She looked at the floor. “I guess I needed to get all that out. You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m glad you got it out,” I said. “I’m glad you told us.”
And I was, even though I felt like I had a hole in my fucking heart that would be there until the day I died — the very least I deserved — because of it.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
“It matters to me.” I was glad when she let me pull her onto my lap. I lifted my stethoscope and placed the chestpiece against her skin, relieved by the rhythmic beat of her heart.
I dropped the stereoscope and wrapped my arms around her waist. “There will never be enough ways to say I’m sorry.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I know.”
“Rafe’s a fucking asshole.”
She laughed a little and tipped her head against mine. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“We’ve been talking,” I said.
It was a simplistic word for the conversation we’d had in the living room after Lilah went upstairs. There had been talking,sure, but there had also been arguing and a near fistfight between Rafe and me before Jude broke it up.
I shouldn’t have expected any different. Rafe didn’t know how to handle even the most basic of emotions — thanks to his dad, something Lilah didn’t know about yet — and what Lilah had told us went way beyond basic.
“What have you been talking about?”
“About what to do next,” I said.
She met my gaze, her forehead still tipped to mine. “And? What’s the verdict?”
“The verdict?” I looked into her eyes and swore to myself I would go to the ends of the earth to fix this, to make sure she was okay, that she was allowed to live the life she deserved. “The verdict is Greece.”
PART III
50
RAFE
I drovethrough the narrow cobblestone streets of Folegandros, working my way up the craggy mountain road to the house we’d rented. The car was small — also a rental — and I was glad Lilah was in back with Nolan, Jude next to me in the front seat.
Lilah probably thought I was avoiding her because I was pissed about Folegandros, but the truth was, I could hardly face her after her confession the week before. I’d known what we’d done was wrong — before, during, and after — but I’d had no idea the extent of the damage we’d done.
I felt ashamed just thinking it. I hadn’t known because I hadn’t bothered to check, even after we got out of the military and started a business that gave us access to all kinds of information using resources that would have made finding someone like Lilah a piece of cake.
I hadn’t looked for her. I hadn’t looked for her even though not a day went by that I hadn’t thought of her, and I was honest enough with myself to know why: I was a fucking coward.
I’d known when she disappeared from school that the fallout from the pictures was bad. I just hadn’t wanted to know how bad. Now that I knew, I was pretty fucking sure I’d go to mygrave with the sound of Lilah sobbing in the living room, telling us how she’d tried to end her life because of what we’d done.
Even now, winding our way up the island of Folegandros, the Aegean Sea unfurled like a sapphire blanket into the distance, a contrast to the stark white houses perched on the cliffs overlooking the water, my chest constricted at the thought of it.
We’d hardly spoken since her confession, because no words existed in the human language to make up for what we’d done, for what an absolute shit I’d been.
“This is us,” Jude said, pointing at a narrow house perched on a cliff at the end of a long dirt drive.
I turned onto the path and navigated the rental — a nondescript economy model because that was all they had — up the bumpy road. The cliff made it look like we were driving into the sky, but when I pulled up to the house I saw that it dropped to the sea below, a treacherous wooden staircase zigzagging down the face of the cliff.
“Wow,” Nolan said, getting out of the car and stretching, “what a view.”
It was quiet except for the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff, the wind blowing in off the sea. I’d chosen the house both for its accommodations (four bedrooms and a pool) and for its privacy. I had no fucking idea what we were getting into here, and when you didn’t know what you were getting into, privacy was the best bet.