a long time, and it takes me back to my younger years when I would tempt Rowan from the pool.

I close my eyes and let myself sink into the past, the way I want to pull him in and make him feel desire. I can’t help but hope he is watching now, from wherever he is.

We’re in paradise, surrounded by untouched beauty. And all I want is to be touched by him.

After a while, I swim back to the dock, pull myself onto it, and walk out of the water toward my small pile of clean clothes. Once I’ve put on a fresh bikini, I look at the Hilton again. Rowan is standing there, his back to me, surveying the inside, maybe assessing his work.

I slip on my shoes and walk to him, wondering if he saw me. Hoping he did.

“Need any help?” I ask when I reach him.

Rowan turns, and his eyes cast over me fleetingly.

Oh, he saw me.

I smirk, and he ignores it. So I press, reaching out and touching Rowan’s shoulder. “You next? You’re hardly clean.”

Rowan rolls his eyes. “I’ll clean up now that you’re done.”

If he thinks I won’t be watching him the whole time, he’s mistaken.

Rowan is made of marble. When I met him, he was thinner, young and lithe, babyfaced. Now, he has hard lines, strong shoulders, and...an eight-pack? It’s ridiculous, the way he looks. He must live at the gym and have no life at all.

By day, he protects my mother, and by night, he likely reads and works out. No vices. No cigarettes or alcohol. The way we live here. The way he lived back then.

I need a cigarette. Though I know Rowan would tell me how disgusting they are if I had one right now.

We leave the Hilton and walk back to dock.

I gather the dry clothes as Rowan walks to the water.

When everything is back where it belongs, I lie down on the dock—as close as I can get to him—closing my eyes, offering him privacy, but I can’t help myself before long.

I open my eyes, and watch him in all his glorious beauty.

I remember what it was like to be held close by him, to be in his space, to see him undone.

I memorize every line, and in my mind, touch him everywhere.