come.
But for awhile, I thought I could still hold everything together. Her father’s company. Her. I thought we could make it, that I could be strong enough for all of us.
She blinks up at me in the darkness, those luminous eyes that I so long mistook for soul-searching. I break her gaze and roughly undo her wrists. “Get your beauty sleep. You’ll need it, considering what I have planned for you tomorrow.”
Fifteen
7 Years Ago
Daphne
“Wake up, sleepy kitten,” Logan’s gently teasing voice wakes me. “We’re home.”
I blink open my eyes. We went for another beach outing, something we’ve done several times this summer, even though it’s not even technically summer anymore. September’s just begun but that meant the beaches were less populated.
Logan and I swam in the ocean like we always do, my favorite part since it’s an excuse for him to sometimes put his hands on me. Like an idiot, I live for those touches.
But things have been so bad at home that I was especially eager for the escape today. Because I’m a terrible person. Eager to leave her ill mother and worried, moody, anxious father… But Mom told me to go, said she’d be angry if I didn’t.
And the day on the golden sand, stretched out beside Logan, counting the freckles on his arm and dreaming up new constellations from the way they’re arranged while the waves crashed in the background and the sun warmed my skin…heaven.
My whole body is still relaxed from the day as I sit up in the truck, still sleepy. “What time is it?” I reach for my phone only to find it’s run out of battery.
“About nine o’clock.”
“Wow.” I scrub my face, the smell of salt and sand permeating Logan’s truck. “Sorry to just conk out on you like that.”
He smiles sideways at me as he pulls into the driveway in front of Thornhill. “Don’t be. You’re angelic when you sleep.”
His eyes linger on me and the intensity that seems to occasionally spark between us lights up like a firecracker in the small space of the cab.
I want to reach out and touch his face. I want to climb his body like I did in the ocean when I pretended to be afraid of something in the water even though I knew it was really just seaweed catching at my feet.
I want to ask him if it really is just obligation that’s had him spending so much time with me or if it’s something else, if he sees me like a man sees a woman. If there could ever be something between us or if I’m going to be doomed to this hopeless longing forever.
But the moment is suddenly broken when the front door of Thornhill crashes open, slamming against the wooden frame of the house, and my father storms out.
“Where the hell have you been?” he shouts.
I stumble out of the truck. “Daddy, I’m so sorry, what’s going on?”
And…that’s when I realize he’s not talking to me at all. It’s Logan he’s shouting at. “My wife is dying and you have your cell phone turned off all day? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dad gets right up in Logan’s face. “She’s turned and could be a matter of days if we don’t save her now and you’re off gallivanting with—”
A matter of days? Oh Mama.
Then Dad’s eyes turn disdainfully my way, looking me up and down. “And you would just abandon your mother like that? I thought I raised you to be a better daughter.”
His words cut to the quick and I flee towards the house.
“Daphne!” Logan calls after me but I don’t turn to look back. I have to see Mom. A matter of days. And I missed one of them, at the beach, being one of those idiot girls I hate, stupid about a boy who doesn’t even like me back.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks by the time I make it to Mom’s room.
And she does look worse than when I left her this morning. She’s got an oxygen mask on and her skin, it doesn’t look right. It seems papery and gray and like the veins are too close to the surface.
“Mama!” I cry, rushing to her bedside and crashing to my knees beside it, taking her hand. Her eyes are sunken and they move slow, like it takes her effort to even move them to look at me.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here!”
But she shakes her head and motions for me to remove her oxygen mask.
“You