“The fuck is going on with you and my brother?”
The look on her face was answer enough. Guilt, all over it. Kelsey blinked and shook her head, but she’d already given herself away.
“Nothing, baby. I don’t know —”
“Shut up.” Ty felt sicker than he had before. He looked toward the front of the boat so he didn’t have to look at her. “Just…shut up.”
“Tyler.”
He didn’t want to hear it. He pushed away, not caring that he made her slip and fall. He went to the front of the boat to find out what the hell was going on, and he left her behind.
24
“Wake up, honey. Wake up, Sheila. Come on.” Duane rocked her, but she stayed limp and lifeless, her eyes open and staring. Her mouth slack. Her arm fell against the deck with a thud, and she didn’t even wince.
“What happened?” Jeremy pushed away the debris of splintered wood and glass to kneel next to him. “Did you do CPR?”
“I don’t know—”
Helpless, Duane watched as Jeremy pushed him aside to bend over Sheila. He pushed on her chest, then put his mouth to hers and blew. Again. Then again. Nothing happened.
“He’s moving on your girl too?” Ty muttered from behind him. “Motherfucker.”
Duane couldn’t think straight. One minute they’d been sailing on clear blue seas, drinking beers and enjoying the shit out of life. The next the storm had come up and hit them, and he’d heard Sheila screaming…he’d been able to get to her, but though he could see no evidence of any injuries, hadn’t seen her fall or get hit with anything, she’d suddenly started to spasm. She’d fallen, and he’d caught her, and she hadn’t moved since.
“Does she have any medical conditions?” Jeremy paused to speak, then bent back to her.
“Listen to the little medic.” Ty sounded pissed, and Duane couldn’t figure out why.
Ignoring him, Duane shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. Well…maybe…she passed out a couple times last year. She had a…what do you call it. Irregular heartbeat. A murmur or something. Mitral valve prolapse.”
Jeremy kept up the pushing on her chest, the blowing into her mouth, while all Duane could do was watch. His own heart hurt, pounding too fast. Everything was too bright. He had a taste like pennies in his mouth and he went to the railing to spit into the sea.
All around them, the water was mirror-still. No sign of any storm, not even any bits and pieces of the mast which had snapped in half and fallen into the water. No floating cushions. Nothing. Maybe the waterspout had sucked everything away.
“I’m sorry, man.” Jeremy sat back on his heels and wiped at his face. He was sweating, and his hand shook. “I think she’s…gone.”
Duane fell upon Sheila’s body, frantically pressing his ear to her heart. To her mouth, feeling for any breath. He pulled her against him, rocking her again. “No. No. No.”
Jeremy put a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed. “I’m sorry. Did something hit her head or…?”
“NO.” Duane jerked away from the touch. “No. Nothing. She’s just sleeping. She just…passed out. She’ll be okay.”
He closed his eyes. Held her close. She was his life, this woman. He’d been planning to ask her to marry him on the last day of their vacation. Something romantic, a ring in a glass of champagne or maybe take her for a walk along the beach at sunset, not sunrise, Sheila’d never get up that early on purpose without being suspicious…
“She’s gone, man.” Jeremy tried to touch him again, but Duane rounded on him.
“No. She’s not.”
Tyler pulled his brother away. “Leave him alone. We have other shit to deal with. The mast, man. It’s fucking destroyed. The boat…”
“There’s a motor, right?”
Tyler looked toward the back of the boat, and his eyes narrowed. Mouth went grim. Duane had seen him look that way a few times, when someone thought they were pulling something over on him in a deal. When he was losing at poker or pool. It was a mean look, and Duane was always glad it had never been leveled at him.
“Fuck. Fix the motor,” Ty said. “Yeah.”
The brothers moved away from him, and that was fine. They could take care of things. They knew more about sailing than Duane did. They’d been boating all their lives, those pricks. Grew up on the coast, had their own sailboats, belonged to the frigging yacht club. Whatever. What the fuck ever.
He had more important things to worry about.
“Honey, you just rest. I’m here.” Duane stroked Sheila’s hair back from her face. He held her close. She was cold, she felt cold, wet from the ocean, but the sun would warm her. The sun would warm them both.
25
The fucking motor was nothing but a piece of mangled shit, and it didn’t look like the damage had been done from the storm. There were bolts missing, for fuck’s sake, and while Jeremy had heard stories of tornados pulling nails from boards, he doubted the waterspout had done this. There were flowers growing in it, for fuck’s sake, tiny blue and purple flowers. It was a piece of shit motor that hadn’t worked right in years, probably, and nobody’d thought to check it before they went out.
Ty had tried to blame him for it, but Jeremy wasn’t putting up with that shit. Ty had been the one to book the boat, make the arrangements with that shifty son-of-a-bitch who owned it. Ty should’ve been the one to make sure everything was in working condition, but instead he’d been too fucking interested in if the galley had enough booze and snacks and the cabin had a bed big enough to bang his girlfriend in.
Christ.
Kelsey. The fuck was she doing with his brother, anyway? It tore him up a little, watching how she fussed and cooed over him, when it was Ty’s own stupid fault he’d hurt his hand. That was what happened when you punched a wall, dumb ass.
All of this was Ty’s fault.
Jeremy watched his brother shrug off the comforting hand of the woman he supposedly loved, what a crock of shit, his brother couldn’t love anything but himself. He got everything handed to him, and he still couldn’t appreciate it. All he did was ruin everything and never even cared, because he knew there’d always be something else waiting for him.
“Just let him go,” he said to Kelsey when Ty snarled at her. “When’s he’s pissed off like this, it’s better to just let him go.”
“I’m standing right here, douchebag. I can hear you.”
Jeremy didn’t even look at him, because if he did he was sure he’d punch his brother right in the fucking mouth. He kept his eyes on Kelsey, that beautiful face. Those eyes that had seen so much. That mouth, God, that mouth he’d imagined so many times, the one that tasted so sweet…
“Hey, dickbag. Stop staring at my girl.”
Kelsey was between them again with a hand on each of their chests, off balance between them because she couldn’t put weight on her foot. “Stop it. Both of you. Stop it. We have more important things to worry about.”
“Like what? Where he’s going to put his dick next?” Ty sneered, focused on Jeremy.
Jeremy stared back without flinching. The only reason he didn’t let fly with his fists was because Kelsey was in the way, and he didn’t want to hurt her. His brother wouldn’t even care, that cocksucker. He’d already pushed her, yanked her arm and bruised her. He didn’t give a shit about her except that if someone else wanted her.
“We need to make an inventory of supplies.” Kelsey looked at each of them. “Water. Food. Medical supplies. And we should think about getting Duane to let us take care of Sheila, somehow.”
“Take care of her how? Bitch is dead.”
Kelsey flinched. “Ty.”
Sheila was dead, there wasn’t any question about that, but Duane wouldn’t hear of it, and he wouldn’t give her up. He was useless, sitting in the front of the boat whispering to her. Fucking creepy as shit.
“Someone will come for us,” Ty said. “Coast guard. Someone.”
“The radio’s broken. The motor’s broken, and our mast is also
broken. My tote bag is gone, my phone is gone. It’s been at least three hours. It’s getting dark. When we don’t come back, yes, I’m sure someone will come out to look for us…if the guy who owns this boat calls someone. He’s not expecting us until Sunday.” Kelsey shrugged. “Until then, I think we should make a list of what we have. Because it could be a while —”
“The fuck do you know?” Ty said in a voice so thick with loathing it was like a slap even Jeremy felt. “The fuck do you know about anything?”
Kelsey wasn’t a tall girl. One of the things Jeremy loved so much about her was the way she fit right under his chin. But now she seemed to grow and grow until she towered over Ty.
“I know a lot about a lot of things, and I’m tired of you treating me like crap. I don’t know what hell your problem is, Tyler, but I’m sick of your stupid accusations and your temper. We could be in real trouble here —”
Ty punched her in the face.
Kelsey doubled over with a gasp, both hands clutching at her bleeding nose. Ty made to knee upward into her gut, but Jeremy got between them just in time and took the blow. Then it was on.
They’d scrapped as kids, wrestling in the living room until Mom came after them with the broom and threatened to beat them both. They’d competed their whole lives, sometimes Ty coming out ahead, sometimes Jeremy. They’d fought hard and fiercely, but never anything like this.
Now they went at each other like gladiators, all fists and feet and teeth, with whatever they could grab to swing at each other. Ty hit Jeremy with the empty cooler. Jeremy came up with a broken bottle and cut the shit out of Ty’s arm. The blood from his own cut fingers made the bottle too slippery and he dropped it; his brother lunged and tackled him to the deck on top of more broken glass that gouged and dug and sliced.
Ty got his fingers around Jeremy’s neck and started to squeeze. Jeremy bucked, but his brother was bigger and heavier, and there wasn’t room for them to roll. The world started going red at the edges, easing into gray.
The last thing Jeremy saw before he passed out was Kelsey wielding a piece of the broken cooler, which she used to hit the back of Ty’s head. Ty’s eyes rolled up in his skull, and he slumped over, his weight crushing Jeremy. That was the last thing he saw.
26
Beauty is pain. All the magazines make it seem effortless, those thin girls with the absurdly bent and artificially slender limbs. Those pictures are altered. Curves slimmed, hips and breasts made bigger, eyes enlarged, mouths plumped. Kelsey knows this, yet when she looks in the mirror at her pretty face and runs her tongue over teeth that are now sparkling white and perfectly straight, all she can think about is how much time, effort and agony all of this cost her.
At the same time, she thinks, yes. This is me.
The real her, not some battered, useless girl in shapeless clothes who refuses to smile because she’s ashamed of her teeth. Not a girl who flinches at the smallest noise. Not Kathy.
Not any more.
It’s taken years, long hard years, because doctors won’t give boob jobs to teenage girls, at least not the ethical ones. Besides, plastic surgery is insanely expensive. She can manage the blonde hair with regular salon visits and at-home dyes if she’s desperate, but she’ll be paying off the dentistry and all the other work for years.
It’s all worth it.
For the first time in her life, when Kelsey walks into a room, people look at her like they like what they see. It’s her dream come true, and she holds onto it with both fists, gripping tight. First, the education, paid for with her grandmother’s insurance money. It’s the only good thing the old bitch ever did for her. Then the job, a good one, with good pay and benefits. The apartment she decorates carefully, not extravagantly, saving her money for the procedures.
And finally, the man.
Tyler Hawthorne is so handsome he takes her breath away when she sees him across the room at the charity function her company helped organize. It takes a lot of confidence to walk up to him, but if there’s one thing Kelsey’s learned in the past few years, it’s how to turn a man’s head. She doesn’t even care that it’s the hair, the boobs, the butt, the false lashes and French manicure. That’s what she has, what has become important. Forget about someone falling in love what what’s inside. If Tyler knew what was inside her, he’d run screaming away and never look back.
Sometimes, Kelsey wishes she could run away, but there’s no running from yourself. So she spends the time and the money, and she suffers for her beauty, and she tries her best to be happy because she deserves that, at least, God dammit. She deserves to have everything she ever dreamed of.
* * *
She never dreamed of this.
Kelsey sat in the shade from the cabin, her knees drawn to her chest, her chin resting there. Her foot throbbed and ached from where the glass had cut her. She probably should have a stitch or two, but for now the wound had gummed over with blood and some pus, and she kept it bound up with strips torn from Jeremy’s t-shirt. It was the best she could do, aside from washing it saltwater, which hadn’t seemed to help very much. The rest of her stung and ached too, because she lost her tote bag during the storm and without her sunscreen she managed to get a nasty, uneven burn.
She was thirsty. So thirsty. After she knocked Ty out and bound his wrists and ankles with the roll of duct tape she found in the cabin, and after Jeremy had come to, they’d searched for supplies that hadn’t been lost overboard. A few beers. A six-pack of bottled water. Salty snacks, chips and pretzels. Barely enough for the weekend tour they’d planned, much less the four days they’d been adrift.
Nobody had come for them. No coast guard. Not even the boat’s owner had come out to look, and if he didn’t give a damn for them, you’d have thought he’d care about his property. Without the sail, a motor or a working radio the only thing to do was wait, and even knowing they were only maybe ten miles off shore didn’t help, because there was no way any of them could swim that far.
From the opposite side of the cabin, Ty let out another stream of curses. He’d called her every foul name she’d ever heard and a lot she hadn’t. He’d accused her of sleeping with his brother, which wasn’t true but hadn’t been helped when Jeremy told him about the kiss.
Just one, a mistake, a stolen embrace under the mistletoe at Christmas. She’d been giddy with mulled wine and the holiday spirit and fitting in to what felt like a real family, at last, and Jeremy had been smiling and charming, taking her hand and tipping her face to his. One kiss that had gone on and on and on until she was breathless and delirious with it, when she’d have let him back her up against the wall and take her in any way he wanted to. His hand had slipped between her legs under the red velvet dress she’d picked out especially to please Tyler, but she wasn’t thinking of her boyfriend when his brother brought her to the edge of some precipice she’d never known existed.
“Frigid bitch!” Tyler cried. There was a thumping, like he was banging his head against the cabin. Probably was. He’d made himself bloody doing it, and Kelsey was tired of caring. He’d gone crazy. “Frigid fucking whore!”
“Shut up, Ty.” This came from Jeremy in a weary voice as he rounded the corner. “Christ.”
He looked bad. Sunburned, lips cracked, hair stiff with salt and sweat. He’d been in good shape before, but now his shorts hung low on his hips, his belly concave. The skin on her stomach had gone loose and wrinkled. Ugly. She’d stopped being hungry yesterday, so much the thought of food made her nauseous. But oh, what she would do for a drink of water, a long, cool drink of water instead of just the one or two sips they were allotting themselves.
Jeremy sat down next to her. “Hey.”
Kelsey said nothing, no energy for words.
“We need to do something about Sheila. She’s starting to…well. It’s bad.”
Duane had refused to give her up. He’d also refused to eat or drink, which was terrible, and they should’ve forced him, except that it meant more for the three of them. If
she could’ve denied Ty his daily sips of water though, she would’ve, Kelsey thought as the man she’d thought she loved so much sent up another volley of bitter curses directed at her.
Sheila was starting to stink. That’s what Jeremy meant, and Kelsey supposed that made sense since she’d been laid out for three days in the hot June sun. Fortunately, the years of exposure to toxic chemicals had ruined Kelsey’s sense of smell. Still, her throat convulsed at the idea. She and Sheila hadn’t been anything like close, but that didn’t mean Kelsey’d wished her dead.
“What do you want him to do, toss her over the side?” She barely gave him a look, too tired and sore and thirsty to move.
“Yes.”
Kelsey grimaced, but there wasn’t any point in denying it — what choice did they have? They were on a broken sailboat in the middle of the ocean with a corpse and two crazy men. She sighed. “You tell him.”
“Kelsey…”
She did look at him, then, and wished she hadn’t. It was all there in his eyes, that desperate, hungry glare that had nothing to do with an empty stomach. “No.”
He moved closer. Put his hand around her shoulders. It was hot enough without the extra heat of his body. She wanted to shudder away from him, but suddenly he’d pinned her tight. His mouth sought hers, and Kelsey turned her head so the twisting worm of his tongue slid along her cheek instead of between her lips. She pushed at him, but Jeremy was strong.
“I said no!”
“Don’t do that. Don’t you do that. Don’t you do it,” Jeremy muttered moving against her, pinning her against the cabin, forcing her down onto the deck. On top of her, his erection hideous and hard against her bare belly, he writhed and thrust. “Don’t act like you don’t want it.”