Castle in the Sand by Megan Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

head. "No, Claire. I wasna alone."
     
    More chills spread through her body. "You
brought her here. To our place. And you fucked her out there, on
the beach. You didn't know I had planned to get here early,
too."
     
    She swallowed the burning in her throat. The
more she talked, the easier it got. "You came in here, to the
kitchen. We...we fought. I asked you if you'd been with someone
else, and you lied. But I could smell her on you. Not my perfume.
The smell of raspberries."
     
    He groaned, but she continued, her voice
rising as the memories washed over her.
     
    "And then I ran out to the beach. She was
gone, but that didn't matter.The ocean was there, and I ran to it.
I wanted to swim, to get away from the anger and the pain. A storm
came up. I swam out too far. I couldn't get back. I was
drowning..." Now she turned to stare at him, her wet dress clutched
in her fists. "And you swam out after me."
     
    "I did." Malcolm shivered. "I swam out after
you, Claire."
     
    "But the waves were too high." Her voice was
calm, low. The sickness had passed. "You caught me by the hair. I
remember that."
     
    "Your lovely hair."
     
    "And you pulled me above the water. I could
breathe again."
     
    He nodded, slowly. She saw the hems of his
trousers had gone dark with wetness. He sighed.
     
    "But then you left me!" she cried, stricken
with the memories. "You left me anyway, didn't you? But I did what
I said. I didn't ruin it for everyone else. I didn't speak to you,
no. And I didn't forgive. But I didn't make it hard for the others
to be around us. I wasn't like Joe when he broke up with Candace,
and it was so awkward to be around both of them. I tried so hard to
pretend, for everyone else, that I was okay. But it didn't matter,
did it? After a while you stopped coming."
     
    A sob burst from her. Tears slid in burning
trails down her cheeks. "I tried so hard!" she cried, and swung at
him. He didn't even move away. Her palm cracked against his cheek
with a sound like deadwood cracking. "I tried!"
     
    He enfolded her in his arms, though she
struggled and fought against him. "I know you did, Claire."
     
    "But you left me anyway, you son of a bitch!"
She sobbed and pounded his chest over and over. The blows hurt her
hand, but he didn't even move. "You left me!"
     
    "No, Claire," he said softly in her ear.
"Don't you understand, love? You left me."
     
    * * * *
     
    Warm and dry beneath the covers of the bed in
the upstairs room, Claire snuggled close to Malcolm. She felt
burned out from crying, an empty husk, but better for it. The
memories had been poisoning her for too long, even when she didn't
remember them.
     
    "I pulled you out of the water," Malcolm
said. "But you were already gone."
     
    She didn't remember that. She remembered
years of this place. Dinners with her friends and nights spent
alone in this room, this very bed. She did not remember lying in
the ground. But she did remember being cold.
     
    "We all came back here for a while. For
years. And at first, nobody wanted to tell anyone else the things
they'd seen. By unspoken agreement, we all avoided this room
because we knew how you'd loved it best. We didn't want to sound
foolish for saying we'd seen you at the table, or heard you
laughing with us when we joked. Eventually, they began making
excuses for why they couldn't make the trip. First one year, then
another. The place spent more time as a rental than it did as
ours."
     
    "But you kept coming back." She listened to
the sound of his heartbeat through the softness of his shirt.
     
    "I came back. But you never saw me. I kept
coming back, hoping. But you never did."
     
    "Until today? Yesterday? Last week?" She
still wasn't sure how long they'd been here. She let out deep sigh.
She would have wept, but had no more tears. "I wanted so badly to
make sure nothing was ruined for the Fellowship. And it was. I
ruined it."
     
    "Hush." He squeezed her closer to him. "You
didna ruin it for them on purpose."
     
    "But it was