Heroes Are My Weakness(88)

“More than one. Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Not a thing. Keep going.”

He grabbed his coat from the ottoman and tossed it on a hook by the door, tidying up—not because he was a neat freak, but because he didn’t want to look at her. “I was like a starving man in a supermarket, but even though our campuses were a hundred miles apart, I was still secretive. Right up until senior year when I fell hard for a girl in one of my classes . . .”

Annie leaned back in the chair, trying to appear relaxed so he wouldn’t clam up. “Let me guess. She was beautiful, smart, and crazy.”

He managed a vapor of a smile. “Two out of three. She’s now the CFO of a Denver tech firm. Married with three kids. Definitely not crazy.”

“But you had a big problem . . .”

He shifted a yellow pad on his desk a few inches to the left. “I’d been visiting Regan on her campus as often as I could, and she seemed okay. Normal. By her senior year, she’d even started to date. I thought she’d outgrown her problems.” He moved away from the desk. “The family was getting together on the island for the Fourth of July. Deborah couldn’t make it, but she wanted to see Peregrine, so I brought her over the week before everyone else was scheduled to arrive.” He wandered toward a back window, one that looked out onto the water. “I planned to tell Regan about her the next weekend, but Regan showed up early.”

Annie tightened her fingers over the chair arms, not wanting to hear what came next, but knowing she had to.

“Deborah and I were walking on the beach. Regan saw us from the top of the cliff. We were holding hands. That’s all.” He splayed his hands on either side of the window frame, staring out. “It had rained earlier, and the rocks were slippery, so I still don’t know how she made it down the steps so fast. I didn’t even see her coming, but the next thing I knew, she’d thrown herself at Deborah. I grabbed her and pulled her off. Deborah ran up to the house to get away.”

He turned away from the window but still didn’t look at her. “I was furious. I told Regan I needed to live my own life, and she needed to see a shrink. It got vicious.” He pointed to the scar by his eyebrow. “Regan’s the one who gave me this, not you.” He indicated just below the scar a much smaller mark that Annie had barely noticed. “This is yours.”

She had felt so good about giving him a scar. Now the sight of it made her sick.

“Regan went wild,” he continued. “She threatened me, threatened Deborah. I exploded. Told her I hated her. She looked me straight in the eye and said she was going to kill herself.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I was so angry that I told her I didn’t care.”

Pity overwhelmed her.

He wandered toward the window with the telescope, not looking at her, not seeing anything. “A storm was coming in. By the time I got to the house, I’d calmed down enough to know I had to go back and tell her I didn’t mean it, even though part of me did. But it was too late. She’d already run down the beach to our dock, and she was climbing into the sailboat. I yelled at her from the steps to come back. I’m not sure she heard. Before I could get to her, she had the sails up.”

Annie could see it as if she’d been there, and she wanted to wipe away the image.

“The powerboat was out of the water for repairs,” he said, “so I jumped in the water, somehow thinking I could catch her. The surf was strong. She saw me and yelled at me to go back. I kept swimming. The waves were breaking over me, but I could still catch glimpses of her face. She looked so sorry, so apologetic. So fricking apologetic. Then she trimmed the sails and raced out into the storm.” He unclenched his fist. “That was the last time I saw her alive.”

Annie clenched her fists. It was wrong to hate someone with a mental illness, but Regan had not only destroyed herself and nearly killed Annie; she’d done her best to destroy Theo, too. “Regan got you good, didn’t she? The perfect revenge.”

“You don’t understand,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Regan didn’t kill herself to punish me. She did it to set me free.”

Annie came out of her chair. “You don’t know that!”

“Yeah, I do.” He finally looked at her. “Sometimes we could read each other’s minds, and that moment was one of them.”

She remembered Regan’s tears over a gull with a broken wing. In her sane moments, she must have hated this part of herself.

Annie knew not to let any of the pity she felt show in her face, but what he’d done to himself was wrong. “Regan’s plan didn’t work. You still think you’re responsible for her death.”

He dismissed her sympathy with a harsh slash of his hand. “Regan. Kenley. Look for the common element, and you’ll find me.”

“What you’ll find are two mentally ill women and a man with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. You couldn’t have saved Regan. Sooner or later, she would have destroyed herself. The more troublesome question is Kenley. You say you were attracted to her because she was the opposite of Regan, but is that true?”

“You don’t understand. She was brilliant. She seemed so independent.”

“I get that, but you must have sensed her neediness underneath all that.”

“I didn’t.”