The Lies About Truth(47)

“Forward is the only way through.”

I wasn’t trying to be difficult; my arms just wouldn’t obey instructions. My brain was too busy being a washing machine, tumbling facts and histories over and over, drowning them.

They both lied to us.

I’d told Gray the truth about Trent.

I needed to tell Max.

Sliding the jacket around me, Max zipped it up as if I were five. I felt his intense gaze and closed my eyes.

“We have to push off,” he said, taking my hand.

Mechanically, we launched the Jet Ski into the water. Max drove without direction. His parents’ boat lay anchored nearby, but he whizzed past them without acknowledgment. Max didn’t flinch or answer as Sonia yelled to ask him where we were going. When we were no longer in sight of the little island or any of the boats, Max killed the engine.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“Open ocean.”

“Done,” he said, and we were driving again.

The world hazed around me.

I felt everything without feeling anything.

The puffy, happy clouds of the morning darkened like a bruise in the sky and threatened rain. Soon the threat was more than idle; we were dry one moment and under a waterfall the next. Rain plastered my bangs against Idaho and suctioned Max’s clothes against his body. Nature, at its strongest, shaved off mountaintops or threw houses into the air, but it couldn’t wash away pain.

Everything had limitations.

Max steered toward the curve of the horizon. I shivered from the wind and rain as we bumped along in the violent surf.

“It’ll be warmer if we get in,” he said, and slowed down.

When we stopped, I slid into the water, letting my life jacket keep my head above the surface. Max floated beside me, one hand on the Jet Ski, one hand on my back, as we bobbed up and down in the rain-pounded waves and searched the sky for lightning.

Max used the ocean and the rain to scrub the paint off my shoulder and arm and the tattoos from my cheeks. As if he knew I didn’t want any evidence of today left on me.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Gray and Gina . . .”

He bent toward me so I wouldn’t have to scream into the wind.

“They lied to us.”

I told Max everything Gray had told me. I didn’t know much else, and there were plenty of gaps in the story, but when I finished, Max gave a long whistle.

“There’s something else,” I said.

He swam closer to me.

“Something about Trent,” I explained. “The thing I didn’t tell you in my emails.”

I’d told Gray without meaning to, but now, the words were stuck in my throat.

“O-kay,” he said, preparing himself.

The rain hammered us. I took a deep breath, and lifted my own hammer of words. “You know that card in Trent’s room? The one under his mattress?”

Max dropped his head in a slow yes.

“It was from Callahan.”

Max looked up with questions in his eyes. He whittled those questions into a name. “Chris Callahan?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“I . . . Does anyone else know?”

“They didn’t. I just told Gray.”

“You didn’t tell me first.” It was both a question and a statement.

“I didn’t know how.”

“All those emails where I was worried about—”

“Max, he hadn’t told anyone yet, so it felt like a secret I was supposed to keep.”

“He told you,” he said accusingly. “And you told Gray instead of me, when I’m his brother.”

“I didn’t mean to. I told Gray in anger. I’m telling you now—”

Max finished the sentence for me. “Because you have to.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I’m glad you know. Trent didn’t want to tell you.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t want to change things.”

“That *.”

“Max, put yourself in his shoes. It’s terrifying to live one way and then try another.”

“I could have handled it. I could have helped. You should have told me.”

But I hadn’t. And nothing changed that.

Lowering his chin to the water, Max scooped up a handful of ocean and let it drain through his fingers. Any other words he had followed the water to the bottom of the Gulf.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

He bent his neck, his head hanging there like fruit on an overladen tree. “Sadie”—my name sounded hollow—“let’s go home.”

The tides of us changed in an instant. We came out here for me. We were leaving for him. “You okay?”

Max delivered his thoughts swiftly and quietly. “I don’t know what I am. They lied, and they have to live with it. You lied. Trent lied. I have to live with that. I need some time.”

“But Max . . .” I stopped myself from arguing, from making things worse. He had every right to feel the way he did.

Without another word, Max climbed on the Jet Ski. Robotically, I followed. He forced me to the front, sandwiching me between his body and the steering column.