Torrin lifts his eyes to the ceiling and closes the door. “What do you want to do first?”
There’s a picnic basket and blanket spread out in one corner of the room, but I take a seat where I am, lifting my face to the pretend sun, and smile. “This.”
With my eyes closed, it feels so much like the beach I’m half-anticipating a cool wave to break around my ankles.
“So I’ve noticed you’ve taken to wearing sweaters in the summer—ones that cover your neck . . .”
“You know what’s great about going to the beach?” I pause a beat. “How relaxing it is.”
“So does that mean you don’t want to talk about your sudden addiction to high-necked sweaters?”
I elbow him when he settles into the sand beside me. “No, it means I was hoping to not have to, but now you’ve brought it up . . .”
“That doesn’t mean you have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I don’t realize I’m rubbing my neck until Torrin’s eyes drop to it. “It’s just this big, ugly reminder to everyone that I was weak—that I was powerless.”
Torrin’s brows come together like he’s trying to figure out if I’m being serious. “I look at that scar, and I see strength. I see a person who survived ten years in a situation most would have crumbled under in less than a month. I see a survivor.” He stares at the pool in front of us like it’s the Pacific. “That scar doesn’t prove you’re weak, Jade. It proves the opposite.”
I lie back and stretch out, wiggling my feet and hands into the sand. I close my eyes because if I tell him what I think I’m about to, I don’t want to see what he looks like when he finds out. I cover my eyes with my forearm like I’m shielding them from the sun, but really I’m shielding them so he can’t see them squeeze closed tighter. “I wasn’t chained to anything, Torrin.”
He’s quiet for a minute. “What do you mean?”
I haven’t told anyone—not even my parents. I’d planned to never tell anyone either, but right now, I have to tell Torrin. “The other end, it wasn’t locked to anything. I was . . . free. I just didn’t know it.”
Torrin’s quiet. “How—”
“The detectives I met with last week told me.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. No one ever will either. I was free. I should have known it. I should have felt it or been able to tell, but I didn’t. I could have left. I could have gotten back to my life. I could have . . .” I know we can both fill in what I don’t say. “He’d broken me though. My will, my spirit, my soul, whatever you call it. All of it. He broke it.”
I feel him lie down beside me before his hand digs under the sand to find mine. He pulls it to the surface. “You can’t keep beating yourself up for that. You can’t let it keep you locked in your room for the rest of your life.”
My fingers feel limp compared to his, but he rubs my fingers, warming them, bringing them back to life. “That’s not why I’ve locked myself away.”
“Why then?”
I don’t want to reflect on that question, because I’m scared of the answer. I’m scared where thinking about it will lead me. I’m not ready. But . . . “What if I had found out I wasn’t chained to anything, Torrin? That I was free to go out that front door one day?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either. That’s the problem.”
He scoots closer until his arm is running down mine. His body’s warmer than the warm breeze blowing over us. “Well, nothing like an afternoon at the beach to relax and reflect, right?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t smell the same,” I say, wondering if I can just delay the inevitable forever. I think it would be better than confronting the realization that I might never have carried that chain out of the front door if I had found it was bound to nothing.
Torrin lifts our hands and drops them on his chest. He’s not letting me bury mine again. “Well, you know where to find that when you’re ready.”
I’M READY. OR at least I think I’m ready. Or I am for sure pretending to be ready.
Either way, we’ve loaded the Tahoe and are parking at the public beach access, and Dad’s shutting off the engine. It’s my first time outside in two weeks, and I’ve been on the cusp of a meltdown ever since we backed out of the garage.
The media’s still camped out, as abundant and vicious as ever, but Dad got his windows tinted super dark a few days ago. That, and a blanket tossed over me sprawled out in the back, meant a successful escape without a caravan of news trucks following us.
“Hey, you’ve got this.” Torrin gives my hand a quick squeeze before moving it away because my dad has spent as much time checking the rearview mirror as he has the windshield. “I’ll be right here the whole time.” When Dad exhales loudly, Torrin adds, “We’ll all be right here.” When Dad turns around in his seat, Torrin tacks on, “The whole time.”
I bite my lip and bob my head, but I’m losing it on the inside. Not even Torrin’s injection of confidence can penetrate my skin this time. It doesn’t get inside and spread like I’m used to.
When I’d worked up the nerve to go to the real beach, I’d only planned on including Torrin. But when my parents found out, I knew they were hurt that the plan didn’t include them. So I invited them. And they invited Sam and her family.