I should go inside. Climb into bed, shut my eyes, reset the day. But, looming emptily behind me, Cormorant House feels just as cold as the night. An inhospitable specter, devoid of life. I don’t want to walk its vacant halls alone. Doing so makes me feel like a ghost. As though, at any given moment, I could simply…
Disappear.
The sound of raised voices drifts to me on the wind. I sit up, glancing around for the source. Straining my ears, I realize it’s coming from the house.
Two men, speaking rapidly.
They’re too far away to make out any of their words. I should probably feel fear as I climb to my feet, but I’m too numb from cold to feel much of anything. Bested by my own incorrigible curiosity, I move quietly down the dock, toward solid ground.
I follow the voices up the path to the estate, my footfalls silent against the grass. My hand curls tightly around my keys, the only weapon at my disposal. Their metal edges dig sharply into my palm.
I keep to the shadows — an unseen eavesdropper in the dark. The argument grows louder as I approach the house. I’m nearly to the terrace when one of the voices becomes identifiable.
I stop in my tracks.
“She isn’t my girlfriend.” I hear Archer scoff. “Don’t tell my that’s why you thought she’d help you? You’re even dumber than I thought.”
I duck instinctually behind a maple tree, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Who is he talking about?
I strain to catch more of their conversation. My eyes widen when I recognize Jaxon’s voice, responding. “That girl will do anything for you. Anything.”
“Maybe back when we were kids,” Archer volleys back. “You’ve been away a long time, Jaxon. Things change. People grow apart.”
“Bullshit. I was gone two years, but I haven’t forgotten the way you look at that girl.”
How’s that?I think hopefully.
“How’s that?” Archer asks flatly.
“Like she’s the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.”
My heart lurches into my throat and lodges there. Breath becomes an impossibility.
“God, you really must be high.” Archer’s cold laugh sends shrapnel into the fabric of my soul. “You think I actually like being her friend? I tolerate her for exactly one reason: her parents paid my tuition to Exeter. As soon as I walk across that graduation stage, I plan to keep on walking, right out of her life.”
My eyes are stinging from the wind. That’s why I’m crying.
The wind.
Just the wind.
I brush the tears off my face, but they keep coming. The pain inside my chest is crippling. My knees threaten to buckle beneath me. I reach for the tree trunk to steady myself.
“Jo Valentine means nothing to me,” Archer tells Jaxon. There’s not an ounce of hesitation in his voice. “Nothing.”
A fissure erupts beneath my ribs, tearing through the fragile cartilage. Breaking me open, into fragments.
I can’t listen anymore. I can’t bear to hear another word from his cruel, contemptuous mouth.
Tears blind me as I dodge into the dark. I don’t bother wiping them. Stumbling sightlessly through garden beds, I circle around to the front door, shove my key into the lock, and fall across the threshold. A pained sob chokes out of my throat as I hit the floor, echoing back at me in the vaulted atrium.
Lying there on the cold marble, the estate’s vastness presses in at me from all sides… it’s empty rooms a perfect reflection of the hollow panging inside my heart.
* * *
The following morning,I stagger into the kitchen after a sleepless night and stop cold at the sight that greets me. Surely, I must be hallucinating from sheer exhaustion. Because sitting at the island countertop, sipping mugs of coffee and swapping sections ofThe Boston Globe, are my parents.