Page 60 of The Sniper

But it had.

I parked along the street near The Soundline, a weatherworn little bar and grill that clung to the sand like it had been holding its breath through every storm since the '70s. The shingles were sun-bleached and uneven, the porch slouched with age, and faded concert flyers fluttered in the salt breeze.

I’d been coming here since I was a kid, back when Daddy would bring us on his days off from church, when he let me run barefoot in the tide while he sipped sweet tea under the awning. Ever since I moved to Mount Pleasant, I’d found myself here more and more.Sometimes with friends, sometimes with a book. Sometimes just to sit and let the sound of the waves and the low thrum of a guitar spilling out from the back deck drown out the rest of the world.

It was the kind of place where the air smelled like coconut sunscreen and fried shrimp, and the past never seemed all that far away.

I used to dream about living here one day—right here on Isle of Palms. Owning a little beach cottage where the wind always smelled like salt and jasmine, and I could fall asleep to the sound of waves brushing the shore. I pictured myself in cotton sundresses and wide-brimmed hats, walking barefoot down the sand to grade papers or sip sweet tea under an umbrella.

Dreams like that weren’t made for teachers. Not on the kind of salary that barely covered rent and lesson supplies and secondhand cardigans. Still, I let myself imagine it sometimes.

The beach behind The Soundline stretched long and pale, the sand warm beneath my soles as I carried my bag toward the dunes. I found a spot near the edge, not too close to the water, but close enough to hear the waves roll in. The tide was soft this morning—gentle, rhythmic, like it understood something I didn’t.

I spread out my blanket and sat cross-legged, the sun already warm against my bare shoulders. The novel stayed in the bag. I just … listened. To the waves. The gulls. The distant laughter of early risers dragging chairs into the sand.

The ocean had always soothed me. Even as a little girl, it had made more sense than scripture. More sense than sermons. Daddy used to say that the sea was a kind of prayer all its own—wordless, endless, washing over whatever you carried until it came out clean.

I wasn’t clean. Not today.

I thought about the heat of Noah’s skin. The weight of him above me. The way I’d come apart in his hands like something sacred and wild, like I’d never been touched before because I hadn’t.

He’d known. He’d felt it. Still, he hadn’t gone soft with me. He’d taken everything I gave and made it feel like fire. I didn’t know what to do with that. Because it wasn’t just the act. It was how much I liked it.

How I’d begged. How I’d opened for him like I’d been waiting my whole life for that exact kind of ruin.

How I’d let him put his mouth on every part of me and hadn’t once asked him to stop.

Not even when I knew I probably should’ve.

I didn’t feel ashamed during. That was the part that rattled me most.

I’d always thought if I ever gave that part of myself away—if I crossed the line I’d drawn in marker when I was fifteen and pink-cheeked in youth group—it would feel like loss.

Like handing over something holy to someone who didn’t deserve it.

But it didn’t feel like that.

It felt like claiming. Like he’d reached inside me and flipped a switch I hadn’t even known I had—lit it, fanned it, fed it until it burned through every rule I’d been taught.

And I’d let it. I’d ridden that fire straight into something that looked a lot like bliss.

Who did that make me?

A good girl wouldn’t have gone to his bed after identifying her daddy’s body.

A good girl wouldn’t have begged for more when the first time made her cry.

A good girl wouldn’t have let a man with a gun under his mattress bury himself in her like she was his to take.

But I hadn’t been a good girl.

I’d been hungry.

Raw.

Desperate to feel something that wasn’t grief—and I’d taken it from him with both hands.

Even now, with the salt wind in my hair and the sounds of the ocean smoothing the edges of my thoughts, I could still feel him. The stretch of him inside me. The scrape of his stubble along my thigh. The way his voice had gone rough when I broke open beneath him and said his name.

---