Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 73462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
River, standing, running his fingers through his disheveled hair.
And two blond men.
They’re embracing.
Oh my God…
I run toward them.
My mind is spinning, but my body acts on instinct alone. I reach them in the blink of an eye, standing only feet away from them, my breaths coming in harsh gasps.
“Jake!” My voice is a hoarse whisper.
I stumble forward, my heart pounding with each step. The world seems both incredibly large and incredibly small in this moment, as if time itself is warped.
The two men break apart.
Brett’s eyes are glazed over. His face is drained of color.
River is trembling visibly, his hands clenched into tight fists.
And the third…
He’s taller than I remember, broad-shouldered and tanned, his once-boyish features now etched with the wisdom and weariness of a man who’s seen too much. His hair is still blonder than Brett’s, though it’s darkened since we last saw him.
But it’s Jake.
Same blue eyes, same unruly hair, same slim build.
And God…he does look like Misty. How did I not see it before?
I simply stare at him. Gape at him, my heart still pounding.
“Jake?” I finally choke out.
Jake’s face goes through a series of emotions—shock, disbelief, and finally, an understanding so profound it nearly knocks me off my feet.
“Sebastian,” he says, his voice hoarse and filled with a mixture of pain and longing.
The sound of my name in his voice is like a punch to the gut, a ghost from the past springing back to life.
I try to say something, anything, but no words come out. I just gawk at him, trying to reconcile the man standing in front of me with the boy who died—or who we thought had died—all those years ago.
Finally, I speak, my voice as shaky and raw as I feel inside. “You’re alive.”
He nods slowly. “I am. Still standing. I’m so sorry, Seb.”
Sorry? He’s sorry?
I grab him into a bear hug. “Damn, Jake. God damn.”
“We have to tell Alex,” I hear River tell Brett.
“Yeah,” Brett agrees, “and you two have a fucking lot of explaining to do.”
EPISODE 197
LONELY GIRL
Misty
The waves stretch before me, rolling in slow and steady, their rhythm a whisper against the shore. The sand is cool beneath my bare feet, the air thick with salt and the warmth of the mid-morning sun. The others are back at the mansion, probably fawning over the new doctor who arrived.
She seems nice enough.
But I’ve learned never to take anyone at face value.
When I found the documents showing I’d been adopted by my parents and that my birth mother was a woman named Lisa Patterson, I was devasted, of course.
But the more I’ve allowed myself to consider it…the more it makes an eerie kind of sense.
I kick at the wet sand.
Maybe it explains why my mother never really looked at me—why she treated me like another investment instead of flesh and blood.
Money was her love language, her way of showing affection—or rather, not showing affection. When I fell off my bike and scraped my knee, she bought me a designer party dress. When I was sick, she sent a nurse and a brand-new dollhouse. And when I was drowning—truly drowning—she turned away and let my father do as he pleased.
The tide rushes up and curls around my ankles. I stare out at the horizon, where sky meets water, where the world feels endless. My father used to tell me drowning wasn’t real. That it was all in the mind.
“Your body wants to survive,” he would say, pushing me beneath the surface. “It’s weak. It panics. But if you control it, you won’t drown.”
I was a young child the first time he tested me, pressing his hands down on my shoulders, his grip unyielding. I fought, of course. At first. Clawed at his wrists. Kicked against his legs. But the water swallowed me whole, and soon, the only thing left was silence.
I used to think he would let me die. But that was never the point. The point was breaking me. Teaching me that suffering is survival.
I wrap my arms around myself as the breeze pulls at the hem of my sundress.
My father was wrong, though. I didn’t drown.
I lived.
I became something colder, sharper. I learned to survive in ways he never expected. And now I stand here, on this island, the weight of my past pressing against my ribs like a corset. Adopted or not, nothing changes the truth of what I endured. Nothing erases the ghosts of his hands or the echoes of her indifference.
But here, in this moment, the waves can’t touch me. The past can’t reach me.
And for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel like I’m drowning.
I have a birth mother. A brother.
All tangled up in the four men on this island.
I thought River would be the answer. He’s the handsomest of all of them—at least in my mind—and he still lives in the town where they all grew up.