“No worries,” Brian told me, walking a few paces up the beach, putting distance between us and the fish. “Actually, I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, walking beside him.
“For spilling all over you about my parents.” He dug a groove in the sand with the tip of his sneaker.
My heart thumped with sympathy. “Oh, it’s fine,” I said, then hesitated. “I’m…glad you came over to me.”
“I’m glad I did, too,” he said with a grin.
And then his fingers caught me around the waist. The words What are you doing? were still forming in my mind when he leaned down and kissed me. His lips were dry and tasted sour. I yanked my face away as quickly and politely as possible.
“Oh, Brian, I’m so sorry,” I said, taking a slight step back. “I didn’t mean to make you think I—”
“Think what?” he asked darkly. “That you wanted me?”
His hands gripped my waist tighter now, and he pulled me against him, pressing my pelvic bone against his. Then his mouth came down on mine again, his nose pressing mine flat so completely I could hardly breathe.
Panic coursed through my body. This wasn’t happening. This could not be happening.
I lifted my hands and pressed them against his chest, but his grip was like a vise. I couldn’t force even an inch of space between us. With a screech, I managed to turn my head away from his, but then he swept my ankle with his foot and sent me sprawling on the sand. My cheekbone hit something hard—a rock or a large shell, and hundreds of tiny dots of light exploded across my vision.
“Don’t be a tease, Rory,” Brian spat, climbing on top of me. He pinned my thigh down with his knee and my shoulder with one hand. With his other he worked the zipper on my jacket, yanking it open with three quick jerks. “You knew what you were doing when you came out here with me. We both knew what you were doing.”
“Get off me!” I cried, kicking my legs.
Brian laughed coldly. He dipped his head closer, and I saw the sharpness in his dark eyes. The determination. “That’s not gonna happen,” he said icily. “So you may as well just relax and enjoy yourself.”
He mashed his lips against mine again, and suddenly my whole body was on fire. My brain exploded with images. Faces. Girls. A blond with terrified blue eyes, blood dripping from her nose and over her lips as she tried to writhe free. An Asian girl with dark, wet hair, a scrape across her forehead, whimpering as she curled into a ball. Another girl scratching and screaming and begging him to stop. A fourth who’d gone catatonic, staring off into space while he had his way. Each memory assailed me with such stark details that my stomach curled and lurched and burned as I recoiled in horror, but I also felt this odd satisfaction, this tingling pleasure. I opened my eyes and looked into Brian’s, and just like that, I knew.
Those positive sensations were coming from him. He’d done this before and enjoyed every minute of it.
I tried to knock him off me with my knee, but it was like he had four legs and ten arms. I felt my jeans unzip, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Brian laughed. He was just gripping the waistband of my jeans when all of a sudden something crashed into him so hard he was flung backward into the sand. A bare foot flew by my face and I sat up on my hands, scrambling backward on the cracked shells like a startled crab. In the darkness, I saw Tristan rear up, his blond hair a brief flash in the night. He lifted his fist high over his shoulder and swung. The crack was sickening. Final.
I pulled in a broken breath, fumbling for the zipper on my jeans, but my hands were shaking so hard there was no catching it. Somehow, I pulled myself up to standing and forced myself to take air into my lungs. Tristan’s sandals lay a few feet away, one on the sand, one on the steps, where he’d kicked them off, probably to gain more speed.
“Are you all right?” Tristan asked, approaching me slowly. I covered the V of my exposed underwear with one hand, clutching my opposite shoulder with the other. Brian lay crooked and still behind Tristan, blood dripping from his nose.
“I…I…” It was the only syllable I could get out without bursting into tears. Tristan glanced down, and the rush of heat to my face was so intense I almost passed out. He shrugged out of his sweatshirt and tied it backward around my waist, so that the bulk of it was covering my front.
“Rory,” he said, hands on my shoulders. “Are you all right? Say something. Anything.”
I couldn’t believe how badly I had screwed this up. I couldn’t believe he’d had to rescue me. All this talk about being part of his world, one of the Lifers, having this mission, and I’d already failed.
“I’m so sorry, Tristan,” I said. “I can’t believe I—”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said fiercely, one hand moving to cup my face. His thumb traced an arc back and forth across my cheek, and my skin hummed. “This is my fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“But you were,” I said, looking up into his clear blue eyes. “You saved me.”
And then I burst into tears, burying my face in his chest. Tristan held me tightly to him, his arms locked around me as my body quaked with each fresh sob. I was still crying when the first fingers of fog rolled toward us with a low hiss, curling over the lights on the buoys, consuming the boats in their slips and finally the shoreline itself. Seconds later, the fog swallowed us whole, leaving me and Tristan alone in its cool, white grip.
“Who the hell do you people think you are?” Brian seethed, kicking his legs as Joaquin and Kevin yanked him out of the pickup. His heels dragged through the dirt alongside the road, leaving two shallow, jagged trails behind him. “I didn’t do anything. She wanted it.”
He lifted his chin in my direction, and I stepped sideways behind Tristan. We had followed Joaquin in Bea’s Jeep, a bright yellow rusted-out vehicle that wasn’t much more than a go-cart with the top down and the doors removed. Tristan and I had huddled in the back, and I’d pulled his sweatshirt on to guard against the face-numbing wind, while Krista had ridden up front, holding her hair in place with both hands as we bounced over every bump and pothole.
I could hardly look at Brian. I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been about him, how thoroughly fooled. I felt like an idiot, standing there with the others. Like the stupid new girl. I hadn’t looked Tristan in the eye since he’d saved me.