Collared(67)

“You need to start moving on, sweetie. You can’t stay trapped in your room, breaking out for occasional visits to the beach. It isn’t healthy.”

Her voice isn’t unkind, and I know she’s saying it because she wants the best for me, but she can’t understand. She can’t comprehend how trivial a GED and college degree seem to me when I’m struggling to roll out of bed each morning. Why should I care about what I’m going to do with my life if I can’t muster up the will to live more moments than not?

“Why? Why isn’t it healthy?” Torrin’s voice cuts into the conversation as he leans forward to look at my mom. His arm stays planted behind me. “My god, Eleanor, do you realize what your daughter went through? She didn’t wander off at the mall and get lost for a few minutes—she was kidnapped. By a sick, sick person. Who kept her chained up and made her pretend to be his daughter.” His voice is growing, and I’m glad Sam and Patrick are letting Maisy kick at the waves so they don’t have to witness this. “There is no protocol for this. There is no right or wrong way to behave after something like that. So why don’t you stop telling her what she should be doing and what she should be feeling and just listen to what she’s telling you?” Torrin settles his hands on his hips, grasping to collect his emotions.

Dad stays quiet in his chair, chewing on what’s left of his hamburger. That means he’s with Torrin. He’d never come out and say it—I still see his fists form when Torrin comes within a body-length of me—but his silence is support enough.

Mom continues to twist the cap of her water bottle, but she stays quiet.

Torrin suddenly pulls his sweatshirt over his head and drops it into my lap. He’s shirtless, and when he marches toward the water, I’m glad Mom insisted I wear dark glasses. No one can see the way I’m looking at him. I’m thankful for them when he looks over his shoulder and his eyes find me so he doesn’t see the way I’m looking at him.

His dark hair bouncing with his pace, his back familiar and foreign at the same time, his eyes trying to tell me the same thing I’ve ignored up to this moment.

I don’t realize I’m standing until I slip the hat from my head and drop it on the blanket. My sunglasses follow, then I shrug out of the long cotton dress.

“Where are you going?” Mom’s voice is worried as I step out of the dress onto the sand.

“For a swim.”

“Jade . . .”

The sun. The ocean. The current. It’s all a danger to her, and I know that feeling. But today, I’m not letting it keep me from the things I want to do and the people I want to be with.

Torrin’s already disappeared into the waves before I make it to the dark line where the wet sand starts and the dry sand ends. I feel strange in my old swimsuit. It kind of sags around my butt and puckers where I used to have this great part of the female anatomy known as boobs, but it still fits. Mostly.

When I reach the edge of the water, the first wave that crashes around my ankles sends ice into my veins. The Pacific at this latitude is so cold that most people prefer to watch it from the beach rather than swim in it.

I give myself a moment to adjust, then I walk out a little farther. Torrin’s making his way back now that he’s noticed me. His expression has cleared, but his eyes are still clouded by something. I think I know what it is since he doesn’t seem to have an issue with looking at me the way I was looking at him behind my dark glasses.

I want to shift in place and cover myself, but I don’t. If he wants to check me out like I’m still the seventeen-year-old who spilled out of her suit instead of swimming in it like I am now, I’m going to let him.

“I always loved that suit.” His arms stroke through the water.

“Yeah, I remember.”

He gets that look on his face like he’s remembering too.

“I feel like an eight-year-old in it now.” When I glance down at myself, all I see are flat planes and bony joints.

Torrin shakes his head, swimming closer. His wet hair plasters across his forehead. “You look good. Believe me.”

I clear my throat, and this time, I do shift. “I look like a deflated balloon. All limp and saggy and sad looking.”

Torrin makes a face and squirts a stream of ocean water at me. “You are fluent in the language of crazy, you know that?”

“I’m not the only one.”

He huffs, swimming closer as a wave catches him. “Whatever. You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

I shift again, then he stands up in the waist-deep water. Seeing his back from a distance had been enough to make whatever had gone into hibernation in that region below my stomach stir. Seeing him so close, facing me, ocean water falling down the lines and ridges that had just been developing the last time I touched them fans that stirring feeling inside. The softness of boyhood has been ironed out by the harder, rougher planes of manhood.

“You’re checking me out, aren’t you?” He grins, and I swear he intentionally makes his stomach muscles tighten beneath the skin.

“I am not checking you out. I’m just examining. Making sure you don’t have any jellyfish or sharks hanging off of you.”

His smile spreads. “Whatever. You’re totally checking me out, but that’s okay because I’m totally checking you out.”