MEG SHIVERED AND PULLED THE THIN BLANKET up around her ears.
“Cold?” T.J. asked.
“Nope,” Meg lied. She looked down at him even though she could barely see his face. “Just tired.”
“You’re a horrible liar.”
It was true, and Meg made no attempt to refute it. She was freezing cold and fighting desperately to hide any sign of it. Meg lifted her head and stared out into the darkness of the night. Right now they needed to keep a positive attitude. Plus number one, they were still alive, though T.J. had a bullet lodged in his shoulder and had lost a lot of blood. No, stay positive, Meg said to herself. Right. Still alive.
Plus number two, it had stopped raining. They sat on a soggy wooden dock with nothing but flimsy blankets to protect them from the cold of night, but it was true—no more rain. Yay.
She tried to hold on to those two positives in a vain attempt to keep her mind off the horror of what had happened. Her best friend, dead. Violently. Pointlessly. Meg couldn’t save her. In the end, she’d only been able to save T.J., and even then, just barely.
They’d sat on the rocks near the pyre that had been the boathouse until the last embers died. At least it was warm, and besides, neither of them wanted to go back up to the house. Eventually, though, Meg had to. T.J. needed to stay warm if he was going to survive the night. She didn’t stay in the house a second longer than she had to, grabbing a few blankets from the living room and a bottle of Advil from the kitchen.
Oh, and the longest, sharpest knife she could find. She’d seen Tom go up in flames as the boathouse collapsed around her. But it didn’t mean she totally and completely believed he was dead.
Then she and T.J. slowly made their way to the dock. He was getting weaker by the moment, leaning the bulk of his weight on Meg for support, and by the time they reached the landing dock, she was practically carrying him.
T.J. shifted his head in her lap. She heard him suck in a breath at the pain that must have ripped through his shoulder every time he moved.
“How’s the pain?” she asked. It wasn’t as if he’d answer truthfully, and it wasn’t as if she really wanted to hear that every breath, every moment was agony.
“Not bad,” he said through gritted teeth. She wondered if the Advil helped at all.
“Now who’s the liar?”
She stroked his forehead with her hand. He flinched under her touch and she quickly pulled her hand away. But he was clammy, and his body felt unnaturally hot, like he was running a fever. That couldn’t be good.
“Now we just have to hope the ferry comes back,” T.J. said.
“Screw the ferry,” Meg said as she caressed his cheek. “I’m guessing our little bonfire was like a Coast Guard beacon. All of Roche Harbor must have seen it. I bet the helicopters will be up as soon as the sun rises.” Actually, she prayed that was the case. If the Coast Guard showed up, T.J. could get medical attention right away.
He shivered. “Good.”
Meg checked the horizon for the twentieth time that hour. Was the sky lightening at all? She wasn’t sure. She’d been staring into the darkness for so long, she couldn’t tell anymore if she’d willed her eyes to see a faint blush of dawn. But the blackness of the sky seemed to have a purplish hue. Was the night finally over?
“Sun’s rising,” T.J. said. He didn’t open his eyes.
“We made it.” Meg tucked a blanket around his good shoulder, careful not to touch the side where she’d shot him. It was no trick of the eye now. The purple sky gave way to a deep blue before streaks of pale yellow crept across the horizon.
“We’ll be home soon,” Meg said. She’d spent most of the dark night jabbering away about nonsense. What they’d do when they got back to the mainland. College in the fall. Los Angeles. And beaches. And celebrities. Anything to keep their minds off reality.
“Yeah,” he said. His eyes squinted open just a sliver. “But part of us will always be here.”
Meg couldn’t help but smile. “Are you sure you’re not the writer?”
That warranted a pair of dimples as a slight grin appeared on T.J.’s face. She bent down and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’m glad you can still smile,” she said as she pulled away.
“Oh, you know. What’s not to smile about? A bunch of my friends are dead and you shot me.”
The reminder that Minnie was dead made her stomach drop. Her best friend was gone, murdered right before her eyes. Their last hours together had been a nightmare and so much had been left unsaid between them. Meg had tried so hard to save them both, and now she felt guilty that she had survived while Minnie had not.
T.J. must have felt the same way about Gunner. How would they ever get past the survivor’s guilt? Not to mention the fact that Meg had shot him. Would he ever be able to forgive her? Would she ever be able to forgive herself?
Meg could have tried to explain away her actions, but she wanted to make sure she got it all on the table. “I was shooting to kill. I thought you were the murderer.”
“We were all suspects.”
“Yeah? Did you think I did it?”
“No.” T.J. laughed, which turned immediately into a weak, dry cough that racked his body.
“See? So that means I’m the worst person on the planet.”
“Meg, he made you believe that. He was one step ahead of us the whole way.”
“I guess.” Meg couldn’t shake the fact that she’d tried to kill T.J. It seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. “But I fell for it. And it was partly out of anger. I didn’t believe that you really liked me, especially not after what I did to you. I mean, you’ve been avoiding me for months, and it was easy to believe you were just using my feelings for you to accomplish all the murders. It made me feel … pathetic.”
“I’m sorry. About avoiding you. I was really angry at first. Hurt, you know? I couldn’t even look at you.”
Meg winced. She thought she’d only been hurting herself. She never realized she’d wounded him as well. “I … I didn’t know.”
“It’s done now. Besides …” T.J. reached his good arm back and squeezed her leg. “You saved my life. Tom would have killed me. You could have gotten away once I distracted him. Saved yourself. But you didn’t.” He grinned again, looking more like the old flirtatious T.J. “I think that sort of cancels out Homecoming.”
“What about the bullet in your shoulder?”
T.J. smiled. “I’m sure we can think of another way for you to make that up to me.”
Meg recalled the panic she’d felt at losing T.J.—once when she shot him, and once when he tried to save her from Tom. If only she’d trusted him and her own feelings, perhaps he wouldn’t be lying there wounded. Perhaps Minnie wouldn’t be dead.
A heavy tear rolled down Meg’s cheek.
“Hey.” T.J.’s voice was strong and forceful. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” There he went, reading her mind again. “We’re still here. We made it.”
She looked down into those sparkly brown eyes and the dimples that dotted each cheek. “Yeah. Yeah, we did.”
“Now it looks like you’re stuck with me.”
Meg smiled despite herself. “And if it doesn’t work out, I can always shoot you again.”
T.J.’s eyes twinkled. “See? Gold.”
A sound broke the monotony of lapping waves. Something rhythmic. Something man-made. Like a fan turned on full blast.
Meg and T.J. both looked up at the same time. A tiny dot appeared in the sky—orange against the growing light of dawn, and getting larger by the second.
The Coast Guard.
“Can you handle me?” T.J.’s hand grasped hers, tight and firm. “Can you? Because after all of this, I just … I can’t imagine being without you.”
Ten bodies. Ten lives cut short. Meg could see them all in her mind, from Lori’s purple face to the sleeping death of the Taylors, to Tom’s mask of hatred as the flames consumed the boat. Ten people who would never live their lives, never feel love or hate or fear or anything ever again. How much time had she wasted living in fear? Living for others? How much of her life would she continue to let slip away without enjoying a single moment?
That ended. Here and now.
“I love you, Thomas Jefferson Fletcher.” Meg couldn’t believe how easy the words came. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember.”
The helicopter was closer now, circling the smoldering ruins of the boathouse. Then someone on board spotted them and the helicopter turned toward the dock, so close the force of its blades sucked the air right out of Meg’s lungs.
“When you texted me the day of Homecoming …” T.J.’s voice trailed off. “I thought you really didn’t care about me.”
“I know,” Meg said. She so desperately wanted him to understand. “I—”
He held up his hand. “I get it. I get it now. You and Minnie … it was complicated.” The chopper hovered right above them. Meg looked up and saw the side door open and a stretcher swing out on the crane.
“Meg!” T.J. shouted against the noise.
She looked down at T.J. His face was serious again. Tight and worn.
“Don’t let her come between us again, okay? It’s done.”
Done. Done and dead. But as nightmarish as the whole weekend had been, as horrifying and painful and life-altering in a way that even years of therapy wouldn’t be able to cure her of, it had done one beautiful thing. It had brought her and T.J. together.
She bent her head to his and kissed him. Whatever they’d become after the weekend at White Rock House, they’d become it together.
There was no going back.