Light in Mourning (Mourning, #2) (2 page)

I thought about getting a dog. Was a boat a place for a dog? I’d seen it plenty of times, but I wasn’t interested in a puppy; I wanted a calm, loyal old dog. One that would always be there no matter how much I fucked up. So I went to the local animal shelter and told them what I wanted. An old dog was my only requirement.
 

They steered me to a sad-looking golden retriever and I knew he was perfect. Charlie was his name. A perfect name to play skipper on my boat.

And Charlie was a perfect boat dog. He livened up a little when I walked him out of the shelter. Our first stop was the pet store for some supplies. He sauntered in somberly, wandered across to a cute little poodle, mounted her, and gave a few half-hearted thrusts. The owner of the perfectly coifed female glared at me as she jerked her dog away. Charlie looked up at me. I shrugged. “I get you. Gotta give it a shot, even if they are out of your league.” Charlie wagged his tail once before lifting his leg on the corner of an aisle and pissing on the floor. Fucking fantastic.
 

So there we were, Charlie and me in the front seat, Sophie blowing up my phone, Gavin worried about where my head was, Drew sending me a text every day, asking how I was doing, and all I could think about was a mass of wild brown hair and a beautiful smile I’d had all summer and had been ripped away from me.
 

“Whadya say we take a ride, hey, old guy?” I gave Charlie a scratch behind the ears as he sat shotgun with me. It was my second day with Charlie and we'd just come from town after hitting the bank and post office.

He wagged his tail before he turned and stuck his big head out the window of the passenger side.
 

I wandered around some back roads on the way home from Wilmington. It was only a Tuesday. I hadn’t told Gavin I would be gone, but I didn’t have anything important that needed doing in the next handful of hours. I drove and wound my way along deserted, chewed-up roads, headed east toward the coast. I didn’t know where I was going, wasn’t interested in the GPS on my phone; just knew I’d get to where I needed to be as long as I kept heading east.
 

Old cottages and fancy beach homes whizzed by the windows. The sea breeze blew through the cab of my battered Jeep Rubicon and tossed my hair onto my forehead. I needed a fucking haircut like three weeks ago. I couldn't stand it in my eyes, but when it came around to actually getting it done, I just never made the time to do it. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried my best to tuck the too-long-but-not-long-enough strands behind my ears with an eye roll. A buzz cut. Maybe I’d get a buzz cut. Got a dog, a boat, and a buzz cut. Hell, maybe I’d even go off the grid. Put the Jeep in storage and sail until I felt like not sailing anymore. Sort of like Forrest Gump when he just went running. Maybe I would just go sailing. My lips pulled down in a frown when I realized I needed a job to make the payments on my boat, and the only job that I was good at was hacking, which required Internet, which required me to live firmly on the grid. There went that idea, then.
 

“Charlie! Man, fuck you stink. You gotta go to the bathroom, old guy?” Charlie turned and ticked his head to the side before crawling across the console and placing his two front feet on my thigh. I grinned and gave him a pat. I was going to like having a dog. He had the ability to communicate without saying a word. Perfect.
 

I pulled over on a private stretch of dirt road and climbed out of the vehicle, Charlie bounding out after me. He headed for the underbrush along the ditch and sniffed around, tail wagging the entire time. I leaned against the bumper and watched him with a smile. I shuffled my feet in the dirt and noticed that it was intermixed with sand, making us close to the beach.

“Charlie! Come on, old man, do your business.” I hustled him along as he wandered, nose to the ground, farther down the shoulder of the road. He lifted his leg every few feet. “Charlie, come on.” I walked along with him and patted him on the flank. He veered into the thicker underbrush off the road and landed at an old sign buried in the ditch. He wagged his tail and sniffed around it. I walked over and bent to find a rusted
For Sale by Owner
sign. I glanced up to find an old two-track trail that led into the woods. Maybe an old cabin was tucked back there; a cabin on the beach. The perfect place to go off the grid, yet not quite. I tipped my head to the sky as my eyes searched for power lines. I needed Internet; I couldn’t entertain living anywhere without some Internet to help pay the bills.
 

“You wanna go for a walk?” I looked up to find Charlie already far out ahead of me on the trail. I glanced back at the Jeep. It was parked far enough off the road, not that this place saw much traffic anyway, so I figured it was safe for a few minutes while I checked out the place that was
For Sale by Owner
.
 

Charlie and I walked down the two tracks that twisted into the woods. The closer we came to the beach, sand overtook the dirt, before we finally cleared a corner and the old house came into view. My eyes widened for a moment. I clenched my fists at my sides. It couldn’t be. No way could it be. I walked around the small cottage, weathered grey shingles and shutters, the roof of the wraparound porch part falling in, and headed for the side of the building. I came around the edge and ducked through the brush before the beach came into view. A long dock cut through the tall grass that waved in the breeze. The dock was in decent shape, considering the state of the house.
 

I’d seen this dock before. Memories of that night flashed through my mind. The taste of her skin. The taste of her on my lips. Our mouths tangled together. My hand fisted in her thick hair. Her thighs spread for me. Fuck, how could I have ended up at this house? The place that had been the backdrop for the most beautiful and painful memory of my life? Just one of the memories that had been playing on repeat in my mind. The first night Georgia and I had fucked. Except it had been so much more than that. Way beyond fucking. So far beyond I didn’t even have words for it.
 

I gritted my teeth together and kicked at a leg of the dock.
 

“Charlie,” I hollered and patted my leg to call him. He came bounding out of the woods at full speed, bright eyes, wagging tail, tongue hanging out of his mouth. He looked the liveliest I’d seen him all day. Even more so than when he was trying to stick it in the prissy poodle at the pet store. “Back to the car, old man.” I took long strides down the driveway, headed for the road. Fuck me if this didn’t serve as some kind of knife in my stomach. Like I hadn’t been suffering with the memories enough.

 

The memory of that fucking cottage sat in my mind all week.
 

And the following week.
 

I stayed on my boat, dicking around, working here and there, listening to Gavin bitch at me because my head wasn’t in the game. I knew he was trying to be patient. I knew he was worried. I got random texts from Drew every few days that were about random stupid shit and I knew they were check-ins. She was worried, possibly more than Gavin was. I think it concerned them that I was alone up here at the scene of the crime with only the memories of Georgia and me surrounding my every thought.

Trouble was, this was the only place I wanted to be. I only wanted to be in the place where we’d made those memories. Hence, the reason that cottage down the shore from her beach house was haunting me. In some fucked-up way, I knew if I had that cottage, I would know if she came back. I realized this made me a full-on stalker. I knew that. I just didn’t care.
 

So I finally dialed the number that had been burned into my brain.
 

Not only was the place for sale, but also it was well under my budget. Significantly so, probably because the fucking roof looked like it was about to cave in. But I didn’t care. I offered the asking price. I think they were desperate to unload the place, as it had sat there abandoned for more than a year. The owner lived out of town and the cottage had belonged to his father, who had passed on. I tried to offer my sympathy, but in reality, I was relieved the place was for sale and was prime location.
 

I knew I was pathetic.
 

Wholeheartedly.

 
I also knew this was a rash decision. Except it felt like it wasn't. I’d tossed it around in my head on the deck of my boat for the better part of two weeks. And the month before that, I’d only thought about this place
—a
bout the moments Georgia and I had shared on this beach. If I never saw her again, if she never came back to the beach house and she married Kyle and had her perfect little rug rats and a white picket fence, I wouldn’t regret buying the cottage because the summer I’d shared with that one perfect girl had been my perfect summer. Being around her had filled me up inside. So if I never laid eyes on her again, just living with the memory around me would have to be enough, because I knew I had no chance of getting over Georgia Montgomery. Not in this lifetime.
 

I moved in on a Tuesday. I let the lease run out on my apartment and convinced Gavin to drive a moving truck up with some of my furniture. I paid him in beer. That’s all he ever needed. I knew it was unavoidable, but I feared seeing Drew would be torture. She'd driven separately because Gavin would need a way home. I knew she would lay into me the entire few days they were here.
 

I was right. She did.
 

I was pissed, but I held it in. That little dark-haired pixie could meddle like no one’s business. What punched me in the gut was she spoke to Georgia often; she knew how her life was now. I walked around like a mute, refusing to ask questions, but Drew filled me in anyway.
 

She told me Georgia was in rough shape.
 

I told her I didn’t care. Secretly, I did. I cared so fucking much it hurt.
 

Drew told me I should call her. I told her no fucking way. Georgia had to come to me. We’d been a fucking mess all summer, back and forth and back and forth, and I was done with it. Georgia needed to choose me, something she hadn’t done all summer.
 

She also had to choose herself, what
she
wanted. And what she thought she wanted was Kyle, so I had to respect that, no matter how much it made my stomach boil with anger and hurt.

I threw myself on the couch when Gavin and Drew finally left. Back to being by myself, just me and Charlie; exactly how I wanted it. No one to nag me, no one to shoot me pitiful glances. I had my dog, some beer, Internet . . . and it was all I really needed.
 

One evening, I was at the store picking up more beer and dog food, when I ran into Briana, or was it Kelsey? Fuck if I remembered. I could hardly keep them straight when I’d screwed them this summer. I tossed a jar of peanut butter into my cart when a hand slid around my waist and a husky voice whispered in my ear. I’d be lying if I said my dick didn’t twitch to life
—
purely reactionary
—
because the second thing my brain registered was this girl was trouble wrapped up in psycho.