Upton had walked up behind us from the great room, once again
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scaring the wind right out of me. He was wearing a soft-looking navy blue polo and white linen pants, and his feet were bare. His light brown hair had been tousled by the ocean breeze and he made no move to fix it. He was gorgeous. Of course he was. But my heart didn't skip in excitement upon seeing him, like it had every other time he'd entered a room. Since being released from the hospital the afternoon before, I had been trying not to think about all those hours in the water alone. Instead, I'd been focusing on what had happened before my ignominious plunge.
Namely, that Upton had left me alone at one of the most humiliating moments of my life and run off to comfort Poppy Simon, the girl he had been hooking up with for the past few months--until he met me. Poppy was the person he'd been worried about after she and Mrs. Ryan had caught the two of us rolling around on the bed in Mrs. Ryan's stateroom. Her feelings were the ones that mattered to him. Not mine. When I'd seen him at the hospital, my mind hadn't even gone there. I was so happy just to be with him again, to be alive, that I'd momentarily spaced on how much he'd hurt me.
But now I remembered. And I was not happy.
"Where did you come from?" Noelle asked. She shot him a narrow-eyed look. I had told Noelle the entire stateroom story the night before, and she had been about ready to drive over to Upton's and wring his neck. Girl always had my back.
"Walked up from the beach," Upton replied, tilting his head toward the sliding glass doors that fronted the white sand and the pristine turquoise ocean beyond. His sandy flip-flops had been
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left by the open door. "I was going to ring you, but it's such a gorgeous day I decided on a stroll instead. Now who's getting the hell off what? "
"I am," I said tonelessly. I picked up my hoodie, which I'd flung over the top of my suitcase, and shoved my arms into it. "I'm getting the hell off this island."
Upton's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "What? Why?"
He sounded shocked. Like he couldn't think of a single reason I might want to go. I felt so angry and defensive that my shoulders actually curled.
"You seriously need to ask?" I blurted, zipping the sweatshirt violently. "In case you've come down with a case of sudden amnesia, one of your jilted girlfriends is trying to kill me. I'm not going to stick around here and give her the opportunity to finish the job."
Noelle and Upton exchanged a look that made me want to grab the back of their heads and knock their skulls together. In the great room, Mr. Lange lowered his voice and paced over to the doors, staring out at the ocean as he spoke.
"Are you laughing at me? " I demanded, my face growing hot.
"It's just.. .we know these people, Reed. We've known them since we were zygotes," Noelle said. "They're not capable of murder."
"Yeah, but two years ago you never would've thought Ariana could kill anyone either," I shot back, staring her down.
Noelle's jaw clenched, but she never broke eye contact. She'd never been one to back down from a direct challenge, even when she was 100 percent wrong.
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"For the record, I would have," Upton said, raising a hand. "Girl was always a bit dodgy in my opinion."
"Shut up, Upton," Noelle said impatiently. "Okay, I never would've thought Ariana could kill anyone either, but Ariana was different. Poppy and Paige . . . they don't have the guts to do something like this."
"What about Sienna? You haven't known her since you were 'zygotes,'" I said sarcastically, throwing in some air quotes.
"No, but Sienna is harmless," Upton said, stepping closer to me.
"Harmless? She left me in a shower stall for hours, freezing my ass off with no clothes," I replied.
"Right. I'd forgotten about that," Upton said, looking at his feet. "Okay, so she's not harmless, but she's not a violent person. You have to be quite mad to commit murder, Reed, and that's not Sienna."
His tone was placating, almost condescending. I glanced at Noelle. Both of them were looking at me as if I was some irrationally scared toddler. Like I'd just woken up from a nightmare and they were trying to convince me that the monsters weren't real. But they were real. Someone had pushed me off that boat. I had felt their hands, smelled their fragrance, seen them slink away. Why didn't anyone want to believe me?
"I don't understand how you guys can act like nothing's wrong," I said, desperation welling inside my chest, constricting my lungs. "Someone is trying to kill me. They spooked my horse, they rigged my Jet Ski, they shoved me off a moving boat. Three times in the last week I've almost died. Don't you get it? I can't stay here."
Tears welled up in my eyes, which frustrated me even more; I was
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playing into their image of me as a frightened, irrational baby. I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. My vision was blurry as I glared at them in defiance, but no tears escaped.