Page 31 of Forbidden Girl

“Silly goose?”

“I said what I said.” It’s disgusting how cute she makes me want to be, how safe it feels to embrace that version of myself when I’m around her. I guess that’s what love is—feeling safe to be yourself with someone, all the best and worst parts of you, and trusting that they’ll want it all. “Sit down.” I guide her to one of the high-back bucket seats at the stern, leaning down to kiss her forehead before taking a seat beside her. “Your body will get used to it. But don’t be a hero.”

She doesn’t puke. Twenty minutes on the water and she adjusts. Good thing, too, because I love boats. The family trips we’d take on one of my dad’s yachts when my mom was still here were the days I was happiest. Happiness. I’d been without it for so long. It’s nice to feel it again, however fleeting or clouded by my circumstances. In this moment, I am happy.

An hour into the tour, we pass a large colony of harbor seals lounging on a great rocky outcropping. It sends Jules into the most adorable flurry. She’s pointing and bouncing up and down on the tips of her toes, going, “Ah, pups! Look at the pups!” She was cold in her jeans and t-shirt—I haven’t seen her so dressed-down before—so I gave her my knit sweater. It’s too big for her by a size and a half. The cuffs keep spilling over her hands, catching on her manicured nails, and it’s starting to annoy her. “How haven’t you grasped the concept of folding up the sleeves yet?” I take her arm into my hands and do it for her, creasing them up to her elbow. As I move to her other arm, I catch Kevin smiling to himself over it. Alright. Fine. I’m cute. We’re cute. It’s fucking fine.

“Whales!” he shouts at us and gestures to the horizon. About fifty yards off our portside we see dorsal fins, three of varying sizes, followed by three tail fins. Then, with unreal synchrony, all three animals breach the water’s surface. Over and over. Full body. It looks like a dance—choreographed, fluid, and precise.

“Holy shit, they’re gigantic!” Jules has her hands on her head as she stares in awe. “Humpbacks, right?”

“Humpbacks.” I confirm with a nod.

“This is so much cooler than it is on the Discovery Channel!”

I pay more attention to her watching the whales than I do to the whales themselves. I’ve seen every species native to New England up close. Experiencing her like this, brimming with joy, is brand-new. It’s so precious I could die. Her pure, childlike wonder is going to kill me. But I’ll die happy.

I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. She leans backward into me, rests her head on my shoulder. “Best day ever,” she says.

I nuzzle her neck. “Best day ever.”

“Sorry you didn’t get to see any sharks,” Jules says as we’re walking back to Sand Dollar Beach. I’ve been too absorbed in the fact that we’re holding hands—that she’s swinging our arms back and forth the way a child would with a parent—to care about sharks.

“I’m glad we didn’t. All those seals? Especially the babies. You would’ve been traumatized by the feeding frenzy.”

Her features distort in horror. “I absolutely would have been, yes.”

“You’re so easy to get a rise out of.”

“When you talk about baby animals getting eaten alive!”

I smirk. “Circle of life shit or whatever, it would bother me to see, too. Baby or adult.”

She bumps her hip into mine. “As if I didn’t know that.”

The parking lot is fuller than it has been since we arrived. That’s to be expected on an early Thursday evening in late July—lots of people are starting vacation or taking long weekends. I comb absentmindedly over the handful of cars. I see it, at the very end of the lot, half obscured by a line of trashcans: A blue Mercedes SL Roadster. I can’t be sure whether or not it’s the same one from the highway the other night—it was too dark to place the color and it never got close enough for me to catch the license plate number. However, it does have the familiar white and red Massachusetts plate attached to its front bumper.

Before I can stop it, my hand unconsciously grips Jules’s tighter. Because she is who she is, she detects it, too. “Something wrong?”

I shift my focus back to her. Maybe. Probably not. How would they have found me? And two days later? I decide I’m being paranoid; it’s my custom hyperawareness playing havoc with me. “Nah.”

We stop to take our shoes off at the mouth of the beach and I check out the landscape. It isn’t crowded, just two other tents, the occupants of neither tent in sight. The only company we have is a flock of sandpipers chillin’ at the water’s edge, waiting for the changing tide to wash in some hermit crabs. I have that weird, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach again. Trusting my intuition has yet to steer me wrong. The closer we get to our tent, the more intense the sensation gets. My gut is screaming at me to turn around and run as fast and as far as I can. I slide my left hand up my back to where my gun used to live in its holster. It’s a reflex that’ll die hard.

Jules also senses that something’s not quite right, but is more confused about it than I am. Every step she takes is hesitant, guarded. Is she feeding off me or can she feel it, too? I should’ve told her the truth when she asked about my Jeep. My decision to let her remain unaware might be putting her at risk, and I’m unarmed. She regards me with questioning eyes. All I can do is shrug. “Stay behind me,” I mutter. As cunning as she is, she’s a hundred pounds soaking wet and not made for physical altercations. She understands that as well as I do, so she does as she’s told and falls out of step with me.

I open the tent flaps with caution. My stomach churns as the inside comes into view. There, sitting on the edge of the inflatable bed we didn’t remake this morning, is Teague.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Jules asks. She looks around me. Her hand goes clammy in my palm. “Teague? How did you?—”

He grabs her rose gold iPhone, holds it up, waves it around. She hid it under her pillow so she’d be forced to spend the day living in the moment instead of through a lens. “You forgot to turn off Family Sharing.” All the calmness in him drains away. He springs to his feet and roars, “I fucking knew it! I fucking knew it was her when you defended her to your dad and me! How long have you been fucking her, you traitor? Even now, after she killed my best friend!” He’s stomping toward us like a sasquatch on speed. I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of my gun; there’s no doubt he’s packing. He lifts his shirt and sunlight glints off the silver finish of a 9mm.

I don’t have time to think—I let go of Jules’s hand and charge at him. When I’m close enough, I kick him hard in the chest. The sole of my foot connects with his sternum. It knocks him off balance but not on his ass as I’d hoped. He regains his equilibrium before I can kick him again. His gun is in his hand. As he moves to aim it, I throw a vicious southpaw with all my weight behind it. It nails him in his left temple. I hit him with a one-two punch combo. Same story, both sides of his head. He reels from the impact.

I hear shouting from the tent’s entrance. I grasp that it’s Juliet, but I can’t make out her words. And then she’s rushing at her cousin, shouting, “Teague, stop! Please!”

It happens in an incomprehensible blur: I’m unsure whether she runs into him or if he intentionally smashes her with the barrel of his gun. The force of the blow is such that she falls to the ground on her side. When she pushes herself upright, I see that her right eyebrow is split open. She’s bleeding. Copiously. No. That wasn’t an accident; he pistol-whipped her.

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