Page 41 of Hate Wrecked

ROWAN

I walk to the shore, my clothes in my hand. I feel burdened and free all at once. A combination of regret and lust.

I’m hard. Fuck.

Riley doesn’t follow me. And I imagine she’ll avoid me for a while. I dress in silence; the waves lapping at my feet, a slight drizzle of rain still coming down.

If we don’t get rescued soon I’ll go mad, and I’ll give in. I know I will. She’s too tempting, too much of everything I want.

When I make my way back to the campsite I don’t see Riley there, but I see my notebook.

She says I should write about our time here, the story. But I’m not sure I can make permanent the way I act toward her—cold and angry at times. Revealing our present would mean revealing our past. And I’m not sure I could survive that.

I wonder how Riley would feel. Another book showing a version of her that lives in someone else’s head. It’s why she should write songs, tell her own story.

After about a half an hour, Riley joins me at the camp.

She doesn’t look at me when I look at her, but she knows I am. I can see it in the way she brushes her hair from her shoulder, damp. I wonder if she took another shower or a swim in the ocean. I wonder if she touched herself…

She has a handful of clothes from the line in her arms.

“Were there any other pieces left? I can go get them,” I offer, closing my notebook.

“No, I got them.”

I clear my throat, setting my notebook down. “I’m sorry about earlier. About yesterday, too.”

Riley makes busy putting our clothes into two piles. One for me, one for her. “About what you did? Or about stopping?”

“I shouldn’t have started,” I admit. “Then maybe I wouldn’t have needed to?—”

She scoffs. “Of course.”

“I meant it, I meant what I said. We can’t go back there.”

“Then do it cold turkey. No back rubs. No brushing against me in the tent. Do something, or nothing.”

It’s a hard line in the sand, what she needs. What I need.

It hits me how much I enjoyed the grey area. And my role as the reluctant object of her desire.

When I look at her again, her eyes look glassy. “What is it?”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all fucked. For all my talk about the peace out here, maybe I’ve been lying to myself.”

“About what?”

“Maybe something happened. There has to be a reason they haven’t found us. Maybe something happened to one of my parents. I don’t know. But I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have found me yet. It doesn’t make sense. You said the island has been sold. How come no one has been out here yet?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Even when the family owned it, there would be long periods where no one was here.”

She rings her hands as she sits down, and I’m grateful for the turn in the conversation, despite how grim it is.

“I’m just…I feel something inside of me.

Here.” She presses her hand to her chest. “I’ve had this ache, and I’ve ignored it because everything was bad when we got here.

But now I wonder what my body was trying to tell me.

I’m worried something happened to my mom and I wasn’t there for it.

And if her last memory is of a daughter who hates her… I’ll never forgive myself.”

I stand before I can think it through, taking a seat next to Riley. I wrap one arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her temple. “She knows you love her,” I say, hoping my mother knows that too. We had been fighting before I went to Hawaii. She has no idea where I am now…

Riley interrupts my guilt. “All she knows is that you were supposed to give me her book, and then I vanished.”

“I did too. If anything”—I laugh—“they probably think I murdered you or something and I’m hiding.”

Riley looks at me, her face appalled. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Weirdo,” she grumbles. And before I can move, she says, “Don’t move your arm. Don’t overthink it, Rowan.”

So I don’t. I run my hand up and down her arm, offering her comfort as she leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “We’re going to leave here. We are. And…and maybe I really will write that book.”

“About this place?”

“Maybe. But only if you start writing songs. I’ll write my book here, if you write songs.”

“Rowan…” she groans, but I don’t let her deny her talent.

“No. Make a deal with me. Here and now. Let’s do it. It’ll motivate us.”

Riley pulls away, turning to face me. “Don’t make it lies. Don’t mask what you’re feeling out here.”

“Same goes for you.”

“Will you let me read what you write?” she asks.

I shake my head. “When we leave. No sooner.”

She pulls a face. “Boring.”

“That’s the deal.”

“So I have to write songs and sing them and you’ll know everything in my head? But you get to keep yours a secret?”

“You don’t have to sing what you write. But I think it would be a beautiful thing to do. Like…therapy.”

She smiles then, and I know she misses that outlet. She puts her hand out, and I grasp it. What a tease to touch her this way, after the way I touched her earlier. But I have to remain in control. I shake her hand, and she pulls me forward, hugging me.

So much contact today, giving in, and pulling away.

I’ll have to be honest about this dance in those pages, and I’ll have to write it as I feel it, without worrying about her eyes reading the pages.

I’ll have to let go there, so I won’t let go here when I touch her.

When she stands, walking toward the water, I can’t help but follow her with my eyes.

When she turns to me, she smiles, like I wasn’t touching her moments before, like every break wasn’t at the surface.

Ever the actress, feigning vulnerability, pulling me in like a siren.

And didn’t I crash while looking at her? While being drawn into her?

She dips down into the shallow, her yellow bikini almost transparent. She turns, running her hands over her hair, knowing what she’s doing. And I stand, walking toward her.

What if we stay here forever? Back then, I thought about marrying her, about forever, even though I was too fucking young to have dumb thoughts like that.

Riley’s eyes are on me. “Your hair,” she whispers, pointing. “It's more…”

“I know,” I murmur, self-conscious. It’s going grey. I’m predisposed to turning grey early, like my mother, but one spot in the front quickly started turning a few years ago. The wreck, the caring for Riley, the hopelessness…it’s hastened it.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she finishes, her hand falling to her side. My chest warms, though we are covered in a canopy of shade and cawing birds. She warms me. Heats me.

“Hardly.” I scoff, walking past her deeper into the water.

She moves behind me, close. “Just like this scar.” I feel her before she touches me on my shoulder. Like a phantom. A wanting. I turn around and grab her hand, pulling it from my shoulder and pulling her closer.

“No.”

“Rowan,” Riley continues, a hand finding my hip. “Maybe I’m just going fucking crazy. Maybe I just needed to get all of that out. Someone will come. And someone will take us from this place. But here, you can let your guard down. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for past, but I was a stupid girl.”

“Riley,” I protest, but she can hear me giving up in my voice. She can see it in my eyes. She is like a mirror.

I let go of her hand, and her head tilts toward me. “Our anger toward each other…it’s ruined us. It’s stronger than whatever it was we felt before…”

“Love. It was love,” I declare. My feelings for her are the one thing in this world I never doubt. It was real, regardless of how she felt and how it ended.

“Yes. It was. and I have never felt anything that has come close. I never will.”

I shake my head. “You have no idea what will happen when you leave this place.”

She looks away. “I’ll never leave. I never left…then…”

Years of secrets, hiding, laughter in closets, hand over mouths as we laughed, hoping no one would see us, and how we looked at each other and longed for each other. My job was on the line; nothing on the line for her. But she liked to play the part.

“It was love. Was love. You have to leave it there in the past.”

“No,” Riley urges. “You do. You’re the one lingering in the wrong places. You’re not your father. You’ll never be the bad parts of him. I am free to love whoever I want, and so are you. Here and now. Just let go.”

I pull away then, eyes flashing at her. I can feel what they convey. “What do you want me to do? Lay you on the shore and fuck you, Riley? Because believe me, I want to.”

She purses her lips, defiant. “Yes. That’s what I want you to do.” I see the compromise. She wants more than that, but she will take my anger, my almost surrender.

I step close again, eyeing her clenched fists at her side, her chin pushed out, brave.

Her hands go up when I reach her, wrapping around my neck when my mouth finds her.

I reach down, and her legs go around my waist. I kiss her like it’s the past, like it’s the future, and we’re off this island, and we aren’t scared of the scars we wear and the expectations of the world.

Her fingers ease, pushing into my hair as we walk out of the water.

I lay her down, pulling away long enough to look into her dark eyes. “Is this what you want, Riley?”

“I’ll take any bit of you I can get,” her voice is steady, but I see in her eyes all the ways she needs forgiveness.

It mirrors my heart the way it needs the same offering.

I nod, pulling the tiny triangle of bikini covering her right breast, my mouth descending.

She arches her back, meeting me. I can feel her trembling, so I start slow, my tongue running a slow circle around the peak of her, and when she moans, I pull her nipple into my mouth, closing my eyes at the softness of her.

I love her; I need her to warm me forever.

My hands dig into her as I push away thoughts of love and everything that hurt us.

Riley’s hands thread in my hair, pulling me closer to her breast. She whimpers, and I pull away.

“There’s no one here to hear you, so I want to hear you.” She nods, and I pull the rest of her top away, aiming my attention at her other nipple, hard and ready for me.

I know her buttons, her triggers, what will make her tremble. Muscle memory that I never forgot.

Her legs tighten around me, grinding against my erection.

Memories of her mouth flood me, and I press down into her. We won’t be doing that this time; this is about showing her with my flesh what she shows me with her confessions.

It’s all I can offer her.

It was love. Was . All I can do now is hate the way I give in, the way my body takes over.

Maybe I am everything I hated in him.

Maybe I am no better than him.

But for one night I let myself be selfish as I taste her, suck at her, make her come again and again as I fuck her with my tongue, never letting her rest until she is sobbing with need. Begging me to let her return the favor as she rides my hand until the sun fades away, and the fire goes out.