Set Me Free (6 page)

It was strange to reach East Beach, where, about a half-mile north, I’d slept in my car for three weeks. I hadn’t come back here since I’d moved in with Kaye and Andy. It was like visiting a house I used to live in: familiar and alien, all at once.

A shock of white-blonde hair, bright even in the darkness, caught my eye. Kaye stood just out of reach of the waves, talking to two girls I didn’t know and—to my dismay—Jenny, whose dark bob didn’t seem to be affected by the sea breeze. She shot me a cold glare, but I didn’t care: if she was here, that meant Owen was here, too.

“Miranda!” Kaye waved me over. “I was wondering where you got to. This is Jenny. She’s from Bellisle. And this is Violet, my old roommate, and Alice, who does half-marathon training with me and Andy.”

Alice was slender and seemed to hide in her sweatshirt and jeans. Violet, on the other hand, was almost as tall as Kaye. She wore an imperious updo, a denim jacket, and a clingy maxi dress.

“So you’re the new girl,” Violet drawled, looking me over. “Everyone’s been talking about you.”

“They have?” I glanced at Jenny, wondering if she knew about my car, or about Owen bandaging up the cut on my leg.

Up close, there was something different about her tonight. She wasn’t quite as put-together as usual, and her eyes were ever-so-slightly puffy. I felt a pang of sympathy for her, thinking of a law school party Rhys had dragged me to immediately after one of our fights. It’s terrible to be teary-eyed at a party. You might as well burst into tears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

“What do you think of Fall Island, new girl?” Violet asked me, with a wide, wolfish smile.

I tore my gaze away from Jenny. “I like it.”

“I can’t believe I ever considered moving here,” Jenny snapped.

Violet turned her wolfish grin on Jenny. “Then you aren’t?”

“No,” Jenny spat. All traces of tears had vanished; her face looked like it was made out of steel. “I hate it here. It’s bad enough there are no decent restaurants and the people here are awful and ignorant. Then there’s the fact that the whole place is still obsessed with that stupid painter—”

“Careful,” Violet growled. “Suzanna and I were friends, you know.”

Jenny flinched—which, as scary as Violet was, seemed like an extreme reaction. I watched in bewilderment as Jenny touched her lip, cursing under her breath. Her fingers came away bloody.

“What just happened?” Kaye asked. “Did you bite yourself?”

Jenny’s only response was more inarticulate cursing. She pressed her fingers to her mouth as blood cascaded forwards onto her white fleece.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Are you okay?” Kaye stepped forwards to touch Jenny’s arm.

“Don’t touch me,” Jenny snarled, jerking out of Kaye’s reach. “I’m going home. I don’t know why I bothered coming—no one in this entire town is worth fucking!”

She stalked off across the beach, holding her mouth, while we watched in bewilderment—except for Violet, who licked her lips. “‘Worth fucking’? I wonder who she was planning to fuck? Not Owen, clearly.”

I glanced up at Violet in surprise. Not Owen?

“Yeah,” Kaye said, “it sounds like they had a fight.”

“You think?” Violet rolled her eyes. “Good riddance. Even Owen Larsen deserves better.” She laughed coldly.

Andy jogged across the beach towards us. “What happened? Is Jenny hurt?” He paused beside Kaye, reaching out as if he were going to rest his hand on her back, but he stopped himself.

Kaye shrugged. “I don’t know. Think she’s more upset than anything else.”

“Well, if she’s looking for Owen, she’s going the wrong way,” Andy said. “He was up by the Lodge with Rusty the last time I saw him.”

“I don’t think she’s looking for Owen,” Kaye said quietly.

I needed to know what had happened between him and Jenny. I slipped away from the others and hurried up the beach towards the Artist’s Lodge. I saw Rusty first, perched on a massive boulder with his gangly arms resting on his knees, his habitual slouch, fedora, and cigarette in place. Standing beside him, Owen was a silhouette of messy hair and big shoulders.

This was a bad idea. Owen wouldn’t want to see me right after getting into a fight with his girlfriend—especially a girlfriend who’d come to this party to pick up someone else.

I jerked to a stop, chewing on my lip, but they had already seen me. I took a few nervous steps towards them.

“How’s it going, Miranda?” Rusty slid off the rock he’d been perching on and tipped his fedora in my direction. “Good luck with everything, man,” he added to Owen, and shambled away, puffing on his cigarette.

Taken aback, I watched Rusty go until I couldn’t avoid looking at Owen any longer.

He stepped closer to me. When I snuck a glance up at him, the moonlight was playing on his lips.

“I just saw Jenny,” I said.

“So she did come.”

“You didn’t come here together?”

“No. We didn’t.”

I was painfully aware of his height and size, and also his scent—his nutmeg soap and something else. The scent of his workshop, perhaps, like wood dust and varnish.

“We broke up,” he said.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” My pulse quickened.

“Don’t be.”

“When—?”

“On Monday. After you left. That was why I had to go meet with her.”

“Oh.” I felt flushed and light-headed. He broke up with her after I left. He broke up with her because of me?

Owen stepped closer, reaching for me. The square of moonlight vanished behind him. His cheekbones and strong jaw were sharp angles, casting shadows deeper than the night. He looked different from the man who had tenderly bandaged up my leg and showed me his workshop—a harder man, a colder man.

“You flinched,” he said, drawing back. “Why?”

I hadn’t even realized I’d done it. I didn’t know how to describe the tension that spiraled inside me all the time. Anything that made me think of Rhys—Scott grabbing my arm, a hand raised in the darkness—terrified me, until my bones shook and my lungs felt crushed.

I wanted to explain. I thought he’d listen, if only I gave him a chance. But I hadn’t told anyone about Rhys. Not my dad, my friends, Claire…not even Kaye, who now knew my other, most jealously guarded secret. I couldn’t. To say it out loud would mean owning up to the mess I’d made of my life. And how scared I was, still, by what I’d done.

Owen was turning away—I had to tell him, so he would understand. I said his name, but then I realized what he had turned towards: a flare of cadmium orange atop a pulse of bright yellow light, stark and shocking against the night sky.

When the wind shifted, I could smell it, acrid and electric and unmistakable. There was only one explanation; only one building stood just off East Beach.

The Artist’s Lodge was on fire.

I
called
911 as we raced up the beach. The dispatcher promised to send help, though he sounded almost as shocked as I felt. Stuffing my phone back into my bag, I jogged up the stairs to the Lodge and almost bumped into Owen when he stopped short. My face tilted upwards involuntarily to mirror the column of yellow and gold stretching above us. The fire was tearing the left side of the house apart, hurling burning debris down onto the front porch, roaring like a wild creature.

“What if Matthew’s in there?” I cried out over the cracking shingles.

Owen glanced at me, his mouth tightening. He took off towards the house, jogging past the smoldering front porch and crossing through the scrub towards a side door.

I ran after him. “Don’t—it’s dangerous!”

With each step, the air grew hotter and denser with ash; the flames could have licked my skin. Owen reached the side door and pressed his palms to the wood.

“Wait!” I shouted, but he ignored me and shouldered the door open. Black clouds billowed out after him. He disappeared inside while I watched in horror. Didn’t he realize how dangerous this was? Didn’t he care? And where the hell was 911?

I did the only thing I could think of and called Kaye. “Where’s Muscles? He’s a firefighter, isn’t he?”

“What? Where are you? What’s that sound?”

A gust of fire swept down onto the front porch, snapping beams in half, scattering charred splinters across the yard.

Stifling a cough, I told her about the Lodge, and about Owen. “I’m going in after him,” I said, steeling myself.

“Do not go inside!” Kaye exclaimed. “Are you insane? The fire department will be there in a minute. I’m going to call Muscles. He’s on duty tonight. For God’s sake,
do not go inside
.”

She hung up. I clutched my phone and stared at the fire, my chest aching with the effort to breathe.

Someone ran up the beach, but instead of Kaye or Andy, it was Rusty, puffing as he took the steps up to the Lodge two at a time. “Fuck, man! What the hell happened?”

I shot him an irritated look that I immediately regretted: Rusty’s face was incredibly serious. He held his hat in his hand, pressed against his chest, as if he were in church.

Despite Kaye’s advice and my own better judgment, I couldn’t stand by while Owen was in danger. I picked my way towards the house through the scrub and the simmering heat, wondering if the fire could jump to the dead grass behind me and encircle me.

When I reached the side door, I touched my palms against it, just like Owen had. It felt warm, but not hot. I pushed it open the rest of the way. Smoke poured out, searing my eyes and throat. Wiping my streaming eyes on my sleeve, I stepped forwards again.

Suddenly, my vision cleared, revealing Owen standing before me, holding a limp, sagging figure in his arms. A shirt covered most of the figure’s face, but tell-tale black glasses poked above the fabric. I jerked backwards out of the way. Owen lurched forwards and fell onto his knees. Matthew tumbled out of his arms onto the rocky sand.

“Are you all right? And Matthew—he’s not—?” I dropped to my knees across from Owen, with Matthew in between us. I reached out to touch Owen, but pulled back at the last minute and wiped the sweat and soot from my face instead.

“He’s alive.” Owen braced his hands on the ground, coughing. “Unconscious. Breathed in a lot of smoke.”

With a
crack
, a chunk of roof snapped off and crashed onto the rocks beside us, sending fragments of ash into air, close enough to singe our clothes.

“We have to move him away from here,” I said urgently.

Owen nodded and wedged his hands under Matthew’s shoulders and knees. He heaved, but Matthew didn’t budge. Owen’s ash-smudged face was pale, his breathing rattling and rough.

“Rusty!” I shouted over my shoulder, straining to see Rusty through the smoke billowing out of the door. “Rusty, where are you?”

Grabbing Matthew’s shoulder myself, I tried to help Owen lift him, but I couldn’t stop shaking, and Matthew was much too heavy for me. I sat back on my heels, struggling for breath, while the fire continued to tear the roof apart. We had to get him to safety, but the task seemed impossible.

Then—at last—sirens wailed in the distance. Louder and louder, slicing through the roar of the fire. Blue lights strobed through orange flames. Suddenly, people in uniform were surrounding us, ushering me and Owen away from the house. Two EMTs lifted Matthew onto a stretcher and wheeled him away, towards an ambulance idling behind what had once been the Lodge.

I glanced up at Owen where we stood in the scrub grass. He coughed again, and I opened my mouth to say that he should go to the hospital, too. Then Officer Not-Rhys appeared in the smoke, his expression colder than ever. My heart sank.

“Larsen,” Not-Rhys barked. “What are you doing here?”

Owen tried to speak, but immediately devolved into another coughing fit. He gestured at the ambulance. Not-Rhys just frowned at him.

I glanced from one man to the other, my anxiety at the sight of Not-Rhys fighting with my desire to defend Owen. “Don’t you get it? He got Matthew out of the house. He saved him!”

Not-Rhys turned to me, eyebrows lifting, but he didn’t press it. He gestured for us to give the first responders more room. We joined the small crowd that had gathered on the beach below us: Rusty, Andy, Kaye, Violet, and Alice. They stared at us, but no one spoke.

Slowly, the flames ebbed under the jets from the fire trucks. We could see the left side of the Lodge again: a mass of charred boards and shingles, sloping downwards to the destroyed front porch.

“Oh, God,” I breathed. “I’ve just remembered.”

Everyone looked at me.

“What is it?” Kaye asked, her eyes huge in her pale face.

I pointed to the pile of black rubble that had once been the octagonal gallery. “Suzanna White’s paintings were in that room.”

Owen’s beautiful portrait and that magnificent seascape were both gone forever.

I knew it was silly, because at least Matthew was alive, but losing Suzanna’s paintings made my heart ache. Poor Suzanna White! Dead at twenty-two, and the fragments of her memory gone so soon, so senselessly.

“You did it.”

Violet was glaring at Owen, all traces of her wolfish smile gone.

“You should just admit it,” Violet said. “We might actually respect you if you did.”

Owen crossed his burly, soot-covered arms over his chest and scowled at her. “Fuck you, Violet.”

“You shouldn’t speak to her like that.”

We all turned at the sound of Scott’s voice. He stood to the south of us on the beach, his hair mussed and his expression fierce.

He strode up to the rest of the group and stood protectively next to Violet. She gave him an annoyed look.

“We all know it was you, Larsen,” Scott hissed. “It’s
always
you. Admit you burned up Suze’s paintings and we can move on with our lives—”

Shockingly fast, Owen seized Scott by his shirt collar and dragged him across the sand, twisting the fabric tighter and tighter. “Do
not
call her that, you piece of shit. You do
not
get to call her that.”

Scott pulled at Owen’s fingers, trying to loosen their grip. Dashing between them, Andy grabbed Owen’s shoulder. “Take it easy, both of you. This isn’t helping—”

“Shut
up
, Andy!” Violet threw her hands in the air. “God, who do you think you are, the United fucking Nations?”

Owen, though, let go of Scott and stepped away from the group, breathing hard and rough with his back to us, his shoulders heaving.

Scott sneered. “You know you did it, Larsen! You won’t be able to get away with it—”

“How could he have set the fire?” I almost choked on the words. “How could Owen have set the fire? He was talking to me. When we saw it go up, we ran over here, and Owen went in and got Matthew. He saved his life. Remember, Kaye? I called you while Owen was inside the house. And Rusty,” I added, turning to Rusty, who looked nervous and exhausted, “before I came over, he was talking to you, right?”

Rusty nodded.

“For a while, right?” I prompted him.

“Half an hour, an hour,” Rusty said.

I turned back to the others. “So how could Owen have set the fire? Seriously, guys, why are you doing this? I’m sure it was an accident—an electrical problem, or something.”

Owen glanced over his shoulder at me, his face oddly lit by the police spotlights staged around the perimeter of the wrecked house.

“He could have planted an explosive or something.” Violet pursed her lips. “You know, with a timer.”

Owen ran his hands through his hair, and without a word he walked away: a lonely figure blending into the darkness on the beach.