Page 35 of Hate Wrecked

ROWAN

The blanket on the mattress is itchy. I toss and turn, not just from the blanket but from thoughts of Riley. She’s tempting me and pushing at my boundaries. Transforming before my eyes.

I roll over, staring out into the night. Before I can think better of it, I throw the itchy cover off, heading for the beach. The stars are out in full brilliance, and they greet me when I break from the jungle.

And so does the sight of Riley. Sitting by a fire, cross-legged, her mother’s manuscript in her hands. The glow of the fire illuminates the pages.

“I hope you didn’t use a page of that to start the fire,” I joke, walking closer.

Riley looks up, startled. “No. I’m tempted, though.”

“You didn’t like what you read?”

She stretches her legs out in front of herself, leaning back on her arms. “The truth is a difficult thing to face. Especially one you thought you knew.”

I fall down to the sand beside her. I haven’t been this close to her in a while. It’s both not my favorite thing to do and my favorite thing to do. “I feel that way about my father. I thought I knew him. My mother thought she knew him. We were both wrong.”

“Wrong like me?” she asks, leaning my way.

I move away, and though the movement is slight, she registers it. I wish I wasn’t so jumpy around her—like a schoolboy.

“Maybe not quite like you,” I admit.

“What do you miss right now?” she asks, catching me off guard.

“Everything and nothing. You?”

“No, I want more of an answer than that, Rowan Finn.”

I groan, leaning back. “I don’t miss the stars because look at them. Remember when we tried to look at them in LA? Lost to the fog of man. I miss bread. I miss reading. I miss stories.”

Riley pushes on my shoulder. The contact is brief but electric. “You act like we have been here for years. I miss…” She changes her voice, adopting a Scottish accent, but I cut her off by placing my hand over her mouth. Her hand comes up and covers it.

I pull it out of her grasp. “Sorry, I couldn’t listen to that awful impersonation again. You’re horrible at it.”

She smiles, placing the hand I touched on her chest. “It’s okay. It got you to smile for a second. It was worth it.”

I want to stop smiling then. It’s a childish thought, but I’ve been warring with her, or more accurately, warring with my own emotions, for too long.

My mother warned that if we kept our faces one way for too long, they would stay that way. Sometimes it feels like mine has been in a scowl since the moment I picked Riley up from the airport.

“You’re different out here,” I say softly, encouraging her to lean forward again. This time, I don’t pull away.

“How?”

“Freer. Brave. It took you a minute, but it’s like—” I wave my hand at the night around us, at the stars and the ocean. “This woke you up. I fell apart, and you stepped up.”

Riley leans on her elbow, watching me. “I feel like my whole life has been under a microscope. I was always one step behind, never a chance to live up to what my parents had built, but I had every opportunity to make their mistakes. I drowned in it and the pressure I put on myself to protect my sisters. I became the thing I cursed. Like my mother when she fell apart.”

I turn onto my side, mirroring her as I listen.

“I’ve been drinking, using, and unraveling ever since I stopped talking to her.

It’s like I was…so mad at her…that I had to be mad at myself, too.

I thought if I could just step into her shoes, I would understand, and I did.

I do. Maybe the anger has given way to something else, but I have kept up the wall anyway.

It’s armor now, and I don’t know how to tear it down.

I don’t know who to call to let her in, but when we get off this island, I think I have to, regardless of what that book says.

I have to know her again. She’s my only mother.

I’ll never have another, and I have to be the one to do it.

My sisters won’t. They look to me to lead, and I sometimes hate that.

But out here? I can breathe because all those decisions are on pause.

I can just be me—get up each day, live, and stop worrying about the rest. And you help, too.

I don’t want you to, and you don’t want to, but you take care of me. And I want to take care of you, too.”

I don’t speak. I don’t know what to say. Eventually, Riley looks away. We lie there for a while, staring at the stars above us. Untouched by man, breathtaking. No smog to overtake.

I point up, turning to Riley. “Do you see that one?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Of course.” She turns to me, her thigh covering me. I reach down and run my hand over my skin, accepting the touch. I can feel how rough I am. My hands have bled, scabbed over, and then bled again.

I try to pull my hand away, but Riley stops me. “Don’t.”

“They’re rough.”

“I know. Just like you.”

I cup her face, run my hand along her jaw, and kiss her forehead.

She’s strong here, independent in ways she wasn’t before and wild in a way that no longer scares me.

When I pull away and turn back to the stars, I see her watching me in my periphery.

“I never stopped worrying about you. I never stopped wondering if I would see you again,” I admit.

“Is that why you took the job with my mother?” Riley asks, a tinge of hope in her voice.

“I didn’t do it for myself. I hoped you would find your way to her again.”

“I hope I can,” she admits. “You want to hear something crazy?”

I nod.

“It scares me sometimes how much I like it here,” Riley says.

“Me too. I’ve always wanted the quiet.”’

“I want that. But I’ll always have a public life,” Riley whispers.

“I know.”

“You can’t disappear when we get back. Who’s going to protect us?”

I laugh, low, bringing a small smile to her face. “There’s always going to be someone,” I say, turning to her.

“No one is you.” I don’t stop her when she sits up, moves over me. I grip her hips as she looks down at me, her dark hair cascading.

“Do you want me to be your bodyguard?” I ask. “Because that’s a little...”

“No. I want you to be mine.”

I close my eyes, and she continues.

“I want you to follow your dreams. I want to read the stories inside of you, Rowan. Your voice is love, strength, everything. And when we leave, you’re going to tell this story.

” She grabs my hand, bringing it to her heart.

“How we knew we would be rescued. How we survived. Second chances only happen once. This is it. You’re it for me. ”

And just like that, the spell is broken. I sit up, pushing her off of me. “Don’t make any rash decisions about your life while we’re here. You’re a million different versions of yourself on this island. I want to see who you’ll be on solid ground.”

She reaches for me again, but I pull away.

Her jaw is set when she speaks again. “This isn’t a rash decision.

It’s the one I made with my heart the moment I saw you at that airport.

I knew I couldn’t let you out of my sight again.

It’s why I couldn’t get on that plane. I felt a heavy ache in my gut when I thought about leaving you.

Don’t make me leave you. I’ll never repeat a mistake like that if I have the choice. ”

I stand, regret in my chest, longing in my body now that we’re not touching. “You should have gotten on that plane, Riley. You wouldn’t be here, stuck with me, if you’d listened. You didn’t respect my wishes. Again. Just like back then.”

“I had wishes back then, too,” she whispers.

“To use me? You go that wish.”

“To go slow!” she yells, standing. The same line, the same fight. I don’t know why I even said anything.

“ We did go slow, ” I say through gritted teeth.

And we did, in physical ways—not in our hearts.

Which is why I couldn’t be her dirty little secret.

So I protected her, and she protected her reputation.

Playing make-believe out here won’t change the past. I hate this feeling between us: animosity and arousal.

I groan, gripping my skull as I walk to the shore.

“Why can’t you just leave the past there. You’re fucking with my head.”

She follows, at my heels when she speaks. “I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not a wounded girl trying to outrun her past. You want me to forgive my mother, but what about you?”

“I’m not mad at your mother.”

“No, you’re mad at me. Where is your forgiveness for me? Or is it only you who gets to choose who receives it?”

“Grow up,” I mutter, reaching the shore.

“Oh, how original. You’ve got a bag full of grow up s on hand.

Fuck, you,” Riley says, walking past me, forcing me to look her in the eye.

The firelight casts her in amber, in orange, in anger.

“I know this is scary, and it’s…endless.

This feeling inside? It’s useless. You can be mad at me forever.

You can be mad at this happening. But I’m taking this second chance. ”

I stare at her. “Does this look like a second chance? We’re alone on an island. Someone should have shown up by now. They haven’t. No one knows where we are. Hell, they probably think I kidnapped you. This isn’t a second chance. This is a death sentence.”

She smiles, shaking her head. “Someone is coming. I can feel it. We just…we have to be strong. You can’t be this way.”

“What way?” I ask.

She steps up to me, staring into my eyes. “Like who I used to be. That girl you hate, she died in that boat. I lost her to the waves in the bathroom before we hit land. She died along with the captain.”

My heart aches as I look down at her. “If you say so.”

“How many versions of ourselves are we before we die? I’m sorry I hurt you, but I was just a girl.

You know that. And I’m sorry I was an asshole when I landed.

I was hurt, living in the past. But you wanted me to read that damn book.

” She jabs her finger back at the fire. “You wanted me to forgive my mother. And in doing so, in fucking trying, I’m learning to forgive the version of me I’ve been dressing up as until very fucking recently.

” She points to the ocean now. “I lost the goddamn past to that ocean. I lost every bit of regret I had, every bit of anger I was poisoning myself with. It went down with the pills and the liquor. I won’t be burdened by that shadow anymore.

Not in here…” She rests her palm on her chest, and I see the welling in her eyes, the sincerity.

“I know you’ve had to take care of me over and over and over again through the years.

It’s not lost on me. But you don’t have to do that anymore.

I’m finally seeing clearly. I am finally done with it all.

I’m going to go home a new person. Whatever version of you goes home is up to you.

But I’m not dying on this island, and neither are you.

So we can stick to the dark and avoid each other in the day, or we can work together to get through this.

But I’m not dimming or hiding myself for one more second out there.

Any goddamn want you have, any desire you have, that’s on you.

Take responsibility for your own heart. I’ll worry about mine.

She walks back to the fire then, and I stare into the ocean, knowing I am close to unraveling for her, terrified to walk back to the fire.

When her voice comes again, all I can do is close my eyes to the promise. “I won’t touch you again, not unless you want me to. And Rowan, I know you’ll want me to.”