Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
“Oh, my God, Heath! What happened?” she asks, dropping her hard cover.
She grabs me as I crash into her mattress, feet still on the floor, arms flung out over her. She pushes my hair from my temple and kisses my forehead. Tears stream down my face unabated as I feel utterly gutted and empty over the loss of Mom. She was the only one I ever had, Mom and me against the world, but now she’s gone and I’ve got to fight this battle on my own. I belong to no one. I’m not truly a Shaw. I am utterly alone.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore, now that she’s gone,” I sob.
Kat holds me steadfast and I feel her strong heartbeat through the fabric of her nightgown. Her tiny kisses flutter across my face and her sweet breath fills my nostrils.
“You’re Heath Clifton, my best friend. You’re family to me, and I’ll never leave you. I promise,” Kat swears.
Her eyes fill with tears and spill over, mixing with mine as she kisses my cheeks and brow.
“You have me, Heath, and nothing will ever tear us apart.”
PART I
THAT WAS THEN
CHAPTER 2
Heath
I have never seen her get squeamish. She baits the worms or the small fish without a flinch and yanks the catch from the hook like a salty old seaman.
“Do you gut them, too?” I ask her.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she does. Kat lost her mom long enough ago that her father raised her as one of the boys. Kat is a wild, untamable thing, and God help the son of a bitch who tries to reel her in. Her beauty and grace stand in constant contradiction to the wildness that lives right under her skin.
She gives me a dirty look and grabs the largest flounder from our cooler, chops off its head and tail with single blows of her cleaning knife. Kat splits the body and tears the fish apart, her short half-moon fingernails filling with blood.
She tears out the guts with her nails and tosses them over the side of the bridge, then filets the meat with the practiced hand of a surgeon.
I nod, impressed. “You ought to become a merchant marine, join a commercial fishing outfit.”
She’s clad in old jeans rolled to the knee and waders in case she has to get in and “untangle lines.”
“When the zombie apocalypse comes, I definitely want you on my team,” I tell her.
Kat’s cheeks are pink from the sun, and her eyes are shining bright. She loves to spend the day outdoors, running, exploring, and catching fireflies in the moonlight. If she could have it her way, she’d probably camp the whole summer outdoors, away from the creature comforts of Wainscott Hollow. While most of her contemporaries like collecting Chanel purses, Kat likes risking her life by swimming in the strong currents in the channel. Or tracking animals, looking for starfish in tide pools, finding little-known constellations, or building a fire from nothing and dancing around the flames that leap into the night like a mad woman.
This is her favorite fishing spot, and I’m almost embarrassed to say that Kat’s the one who taught me to fish. But, as it turns out, I’m pretty fucking good at it. We spend hours on this bridge, riffing and joking, insulting one another until the tension runs high, and we have to change to another activity—like jumping off the edge a few feet onto the craggy, rocky bottom below.
Kat always jumps first, and it’s a wonder neither of us has ever broken a limb. She climbs the protective rail in her waders, unfazed as usual. But this time, as she balances on the edge, a gunshot erupts, and she startles and falls, flailing to the creek bed below. A host of startled field sparrows lifts off from the tall wetland grasses at the sound.
“Kat!” I yell, leaping to her rescue. I don’t care where the shot came from, only whether my friend is all right.
Gunshots in my old neighborhood always spelled trouble. Here in Montauk, they often signal grouse or pheasant hunters or some wealthy gun owner doing target practice on their estate grounds whenever they want.
I skirt the edge of the bridge and run down to the ravine below, wading into the water to aid Kat, who’s recovering from her fall. She’s cradling her arm, but it doesn’t look broken, and she spits blood into the water.
“I’m coming!” I yell.
“I’m okay. I think I bit my tongue. Who the hell is out here grouse hunting on their lunch break?”
It was true. We’d stowed the equipment in the four-car garage and skipped the second half of the school day to go fishing. It wasn’t the first time. Usually, we were so alone out here, we’d forget the rest of the world existed. It was just Kat and me, the buzzing of large insects, and the occasional rustle of wind through the cattails. Our whoops of joy at a bite or a decent catch would echo through Long Island Sound like the whole world belonged to us.