Between Here and the Horizon (15 page)

I’d come to the conclusion that I needed to complete the task Ronan hired me to do and get Sully to take them, but now that I was standing in front of him and he was acting so unhinged I wasn’t so sure that was the best course of action anymore.
 

“Yes,” I answered him. “It wasn’t fair. Ronan shouldn’t have done it. But at the end of the day, he couldn’t help who he fell in love with either.”

Sitting perfectly still, Sully seemed to try and digest these words for a second, which could have explained why he looked like he was about to throw up. And then he said, “He and I shared the same heart. Of course we were bound to fall in love with the same girl.” He didn’t try and get around me again. Instead, Sully put the car in reverse and gunned the engine, tearing off backwards down the street, a shower of dirt and small rocks kicked up by the tires, raining down on me as he sped away.
 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Happy Birthday, Rose

“Did you manage to—god, what have you got all over your face?” Rose met me at the door, Amie hot on her heels, a slab of cake in her tiny hand, chocolate frosting all around her mouth and all over her cheeks. Rose saw the sharp look on my face and had the decency to look apologetic. “Sorry. She didn’t touch her lunch. It was this or nothing. Why do you look like you’ve just been quad biking?”

“
Sully
,” I said.
 

“Ah.” Clearly the one-word answer was explanation enough. Rose produced a pack of tissues from her pocket. “I was just about to clean up the chocolate monster, but looks like you might need these more than she does.”

“Thanks.”

“I could speak to him, y’know? To Sully? He might not be so polite to you, but he wouldn’t dare be rude to me. He’s coming to my birthday party next week. You’ll be there, too. He’s going to have to learn how to keep a civil tongue by then, or I’ll cut the damn thing right out of his head.”

Ah. Rose had mentioned the birthday party a couple of times, but I hadn’t had the heart to tell her I wasn’t going to be able to come. What was I supposed to do with Connor and Amie? And anyway, now that I’d found out Sully was going to be there, my desire to mingle and be sociable with the inhabitants of the island had strangely disintegrated. The thought of Sully at a party was just so out there that I couldn’t help but smile, though. I could just picture the uptight bastard hovering with a plate of cheese in his hand, looking more than a little uncomfortable while a volley of people tried to talk to him about the weather and his carpentry business. I felt manic laughter bubbling up at the back of my throat.
   

Truth of the matter was,
if
he showed up, he would probably hang around for twenty minutes to fulfill his social obligations, and then he’d make his exit as quickly as possible while no one was looking.
 

“No, it’s okay, Rose. If he doesn’t want to be nice, then that’s on him. I wouldn’t want to submit the kids to his shitty attitude anyway. And I think…it would probably be so confusing for them as well. I mean, he looks just like Ronan. I nearly had a heart attack when I set eyes on him. If
Amie
saw him…” It didn’t even bear thinking about.
 

“Hmm. Perhaps you’re right.” She didn’t say she wouldn’t talk to Sully, though. Her mouth had an odd quirk to it. I could tell just by looking at her that she was already planning what she was going to say to him and how she was going to say it, regardless if I begged or pleaded. I didn’t waste my breath asking her to keep her mouth shut. If there was one thing I’d learned about Rose in the brief time I had known her, it was that she was extraordinarily stubborn, and when she made up her mind about something, there was no moving her on it.
 

******

A week later: a party.
 

Rose’s name had been painted on pieces of paper one letter at a time and pegged to a piece of fishing line that ran from one end of her cramped living room to the other. Good thing she had such a short name.
Happy Bday
was tacked up underneath it, the second word butchered for the sake of convenience. Rose ran around the house, flitting from kitchen, to dining room, to living room, thundering up the stairs to the den she’d set up in her spare room, where a number of children including Connor and Amie were watching Star Wars. In most circumstances, probably not the best choice for a little girl Amie’s age, but then again Amie wasn’t like most little girls. Her love of dinosaurs also stretched to a love of space ships and aliens, so Star Wars was apparently going down a treat.
 

Rose’s invites, sent to everyone on the island between the ages of twenty and sixty-five, had clearly stated the party started at seven thirty, however people started rolling through the door at five, which seemed completely normal to everyone apart from me. I was dashing about almost as crazily as Rose, pulling finger food out of the oven, chilling as much white wine and beer in the fridge as I could possibly fit in while trying to pin my hair back at the same time and hop into my dress.
 

Speaking of the dress: tight and black, with a thin cross strap that ran over my shoulder blades. No chance of a bra here. It was so cold even inside the house that Rose’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw me wearing it.
 

“Jesus, O. You do realize Mr. Sweetwater’s coming tonight, don’t you? The poor bastard had a pacemaker installed a couple of months ago. If he sees your nipples cutting at your dress like that, he’ll keel over and die.”

“I haven’t got anything else to wear.” Ronan hadn’t exactly made my trip to the island sound like a vacation. I wasn’t even going to bring the dress I was wearing, but something had told me I might need it. Admittedly I’d have been better served by something more conservative, but now I just had to work with what I had.
 

“Here, then,” Rose said, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me into her bedroom. From the top drawer of the chest next to her bed, she pulled out a box of Tit Tape as if by magic. “Tape those puppies up, before you have people talking.”

Holly, a fifteen-year-old girl wearing a Slipknot t-shirt, showed up at seven to babysit the children. She smiled, displaying two overly large front teeth when Rose introduced us.
 

“So nice to meet you,” she gushed. “You’re from California, aren’t you? I’ve watched every single episode of The O.C. I can’t wait to visit there one day. Is it always sunny there?”

“Actually, I guess it kind of is,” I told her. I’d taken the balmy West Coast weather for granted up until I stepped foot on The Causeway. Now, the brief snatches of sunshine that infrequently broke their way through the cloud cover were something that people went and stood outside for, craning their necks up at the sky overhead, squinting into the light like it was a goddamn miracle.

Holly beamed. “Do you think you could tell me all about it? Only when you’re free, of course. I don’t mind watching the children for you in return.”

“Of course. You can come over anytime.”

By nine, Rose’s place was packed and the windows were running with condensation. A huge three-tier cake was broken out, and everyone sang Happy Birthday in a cacophony of drunk, out of tune voices. That’s when I noticed Sully, propped up against the wall by the television, holding a beer in one hand and an untouched hot dog in the other. He wasn’t paying attention to the food or the drink, or the people singing around him. He was staring straight at me with a dark, brooding look in his eyes that made my heart stop dead in my chest.
 

God.
 

Where did he get off, looking at me like that? His expression was confusing; he was either thinking about running his hands over my skin, pressing his teeth into the swell of my cleavage, digging his fingertips into the curvature of my ass, or he was thinking about murdering me where I stood. I couldn’t quite decide which was more likely. He blinked when he saw that I’d seen him, but he didn’t look away.
 

Slowly, he raised his beer bottle to his lips and he drank, the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed, his eyes locked onto me, as if he were incapable of looking anywhere else.
 

Such a strange, uncomfortable sensation, being observed that intensely. Out of the corner of my eye, Rose was blushing furiously, thanking everyone for coming out to celebrate her birthday. She blew out the candles on her cake, and the room was suddenly all long cast shadows and darkness in the corners. Sully’s face was transformed, severe, half eaten up by the dark, half highlighted by the light thrown off by a small lamp on top of the TV. He wanted to kill me after all. The savage, hard steel in his eyes told me so. I ducked my head, glancing away. He’d won. The bastard had won.
He
might have been able to stare me down until the sun came up, but I didn’t have it in me.
 

I turned my back on him, and did my best to put him out of my head. I drank more. I danced with old Mr. Sweetwater, who was unable to tear his eyes from my cleavage despite the Tit Tape that was covering my nipples so well. I ate and I laughed, and I made friends.
 

Everyone wanted to talk to me, to find out who the strange new Californian woman was living up at The Big House with Ronan Fletcher’s orphaned children.
 

No one brought up Sully. No one even seemed to notice he was there.
 

“So, you’re a teacher? You know, the high school on the other side of the island’s been looking for someone to teach the rest of the year. Once Connor and Amie are enrolled in the elementary school next month, maybe you should go work over there?” Michael, the stocky blond guy I was talking to, had been talking to for the last thirty minutes, leaned closer and smiled. He wasn’t a bad looking guy. He was well built and his button-down shirt strained over his chest, hinting at a wall of muscle underneath the cotton. “It’s a well-paid job, y’know? It’s hard for the school board to find good teachers who want to stay on the Causeway, so they keep on putting the salary up and up. Teachers here are paid better than anyone else, it seems.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. No way. I
couldn’t
work here fulltime.” Slinging back the remainder of my wine, I didn’t notice the hurt look Michael was wearing until I’d put my glass down on the table and turned back to him. Perfect. I’d offended him. Shit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just meant that I couldn’t stay here because I have responsibilities back in California. My parents need me to come back and help out with their restaurant, and—” And I couldn’t think of another single reason why I had to go back to L.A. Will was no longer a factor. I didn’t exactly have a career I needed to cultivate there. As far as friends were concerned, what few people I still kept in touch with were scattered all over the place—Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Austin, Washington D.C. As soon as college ended, everyone had gone their separate ways, off to work, or get married, or whatever, and I was the only one who’d gone back home.
 

Kind of pathetic when I thought about it.

“I wouldn’t believe a word of it if I were you, Mikey,” a clipped, cold voice said over my shoulder. The bare skin across my shoulder blades instantly broke out in goose bumps. I knew without a doubt who it was, and panic sang through my veins. Sully stepped into view, clapping a hand on Michael’s shoulder, who looked awkward and edgy all of a sudden. Sully was wearing a plain jet-black shirt, smarter than his usual plaid, though his black jeans were scruffy and worn. A clear foot shorter than him, Michael seemed to shrink even further as Sully massaged his fingers roughly into Michael’s shoulder. “This is not the kind of woman that hangs around an island like ours, Mikey,” Sully said. His tone was light, though there was an unpleasant edge to it that made me uneasy.
 

“Ophelia Lang from California is just chasing a pay check. Once her job here is over and my brother’s children are packed off back to New York, you won’t see her for dust. Trust me. And then, once she’s finally left, I might be able to sell that haunted old warehouse she’s currently squatting in, and then I’ll be able to leave, too.”

“What? Sell the house? You can’t.” Never mind the fact that he was being shitty and spiteful. That was to be expected. But what the hell was he talking about, selling the house?

Sully took a deep swig of his beer, and then arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Ronan left it to me, didn’t he? I can do what I want with it once you’re gone.”

“You grew up in that house, didn’t you? It was your parents’ house. It’s been in the Fletcher family for generations.”

“What the hell do
you
care about the Fletcher family home?” Sully asked, cocking his head to one side. “What does that damned pile of bricks and mortar mean to
you
?”

“Not to me,” I snapped. “To Connor and Amie. It’s their heritage. Their birthright. It’s their history.”

“Then my brother should have left it to them instead of me, shouldn’t he? He knew I was more likely to burn the place to the ground than ever live there, taking care of his kids.” Finishing his beer, Sully grabbed a fresh bottle from the box Jerry, the boat skipper, was carrying past us.
 

Michael winced. He looked like he wanted to back away slowly, one step at a time so as not to be noticed. God knows he couldn’t be blamed; I didn’t want to be a part of the conversation either.
 

“You’re heartless, you know that?” I shouldn’t be doing this. What good was arguing with him? Or name calling? Sully was the kind of guy who lived for bickering and mud slinging. He got off on it. Without a doubt he was far more accomplished at it, and I was only going to lose my temper if I engaged him the way he clearly wanted me to.
 

“Heartless? Yeah, I guess that’s a fairly accurate description. Vile. Repugnant. Selfish. Cruel. The list goes on.” He let go of Michael and shoved his hand in his pocket, then. Michael cleared his throat and made his escape.