Page 72 of The Ripple Effect

My head comes off his chest. “The fuck! Who was banging you atfourteen?! By the way, we name names in this relationship. No witness protection allowed.”

He smiles at my outrage, or maybe because I used the word “relationship.”

“Britt Carstairs, if you must know. We were counselors at a sleepaway camp for disadvantaged kids. The pay was terrible. I think the owners’ hearts weren’t in it. The next summer, they renovated the dining hall into a wedding venue.” Idly, he twists my hair and gives it a tug that makes my skin burst into shivers. I rest my face in the negative space between his pecs and give in to the pleasure.

“Britt Carstairs,” I prod.

“Right. Well, put a bunch of horny, curious teenagers together with limited adult supervision after lights-out, and there you have sleepaway camp. Britt was sixteen, assumed I was a couple years older, and broke up with me when she realized the age difference went the other way.”

“I hate her.”

Underneath me, his shoulders bump in a shrug. “People always misjudged my age. When I was a toddler, people in the grocery store would ask my mom why her six-year-old was throwing tantrums like a three-year-old. My friends’ parents freaked out about normal stuff like roughhousing, even though I never hurt anyone by accident. My high school athletic directorgot accused of falsifying my age so many times, I quit joining sports teams. There was a lot of pressure for me to live up to my size.”

I feel how much he doesn’t like these memories in the muscle tension under my cheek, the intake of breath as he lifts his chin. How must it have felt for a kid to always have to be the bigger person—literally?

“You must’ve been so angry,” I whisper into his chest, even though I mostly feel sad for the little boy he was.

“Anger doesn’t get you anywhere. And being big, white, and male isn’t exactly a disadvantage in this world.”

“No, but…” I’m not sure whether I should bring up what happened when he was seventeen. To me, the important thing wasn’t that he got blamed for a fight he didn’t start. It was that his family didn’t back him up. I’m sure they had a lot going on with his brother’s illness, but his own parents should’ve known he was still a child no matter how much he looked like an adult.

He still needed someone to defend him. He needed to believe it wasn’t okay for people to deliberately push him to the breaking point, then claim he scared them when he pushed back.

Especially because I need him to help me push back now. Something’s happening in camp, I’m almost certain.

“McHuge…”

“Uh-oh, fun’s over if it’s ‘McHuge,’” he says, rolling us to face each other and resettling me so my eyes are level with his. Usually I hate it when people presume to move my body around, but I know he’s not doing it because my small size makes him feel big. It’s just something he can do to make things easy and kind of lovely.

I wish I didn’t have to ruin the feeling, but it can’t wait. I pick the most urgent item first.

“On the way home from the hospital, we saw Fisher’s crew leaving the geocaching festival.”

“Okay.”

Okay?“We’ve seen him three times in five days. He’s following us somehow. He’s trying to copy the Love Boat.”

He shakes his head, his generous mouth pinched into a conflicted line. “He was at a public festival on a day when any ethical whitewater outfit would have stayed off the river. It could be a coincidence.”

“No. It’s a pattern.”

“Are you sure?” I know he can read my tiny sliver of doubt. Face softening, he says, “I’m worried about making a fuss when we have no proof. If we end up in a public battle, I’ll get painted as the big scary angry guy who’s out for revenge. It’s better to lie low and let this burn itself out if we don’t have hard evidence he’s done anything illegal.”

He’s talking like a lawyer. Probably quoting his own lawyer from half a lifetime ago, who undoubtedly taught him not to fight back against rumors or trolls—stay quiet, and the gossip mill will find a new target.

My heart twists hard at Lyle once again refusing to defend his boundaries with anyone but me. He gives everybody everything, but he can’t—or won’t—give me this. He promised he’d hold on to me, and instead, he’s holding on to all the voices that ever told him he wasn’t allowed to fight back.

And he’s wearing his necklace again today, like it’s a pair of handcuffs he puts on voluntarily.

“I don’t care if it’s not illegal! It’swrong,” I cry, too loudly for the fabric-walled illusion of privacy that’s all we have in this place. “The plausible deniability is part of it. I’ve been gaslighted like this before. So have you—by Fisher. This is our livelihood we’re talking about. This is someone possibly spying onourhome. If they’re willing to take a risk like that, what else are they willing to do?”

I hate how paranoid I sound. How flimsy and dismissible my own words make me feel, as if my old department chief might jump out of the bushes and scold me to stop beingemotional.

An awful sense of impending doom yawns in my chest. The first time a trauma patient told me they felt like they were going to die, I—the lowly medical student—clasped their hand and reassured them we’d take good care of them. My attending physician freaked the fuck out and repeated every test, successfully diagnosing the internal bleeding that hadn’t been apparent before.

We don’t ignore feelings of doom in emergency medicine. More often than not, they’re right.

Lyle clasps my hand, bringing it to his lips. Those lips have kissed me everywhere, said every good thing to me, told me he cared. Told me I mean something.

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