8

CASS

Once we’re home, after Logan escorts me to the front door like I’m a patient recovering from surgery, we sit on the couch. He pulls my feet up onto his lap, gently massaging them. From the outside, it would look like any other night when Logan wasn’t working. The two of us cuddled up on the couch, a Netflix documentary playing on the TV. But there’s no documentary playing now, and this is no normal night, as the anxiety swirling around in my stomach keeps reminding me.

“I can’t believe you had to go through that, that you had to—to find her like that,” he says, his face twisted in concern. “I just wish it had been me.”

I place my hand on his arm, unsure what to say.

“I mean, it’s crazy, isn’t it?” Logan continues. “That woman who fell from Khrum Yai and now this.”

I flinch when he references her. The ring sits like a stone in my pocket, weighing me down so that I feel as though I may sink into the couch. I look at Logan, his face so earnest as he seems to be trying to piece together what’s happened.

I should tell him that I found it. Our ring, his ring. The one he had made as a pair. The exact same size as mine, as he vowed to only ever wear it on a chain around his neck. I know it’s his. I knew it as soon as I plucked it from the sand. I keep replaying this morning in my head, my decision to leave my ring at home, nestled in the red box in the drawer of my bedside table where it still sits. I figured it would be safer there; I didn’t want to run the risk of losing it in the water. The irony hits me like a cold slap to the face.

I should just ask him. I think of Brooke, how direct she is. She wouldn’t hesitate to confront him. She certainly wouldn’t be avoiding the conversation, drumming up unrealistic explanations in her head like I have been. Maybe he went for a swim early this morning and it fell off his chain. Maybe it belongs to someone else who just happens to have the same ring with the exact same engraving. No, Brooke would come right out, point-blank. Logan, why did I find your ring next to a dead girl’s body?

But I’m not Brooke. The idea of confronting Logan ignites a wave of nausea in my stomach. Because I don’t want to hear the truth. Not if it changes what we have. I’ve worked so hard for this—for him. And here we are, finally engaged. If I lose him, I don’t know what I would do. He’s the only thing that’s gotten me through these last few years after I lost everything. My mother to breast cancer when I was thirteen, and then Robin and my father to that hotel room. I had nothing when I arrived on Koh Sang: no family, no friends, no future. Logan changed all that.

I never knew what it was that first attracted him to me when we met two years ago, all wild limbs and awkward bones jutting every which way, barely able to string together a logical sentence. The year of grief and solitude had animalized me, and I was only just coming out of hibernation.

After everything that happened in that hotel room, no one knew what to do with me, especially after what they thought I’d done. And the police didn’t help things. Letting me go for lack of evidence but never clarifying to the public what really happened. My grandmother was the only option. So I lived with her, each of us mostly avoiding the other in that old house upstate. Although I’m not sure you could technically classify what I was doing as living. Curled up on my bed, constantly thinking of Robin, periodically looking through the gap in my curtains at the reporters camped out at the end of the driveway, each trying to outlast the others for a peek at America’s newest villain. They stayed for months, but eventually they lost interest, just as I hoped. So I pulled the curtains slightly wider and kept looking out into the world, thinking of everything Robin had wanted to see but hadn’t had the chance to. Because of me.

My mind kept going to one place in particular: Southeast Asia. Robin’s dream destination ever since we watched The Beach with our babysitter, long before we were old enough to. I didn’t have any particular feelings toward the place, but Robin’s excitement was always contagious.

So when my grandmother finally died, almost a year to the day after her son’s death, and her inheritance—a hefty sum when combined with the estate my father had left behind—transferred to my bank account, the first thing I did was book the ticket. One way to Phuket, followed by an eight-hour ferry to a place I remembered Robin mentioning once as she pored over glossy websites about the Gulf of Thailand: Koh Sang.

Even as the ferry approached the island, as exhausted as I was from the multiday trip, I couldn’t take my tired eyes off the sight of it. The mountains, basking in a pinkish glow, rising serenely over the water. An island of colors so vivid they burned my eyes. It was like staring directly at the sun after spending a year in winter grays.

I forced myself to take the dive course. I was never interested in scuba, but Robin was. And this trip was for her. So I went, barely talking to anyone, avoiding eye contact with the other people in my group and my dive instructor, a charming redheaded Brit named Neil, who every female student—myself included—couldn’t help but have a schoolgirl crush on. But as soon as I took that first breath under the water, it was as if something opened in me. Something I had kept closed since the day I lost Robin. There was a sort of freedom to being underwater. Who you were, what you’d done no longer mattered below the surface. All that did was the tempo with which you dragged in each breath, the second that passed before you released it.

By the end of that first dive, I was addicted.

As soon as I finished the beginner course, I signed up for another and another, making a small dent in my inheritance. I spent my days training underwater, my nights in my closet-sized Terrace room, studying the textbook Neil had given me. At the end of that first week, Neil persuaded me to go with him to a bar his friend had just opened, and a few hours later, I was clinging to him on the back of his motorbike as he led me down palm-filled roads to a bar that was nothing more than a bit of open ground and a palapa situated next to the jungle.

“This is Frangipani,” Neil said after he parked near the chain-link fence surrounding the lot. “My mate Logan just opened it. It’s the main expat hangout here.”

My underarms were damp and my mouth sandy as we entered, and a group of heads turned in our direction. A tall blond Scandinavian-looking woman, a grungy surfer guy with hair so tangled it was halfway to becoming dreadlocks, a pale, dark-haired, severe woman who was the only one not to break into a smile, and Logan.

Their voices greeted me all at once, a mixture of accents and dialects hitting my ears simultaneously, none of the words comprehensible.

It was the most excitement I had received in response to my presence in years, and I felt a warmth grow deep in my stomach as I took in their eager faces. I realized instantly there was something special, something tight-knit about this group. And for a moment, I felt like I was back in college, surrounded by people who accepted me. My roommate, her boyfriend, Eric, and their friends. People who made me feel like I was something more. Like I was special.

In response, I managed a feeble, “Hi, I’m Cass.”

The name felt foreign in my mouth. I’d only said it a few times since I wrote it on my hotel registration, thankful that the women at reception didn’t insist on checking it against my passport. A new heat broke out through my chest as I swallowed down the panic of being found out. I prepared for my lie to spark a flurry of accusations, of knowing eyes quick to label me a liar. Or worse.

But instead, all I heard was Logan’s deep Scottish brogue.

“Well, it is certainly a pleasure to meet you, Cass.” Hearing my name in his mouth was intoxicating, and when his dark blue eyes rested on me, I felt my temperature skyrocket. Bits of my vision turned to black, like a television screen on the blink. And as soon as I saw him, I knew. This was not just a place I would visit. Koh Sang was a place I would stay.

And stay I did. In the following months, Logan and I spent virtually all our free time together. He integrated me into his life, into the family he’d formed on this island. After I passed my divemaster training, Frederic took me on in the dive shop. I spent every night sitting at the bar at Frangipani as the female customers smiled at Logan coyly, watching their cheeks grow red as he’d lean in to kiss me across the counter. Knowing that he’d chosen me.

Frangipani struggled for that first year or so, being such a hike from the flurry of Pho Tau beach. Logan had spent pretty much all his savings buying it, so I helped him out for a few months when he couldn’t make his mortgage payments. I didn’t mind; I certainly had enough money to spare. And eventually, Logan found his footing as a manager. With some help from the other Permanents, he worked up a strong enough marketing campaign to convince the resort guests to make the hike out to the bar, even getting Frangipani listed as a permanent fixture on the island’s official pub crawl.

But more business means I’ve seen him less lately. There’s no longer a spot for me at the bar most nights; all the stools are occupied by customers, so I’ve been spending more nights at home or at the resort’s fitness studio, doing a Pilates class with Greta. More time apart meant more distance for things to get between us. So much so that a few weeks back, I thought I’d lost him. But that all changed again with the engagement, our vow to spend the rest of our lives together.

Suddenly, I’m struck with a panic, the thought of him leaving seizing me by the throat. The same way it did a few weeks ago. I’ve tried to keep these feelings buried, tried to forget about what happened. I can’t let them come back, especially now. I give a little cough, which does nothing to help.

“You okay?” Logan looks over from his side of the couch, concerned.

I nod, although I’m about as far from okay as is humanly possible.

He yawns and stretches up his arms. “Well, I’m knackered. And you must be too. What do you say we have an early night? I’m sure there’ll be loads for us to sort tomorrow once Frederic gets in.”

As he gets up from the couch, I want to run after him, to beg him to tell me that nothing will change, that he had nothing to do with Lucy’s death. But I sit there, stone still, until he reaches the bedroom door.

“Coming?” he asks.

I follow him into our bedroom, the sight of the dark sea through our floor-to-ceiling windows for once doing nothing to improve my mood. Logan’s already stripping off his shirt and tossing it in the hamper. As he turns toward me, my eyes travel to his neck, flashing over the Scots Gaelic text inked across his clavicle. Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh. I’d asked him what it meant the first time I’d seen him shirtless, less than a week after we met at Frangipani. “It’s an old proverb,” he murmured in my ear as I traced my fingers over the raised flesh. “There isn’t a flood that will not subside.” And I thought then that it all made sense. I had made it through the worst.

But now, as my eyes skirt over that same tattoo, coldness rushes in. It’s not the words themselves, it’s what’s missing from the naked skin above them. The chain is still looped around his neck, but it’s naked of the ring he vowed to keep attached to it only a few days ago.

The words escape before I can stop them. “Logan, where’s your ring?”

He looks down at his chest as if he’s been shot. When he raises his eyes to me, they’re filled with guilt. I take a step back, grasping on to our dresser to steady myself, bracing for his admission.

“Ah, Cass, I’m so sorry.”

“Logan,” I say, silently begging him to stop.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“You don’t…”

“Doug convinced me to put on that bloody neon paint when we got to the Full Moon Party.”

Huh? My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s going to escape from my chest. What the hell is he talking about?

“I should have just said no. I mean it’s a stupid thing to do. But you know Doug when he’s pissed—you saw him last night. He was in rare form. So I did it. I took off my shirt and drew some stupid designs on my chest. The chain must have come unclasped, and the ring must have fallen off somehow. When I got home, I found the chain wrapped up in my shirt, but no ring.”

I stand there, not sure I understand what he’s saying.

He rushes over to me, cupping my elbows in his hand, his dark blue eyes inches from mine. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t need to be dealing with this, especially not tonight. But it was an accident, I promise. It’ll be somewhere on the beach. I’ll get someone to help me search. We’ll find it.”

Tears prick the backs of my eyes, and before I can stop myself, they fall, one by one.

“Oh, love. I’ll find it, I promise.”

Logan pulls me into a hug, and I sob against his chest as I process everything: finding Lucy, then the ring, suspecting Logan was somehow involved, and now hating myself for ever thinking he was capable of that. I’m the one who should be sorry.

But there’s one more thing I need to know. I push away from his chest.

“So you never saw Lucy last night, right? Before she…you know.”

His forehead crinkles in confusion. “Did I see Lucy?” he repeats. “I—I don’t think so. But I don’t know what she looked like. You said she was tiny and had curly brown hair, right?” I nod, and he pulls his top teeth over his lower lip, thinking. “No, I don’t remember seeing her. Why?”

I breathe an enormous sigh of relief. “No reason,” I say, my voice almost giddy. I’ll give the ring back to him tomorrow or the day after. I’ll tell him that I found it somewhere on the beach. He doesn’t ever need to know.

Because Lucy must have picked up Logan’s ring when she was at the party. Maybe she was trying to find who it belonged to so she could return it. Or maybe she stole it. I realize I have no idea what kind of person she may have been. Either way, she must have had it in her hand or somewhere on her when she went swimming later that night. She could have dropped it as she drowned. That’s how it landed in the sand. It all makes sense.

As the tension washes out of me, exhaustion floods in. I almost collapse in Logan’s arms.

“Hey there. I think it’s time we got you to bed.” In one swoop, he picks me up, carrying me like a baby over to my side of the bed. Once I’m under the sheet, he bends down, kissing me gently on the forehead. “Forever us two,” he says.

“Forever us two,” I murmur, already closing my eyes.

Sleep comes fast, blocking out everything, including the pinprick of doubt lodged in the back of my mind.