Page 28 of Day Break

It was then that I noticed she was wearing familiar clothes. The bright pink T-shirt with the words Kim’s Last Stand had my fists clenching. I even recognized the jeans she was wearing. The hole just above the knee was from where Sherry had fallen off her bike that last summer. I’d had to help her remove the material from her bike chain.

“What the hell,” I said, storming towards the woman. “Who are you?” I demanded. “And what in the hell are you doing in my sister’s clothes?”

I would later play over the encounter in my head many times and realize my mistakes. How the woman’s face had paled. How she’d been too thin, too tiny, too fragile.

But for now, I plowed through angrily at this stranger for breaking into my sister’s room and taking her things.

I barked at her and threw my hands up in the air as I accused her of things that I was ashamed of even then.

In the end, what made me stop was seeing her crumple at my feet and land in the sand.

“What have you done?” My grandfather got up from his chair and marched across the sand. “Help her.”

I glanced between my grandfather and the small pile of woman at my feet. Dog stopped racing around the sand and rushed to the woman’s side, licking her face and trying to wake her.

I knelt and shifted her easily into my arms, only then realizing that she weighed less than she should. Far less. There was no way she was over a hundred pounds. Why the hell was she so skinny?

“Bring her back to the house,” my grandfather said. “Hurry, get her some water. I’ll be along.”

I paused, worried about him walking across the sand and through the tall grass, but he waved me away. “Go,” he said sternly with a wave.

I marched back through the tall dune grass, across the freshly cut grass in the yard, and in through the open glass doors.

I laid the woman down on the sofa and ran my eyes over her. She looked vaguely familiar. Where had I seen her before?

Her long blonde hair was tied back in a braid that lay over her shoulder. Maybe the familiarity was because she was in my sister’s clothes?

She was pretty, there was no denying it. Gorgeous even. Her eyelids were closed, showcasing long lashes that I realized were long without the aid of extensions or mascara like all the other women I knew. Actually, she wasn’t wearing any makeup whatsoever. She was a natural beauty.

How many women in my past could I say that about? Many times I’d woken the morning after hooking up, feeling like I’d been catfished the night before.

It was a great mystery to me why so many women piled on makeup and clothes to make them into something they weren’t. Another reason I’d been off the dating circuit in the past few months.

My lack of trust in people was now bleeding into my sex life.

However, this woman was different. Even though she was too skinny for my taste, there was something that immediately pulled me in. And it wasn’t the fact that I’d yelled at her until she’d passed out. That vulnerability somehow pissed me off. How had she gotten this way?

More importantly, what was she doing hanging around my grandfather? Most importantly, what was she doing in Sherry’s clothes?

When she stirred slightly, I stood up and headed into the kitchen to get a glass of water and returned just as she was sitting up.

“Easy,” I said when she flinched and jerked away. I held out my free hand, then slowly held out the glass of water towards her. “Who are you?” I asked after she’d taken it and took a sip.

“I…” she started.

“She’s helping me out, like you suggested. I needed someone to do some things around here,” my grandfather said from the doorway.

CHAPTER SIX

“Night is always darker before the dawn

and life is the same, the hard times will pass, everything will get better

and sun will shine brighter than ever.”

- Ernest Hemingway

Chloe