Landon stared into Sam’s deadened eyes, pressure building in his chest. Sam had slept with Bailey?
Bailey was Caden’s father? The betrayal knifed him. His own brother’s betrayal. Sam’s betrayal. His eyes stung. Bailey had a crush on Sam for months, but it was nothing more than that. Bailey had always been a sucker for the girls who played hard to get. Only Sam hadn’t been playing. No one knew it better than Landon.
And Sam. He only told her he loved her three days before that night. It took him all summer to work up the courage to say the words he’d never said to any woman. Had it meant so little to her? So little that she had drunken sex with his younger brother three days later?
“He asked me to tie off the boat,” she said.
The faraway look in her eyes frightened him, but the ache in his heart fogged his thinking. “What?”
“The boat.” Her monotone voice droned. “He asked me to tie it off.”
Sam was with Bailey the night he died. Dread slithered up his spine and coiled up tightly at the base of his skull. It had begun raining sometime during his party. He noticed Sam’s absence, but he was busy talking with friends. He didn’t notice Bailey’s absence until most of the guests had left.
He shook his thoughts and focused on Sam. She stared blankly at the spot on his chest where she’d nestled moments before. He started to ask what she meant, then decided he didn’t want to know.
“I got sick on the pier. From all the alcohol. When I was finished, I looked back at him.” Her brow furrowed as she remembered. “He was lying back in the chair, already asleep.” Her vacant eyes filled with water, and her mouth worked silently as if priming for the words. “I forgot to tie off the boat.”
Landon forgot to breathe. Forgot everything except what Sam was saying. He didn’t want to believe it. Bailey had been out on the water by himself. He got disoriented in a storm that rolled in so quickly. He was unable to get ashore before the small boat took in water. It capsized, and Bailey, always the heedless, impetuous one, had never put on a life vest. It’s what the authorities said. What he and his parents believed all these years.
Now Sam looked at him, her face full of horror. “I forgot,” she said as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
He didn’t want to believe it either. But everything made sense now. The way she shook at Bailey’s funeral. The way she withdrew. The way she left the island soon after he went away to college.
It all made sense in its own terrible way. He remembered every detail of the night vividly. He remembered seeing his dad’s empty slip and feeling the pit of his stomach harden. While his dad called for help, he’d borrowed Scott’s boat.
The storm gave rise to brutal waves, and he never would have seen the capsized boat in the darkness if it had been farther out to sea. But the lights from shore cast a dim glow over the raging water.
Sam’s voice cut through his thoughts. “It was all my fault,” she whispered. “My fault he died.”
Landon hadn’t found Bailey that night. He jumped in the water and screamed Bailey’s name until his throat was raw. It wasn’t until he was back at the yacht club, wrapped in a blanket, that he began to worry about Sam. He hadn’t seen her since the beginning of the party. What if she was on the water with Bailey? What if . . . ? When her machine picked up his call, he drove straight to her house.
Sam was safe and sound, but his brother’s body washed to shore two days later.
Her voice jerked him from the past. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Sam’s face blurred. The weight of what she’d done settled like a leaden anchor inside him. Sam betrayed him. Bailey betrayed him. Caden was his brother’s child. Sam caused his brother’s death. She hid the truth all these years.
He shook with the burden. His eyes ached and his throat constricted. He stepped away from her. His love for her conflicted with simmering anger.
He couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together.
Sam spoke, her quiet voice parting the sea of confusion. “That’s what’s inside my heart, Landon.”
He remembered his own words. “You hide your heart from everyoneelse, but I can see inside you.” Had it only been a few minutes ago he was so sure of himself? Now his thoughts were as unstable as quicksand.
Sam guarded herself from Landon’s pain. The confusion that creased his brow was the beginning of the end of his love for her. He was seeing who she really was. What awful things she was capable of.
Before she could stop herself, she drove the last nail in the coffin. “Go home, Landon.” The steadiness of her tone belied the quaking inside her. “Just go.”
I don’t deserve you, and I never will.
He took another step away, his gaze fixed on her. She felt his withdrawal, and her soul cried out, contradicting her words.
Love me anyway. Don’t leave me.
Don’t be a fool, Sam. It’s not a matter of if, only when.
He stilled, not reaching for the screen door. His eyes impaled her, and she knew this moment would haunt her forever.
How could you do this to him? Look at his face, Sam. He doesn’tdeserve it.
He deserves better than you.
“Go home,” she said firmly. “Just stay away from me.” She was doing what was best for both of them. Someday the ache would go away. Wouldn’t it?
His jaw tightened. “You don’t mean that.”
How could he know what she meant? What she thought? Hadn’t she just proven he didn’t know her at all? “I do,” she said past the lump in her throat.
Say it like you mean it, Sam, or all this will be for nothing.
Sam listened to the voice. It had kept her safe so far. “I don’t want you to come back, hear? Just leave us alone.”
She saw regret and compassion mingle on his face, but she turned and opened the door before she lost her courage.
He didn’t stop her this time.
Once Sam hobbled over the threshold, she closed the door and leaned against it. Her good leg was as unstable as a rickety table. Her hands trembled. She slid down the door, letting her legs fold, ignoring the pain in her ankle. It was no match for the pain in her heart.
With her head against the door, she heard the slap of the screen door. She heard the heaviness of Landon’s feet on the steps. She had dropped her secret, and it had exploded like a bomb in his face.
He wouldn’t be back. She had what she wanted.
But in the quietness of the room, she couldn’t help but wonder why she only felt empty.