Page 1 of The House Beyond the Dunes

Chapter One

LANE

Friday, December 29, 2023

Norfolk, Virginia

7:00 p.m.

The fall began with a small slip on a marble step. Any other time, I’d have caught myself, adjusted, and found a way to hold steady. But not this time.

That misstep sent both of us tumbling down twenty-one stairs.Us.Kyle and I weren’t really anus. We’d known each other three and a half weeks, technically twenty-five days.

He’d first approached me in the coffee shop I manage. I was refilling the whole milk and creamer containers at the self-serve station when he slid in beside me. The soft scent of his aftershave snagged my attention. Sandalwood. He said something charming. I thought he was talking to someone else. But his gaze pinned me. I was flattered, and even blushed.

Almost immediately, the floodgates between us opened. He began showering me with enchanting texts, fragrant flowers, and mouthwatering kisses. He didn’t push sex, and I was wooed by his patience. In a few short weeks,wewere on the path tosomething.

This weekend was supposed to be our big, romantic beach getaway. Our first sleepover. We were going to ring in the New Year alone, wrapped in each other’s arms. A big step toward figuring out if this thing between us might be real. So much anticipation. Excitement. I’ve no free time between school and managing the coffee shop, so for Kyle to have lured me away for a long weekend was saying something.

However, within an hour of arriving at his glittering North Carolina cottage overlooking the dunes of the northern Outer Banks and the Atlantic Ocean, we fell. The weight of our bodies sent us hurtling through the air so fast, adrenaline didn’t catch up until the last microsecond, when we hit the marble floor.

Now I’m in the hospital, my left hip is banged up and bruised, and my body is so stiff, it’s hard to turn my head to the right. I feel as if I’ve gone three rounds with a boxer. But my injuries aren’t critical. I’ll heal.

Kyle wasn’t so lucky.

He’s dead.

“You’re fortunate to be alive.” Dr.Jackson sounds cheerful, a little too upbeat, as he closes the curtain to my room. He’s tall, lean, and keeps his hair cut short. Dark circles smudge under his eyes. Emergency room sounds swirl around us. Gurneys. Machines beeping. Hushed conversations.

I shift, doing my best to sit up. The muscles in my gut and along my ribs scream in protest. The guy I liked is dead, and I can barely move without my body crying. I was supposed to be sipping wine while sitting in a hot tub with Kyle, making out, and taking another step towardus. “Yes, lucky.”

Dr.Jackson holds a light up to my eyes and waves it over my pupils. I stiffen. “Just look at the light.”

“How long have I been here?” I ask.

“About six hours.”

“How did I get here?”

“You were airlifted from the Outer Banks to Norfolk.”

The Outer Banks is a 170-mile barrier island chain, and Kyle’s house is in the northernmost section, tucked against the Virginia line.

As the crow flies, Kyle’s cottage is thirty minutes from Norfolk, where I live. But there’s no quick way to get from here to there. This remote stretch of land requires a trip around Norfolk’s beltway, followed by a few secondary highways in North Carolina, crossing the three-mile-long Wright Memorial Bridge, and then another twenty-mile drive north. All that travel is rewarded with an eleven-mile four-wheel drive on an untamed beach. Basically, over the river and through the woods takes two and a half hours.

Memories of the trip and the house are vague. My mind is trapped in a loop, replaying the crack of Kyle’s skull on marble, the pool of his blood oozing toward me, and the pain rocketing through my body.

I’m only vaguely aware of a man trying to rouse me and then being placed on a stretcher. I was out cold during the med flight ride to Norfolk. Most of this entire day tangles like a bad dream.

“Kyle is really dead?” I ask.

“Yes,” Dr.Jackson says. “He was pronounced dead at the scene.”

I brace for a rush of sadness. Grief, despondency, and sorrow are all natural responses for someone who’s lost the other half of a potentialus.

Kyle and I weren’t married or even sleeping together, but we’d had a connection. I didn’t fully understand what tethered us so tightly, but it had been very real. Yet no emotions charge or encircle me. There’s only numbness. Must be shock.

“Are you taking any medications?” Dr.Jackson asks.

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