* * *

I didn’t count walks on the beach to be a violation of my seclusion. In November, there was hardly anyone in the Outer Banks, and an even scarcer amount of people on Carova.

Typically, I ran. Mindless, with numbing music beating in my ears. It was like my feet were trying to claw me out of this universe, kicking up sand viciously behind me.

But sometimes, on the clearest of mornings, when the sea sounded like music and my head didn’t feel like being somewhere else … I took a walk. With Rhett running out ahead of me, biting at the surf like it was a plaything, I moseyed down the shoreline with no destination. I let myself get lost in a place that was so familiar to me, I could tell you where every wave would hit the sand on a given day.

And just like clockwork, the universe intervenes in my plans once again. Seriously, it’s like fate will just not quit bringing us to the same place at the same time. In the past two months, I’ve wondered to myself so many times how the world always knew where we were in relation to one another.

An old pickup comes rumbling down the beach highway, sand flying up as it flies through the tracks. I’d recognize that car anywhere, but out here, there is nowhere to hide. Self conscious from sleeping together only nights before, I raise a hand in a wave.

Making love with Carson, because that is what we had done with our bodies and not our words, had been … otherworldly. The way we’d come together was above language, and I still wasn’t sure how to process it. I’d fallen asleep in his arms and had dreamed for the first time in years, waking to the sounds of the surf in a blissful bubble.

And what he’d said the night before, how he’d confessed his love before pushing inside of me … it still made my stomach flutter. I hadn’t said it back, but hell, I felt it. I didn’t know what to do. Taking that final step, telling him and giving myself back to him completely … it scared the daylights out of me. I wanted it, but last time … everything had fallen apart so spectacularly that I was hesitant this time around.

“Hi, beautiful.” Carson pulls up beside me and stops, getting out of the truck.

Rhett runs up to him in joyous greeting, jumping on him until Carson takes the stick out of his mouth and launches it towards the water. My lab gallops happily away.

“Fancy meeting you here.” I walk up to him and go in for a hug, but he gently grabs my chin and brings me in for a lingering, soft kiss.

I feel his breath against my lips. “I can’t pretend I don’t have something on my mind, so here goes. Why didn’t you tell me about college?”

My blood chills in my veins, and I can’t seem to catch a deep breath. “Who told you?”

“It doesn’t matter, baby. It should have been you.” He dips his gaze until he’s eye level with me, and I can already feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

I don’t even get this emotional about my brother or father’s deaths. Because those are sad events, they cause me grief and sorrow. But they don’t scare me, they don’t freeze my bones or take my voice. And that’s what Wes had done.

Taking Carson’s hand, and resigning myself to the fact that I now had to tell him, I walked us toward the water and sat.

“It’s hard, really hard for me to talk about. But I want to try, for us. Okay?”

“I’m here, I’m listening.” Carson never took his eyes from my face.

I took a deep breath and faced the water. “I met Wes freshman year, in this sociology class that we had to pair up on a project for. I thought he was so nice, he paid attention to me, he paid me compliments. He was the first person in a while to see me and not act like I was broken or haunted. Only later did I learn that he did see me like that, it was just a turn on for him. I was a target. We started dating, and it went well for the first few months. He was attentive, and I felt like I was healing for the first time since Joel’s accident. And then he started to get jealous. He’d tell me that I couldn’t wear certain things, or talk to certain people. One time he’d called me a slut for wearing this pretty new blouse I’d bought.”

Carson squeezes my hand, and I know he’s trying his best to stay quiet and not punch something. Hell, I am so ashamed I stayed in it, I want to punch something too.

“I was restricted on where I could go, he monitored everything I bought and started to track me using a phone finder app. The first time … the first time …”

I can’t bring myself to say the words, but I have to. We need everything out on the table.

“The first time he hit me, I thought it was a dream. I didn’t think it could be real, that I was actually in that room. I swear, it was like my body was floating somewhere else, watching it happen. And the next day, when the bruises formed on my wrist and thigh, he apologized. Swore up and down that it would never happen again. And I couldn’t … so many men in my life had left. Dad had turned into a shell of the person he was. I wasn’t confident enough to go through another loss, and so I needed to make it work.”

“I. Could. Kill. Him.” Carson’s words are vicious, bit back with venom in his mouth.

I pressed on, needing to purge it all. “The last time … it was so bad. I ended up in the hospital, and Dad came to get me out. I didn’t go back to school, and I had to press charges. I still hold a restraining order, but … he’s still out there. The judge let him off with probation because he was a first time offender. I felt so stupid afterwards, I should have said something earlier. I should have been stronger.”

“Hey!” His voice raises. I can almost see the hair stand up on the back of his neck. “None of this is your fault. Do you hear me? He should have never touched you in the first place. Jesus!”

He hits the sand, turning away to collect himself.

“This tears me up inside, baby. Because I never want you in harm’s way. I only want you to be perfect and happy and safe. I … I mostly hate that I wasn’t here. That you felt the need to stay with him in the first place.”

Carson pulls my body to him, and I nestle into his hold. His warmth covers me, and I close my eyes to inhale his clean, soapy scent. He is everything that Wes was not. Caring, patient, kind, an equal. I realize, in that moment, that there is nothing else holding me back.

“I love you.”

The words renew a sense of strength in me, and I know that this time, loving someone won’t be a weakness. It will be a gift, a path to a future.

I feel him move, and then we’re face-to-face, his eyes smiling even while his jaw hangs open.

“I mean it, Carson Cole. Even if I’m a million miles away, even if I’m in the middle of the ocean. I am in love with you.”

And this time, I know it’s real. Not that it wasn’t when we were teenagers, but that was young love. We hadn’t been through anything, we hadn’t taken life’s hardest curveballs and survived them. This was enduring love, the kind that had flickered for years and had never burned out.

As the sea that marked the milestones of our lives drifted in and out, I sat with the only boy I’d ever love, and let it wash us clean of every blemish of our pasts.