Page 120 of The One

He nodded. “I know how much you’re hurting. I just wanted to do something to make it better.” His arms straightened, his fists hitting the air. “I just wanted to tell her how much you love her.”

“Ridge …” I whispered.

“It’s true,” he said. “I didn’t know how else to help.”

As my brother joined us on the bed, my father said, “Listen to me, Rhett. If you need to take a few days and bury yourself in this room, fine. But you’re going to enjoy the summer with your friends, like you planned to do before this all happened, and you’re going to go off to USC. Who knows? Maybe Lainey will show up a little later in the year or your sophomore year.”

What the hell is he talking about?

Did he really think I could go to the beach with the rest of the guys and ride the waves, like a catastrophe hadn’t happened in that ocean? And find myself at parties, laughing, drinking, smoking, having fun, when all I could think about were the sounds from that day on the boat?

And the blood.

Oh fuck, all that blood …

I held the top of my headboard and banged my skull against it. “Lainey’s not coming back.”

“You don’t know that, Rhett?—”

“Yes, I do, Dad. You should have seen the way she looked at me when she left me with Mr. Taylor and walked out of her room. I could feel her glare all the way in my stomach. She’s … done.”

Rowan squeezed my arm.

“She’s upset, son. That’s understandable.”

“But it wasn’t my fault.” My voice was so soft.

“No, it wasn’t,” Dad said. “Right now, they’re too upset to see that.”

“Well, they should see it,” Ridge said. “Rhett’s the guy everyone loves. How could they treat him like this?”

“The loss that family just experienced is unimaginable,” Dad explained. “If anything happened to any of you”—he cut himself off and shook his head—“I don’t know how I’d ever be able to move on. But you know what? Somehow, someway, I would—because I have other children I need to live for, just like Mr. Taylor does.”

His hand moved to my cheek. “I need you to stay strong, son. I need you to keep going. That’s all you can do.” He tapped my chin with his fist. “You’re a Cole. We don’t give up, we fight. That’s just what you’re going to do.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Lainey

Fifteen Years Ago

As I rode in the backseat, I stared at the backpack on my lap. I didn’t know what was inside of it. I couldn’t remember putting a single thing in it or zipping it up. And as I glanced down at my outfit, I couldn’t even recall getting dressed or climbing into this seat or how long we’d been in the car.

The radio was off, and Mom and Dad, sitting in the front, were silent.

Have they been quiet the whole time?

My stomach tightened every time we went over a bump, my breakfast threatening to come up. Nothing was settled anymore. My gut was a bundle of sadness and acid; some days, the acid stayed put, and other days, it came spewing from my mouth.

Have I even eaten breakfast?

When was the last time I ate?

The sky was darkening. I wasn’t sure if it was Tuesday or Wednesday, even though it was probably Thursday, and coffee was all I’d ingested in the last week.

I clutched the bar on the door and watched LA fly by through the window.

There was one thing that I did remember—when I’d sat just like this, folded into the corner of the seat, gripping the door that my father had locked, wishing for the car to turn around and go back to our house instead of Manhattan.