Page 71 of Hate Wrecked

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, andyoudon’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.

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