Лорен Кейт - The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

“I’m not mixed up in any of it,” I said quickly, defensively.

Suddenly, I could see myself through his eyes. What must I look like, cheeks flushed and breath in my throat, firing off frantic questions to someone I swore I’d never speak to again?

I stood up, pushing my stool back. It was stupid to have ever thought he could help me with something like this.

“You got me worried, doll,” Dad said, his head cocked to the side. “I thought you were seeing someone nice, that King boy.”

“You stay away from Mike and you stay away from me,” I said, walking toward the door. “You have enough on your plate, worrying about yourself.”

Dad had his hands up in the air, like, “I surrender.”

“I’m your father,” he said. “And I love you. I’m back in your life now, and I’m straight as an arrow, I swear. You can come to me if you need anything.” He reached for my arm. “Do you need anything?”

His hand on my arm was so familiar, so complicated. I hated it, but I couldn’t shake myself free. How had he found his way back to me — after I’d come so far away from him?

But then, out of anyone, maybe my dad could understand how I’d gotten myself in so deep. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to share this load with someone else. When I looked up at his silver eyes, I saw the same sparkle that I used to carry in my own. I opened my mouth to speak.

“Just tell me what you need,” he said again, more softly.

It was that yearning in his voice — that need to be needed not so different from the Bambies, and I lorded it over the Bambies. My stomach turned.

Behind him, something caught my eye. A large black spider spinning a web from the ceiling of the trailer. And behind it, the neat line of liquor bottles stashed behind a box of cereal. I looked at my dad. Part of his sentence was to get sober and stay clean. Suddenly I saw that nothing had changed — nothing except for me.

I wrenched my arm free of him.

“I’m leaving,” I said. “Stop calling me.”

I grabbed the doorknob and thrust it open, catching a blast of cold air in my throat. I started to run. As the sound of my feet pounded the pavement, the desperate reality of my situation grew clearer and clearer.

Dad had been my last chance out. And he’d failed me yet again.

Whenever Mike and I agreed to meet at our secret spot over the Cove, the plan unfolded the same way:

Rendezvous, one of us would text in the morning, and the other would know what it meant.

Midnight, at the falls, dress darkly and go quietly.

Today, I’d been the one to send the text, feeling uncharacteristically nervous even as I used the code we’d used countless times before. The difference was that usually Mike and I just went there to relax and spend some time together. Tonight, my agenda was a little more ambitious. This whole week had been one catastrophe after another, and even as I tried to start piecing together the fragments of a plan, I knew it wouldn’t feel real until I’d looped Mike in.

Okay was all he’d texted back.

When the full moon was high in the clear, dark sky and my mom had come home from her regular Wednesday night bowling date with the Dick — tipsy enough that she passed out in her clothes on top of the bed — I pulled a black turtleneck over my head and slunk out into the night.

We loved this waterfall. Mike had stumbled on it as a kid and had been coming here himself for years. He brought me here on our third date with a bottle of champagne and a picnic basket. I brought him here on his birthday and had all the props waiting to role-play Tarzan and Jane. It was the site of our first disagreement, our first time, our first anniversary. And luckily, it also was the one romantic spot in Charleston where we’d never run into another couple trying to squeeze in a covert grope. Having been there enough times by now, I was pretty sure that Mike and I were the only two people in the world who knew the secret waterfall existed at all.

To get there, you had to park at the marina across from the Isle of Palms. Then you trooped straight up a craggy washed-out trail for almost a mile before you got to the line of maple trees and a thick patch of Spanish moss hiding the waterfall. But once you waded through the fecund forest, the view was well worth all the huffing and puffing.

The falls cascaded cleanly down a limestone cliff and landed in a pool of water that, in the moonlight, was almost obscenely aquamarine. It wasn’t that high — nothing in the Charleston area rose very far above sea level. But over the years, a perfect limestone niche for two had formed directly underneath the stream. On an early night like tonight, a slower stream of water from a nearby mineral spring sprayed off a cloaking mist that made being there feel kind of like being in a dream.

Every time we went to the falls, Mike arrived before me. He always left a trail from the spot where the path ended to where I’d find him under the alcove, because even though I’d been there enough times to find it in my sleep, Mike still said he didn’t want to lose me on the way. He’d sprinkle rose petals or chocolates or birdseed — once he’d even left a few pairs of his boxers in the tree branches, like flags leading me right to him.

Tonight, the path was bare.

My heart raced at the thought of being stood up a third time, but when I dipped under the sheet of water to the alcove, Mike was there. He was seated on our rock with his head in his hands.

“You didn’t leave me a trail,” I said.

“I thought you liked doing things on your own,” he said. His black shirt sagged at the shoulders, and his face looked as white as the moon. “Besides,” he said sadly, “haven’t we left enough trails already?”

“Mike,” I said. He stood up when I went to him. We wrapped our arms around each other and just stood there for a moment.

“I’ve missed you,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, “about the other day.”

He lifted me up and I swung my legs around his waist. Then he backed me up against the wall of rocks and pressed his body against mine. We kissed. It was long and hot and very us. Something in me welled up with relief.

But when Mike pulled away, we both opened our eyes, and the unwelcome, unfamiliar fear found its way into our waterfall.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, setting me down.

“Look, I’ve got everything figured out,” I said, leading Mike back to his seat on the rock. From my backpack, I pulled out a foil-covered plate of my specialty Carolina Bourbon Brownies that always got Mike’s mind focused before a test.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“Sustenance to help us strategize,” I said, popping a well-done corner piece in his mouth. “I’ve been thinking, just in case Baxter’s DVD does prove too hard to get a hold of, we’re going to need a plan B. Which is why I’ve found the perfect way to keep Officer Creeper in check.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said.

“You do?” I asked, leaning into him. Everything depended on Mike being with me on the plan.

“Are you kidding?” Mike raised an eyebrow in that sexy way of his. “After the way that guy treated you in the fishbowl the other day? I’m all ears.”

“A little bird tells me Officer Parker is packing an incriminating DVD or two of his own,” I said, gaining confidence as he egged me on. I wiggled my finger through his button-down shirt and tickled his ribcage. This was much more like it. “I’ll get us access to proof of O.P.’s statutory ways,” I said. “And if he’s still not cooperating, we might just have to air his dirty laundry.” I leaned in for the clincher. “During regularly scheduled ‘Path to Palmetto’ programming at the Ball.”