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  KILL DEVIL HILLS

  SARAH DARLINGTON

  KILL DEVIL HILLS

  Copyright © 2014 Sarah Darlington

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  The characters and events portrayed in his book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Find Sarah online: www.sarahdarlingtonauthor.blogspot.com

  To my younger sister, Laura. For always being there for me no matter what.

  CHAPTER 1:

  NOAH

  I had to take a piss. It had been a hard day—not the hardest of my life, but right up there. Ellie and I had gotten wasted to make up for it. And now both of us had to use the bathroom at the exact same moment.

  “I hhhhhave ta use the pisser, too. Ladies first,” Ellie announced, standing up from the coffee table and leaving our two person game of Taboo. It was something we often played after a long night of drinking, and tonight we’d especially needed something routine. “You men have it easy. You have bigger bladders.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” I joked. “You’re just as much of a man as I am.”

  She laughed before feigning seriousness. “Shut up, Noah,” she said, swaying as she moved for the bathroom.

  Ellie was a lightweight, as much as she liked to pretend she wasn’t, and I moved after her in hopes that I’d save her from wobbling into the wall. My attempt was useless, because by the time I stood to my feet, she'd already disappeared into the bathroom. And by this point, all this talk about peeing had me really needing to go now. So I marched up the stairs, heading for one of the other bathrooms.

  The Turner's house had three levels, and in my drunken stupor I ended up all the way upstairs. How the hell did that happen? Ellie's parents and two sisters must have gone to bed hours ago, because it was dead quiet upstairs. The kind of dead quiet that made my skin crawl and left an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Years ago, Memaw—the grandmother who had raised me for a time—told me that after a person passes away their soul lingers for a few days. Who knew if that was true or not? And what sort of woman told an eight-year-old about ‘lingering souls?’ But all I could think about was Ben’s soul lingering in this very hallway as I crept for the bathroom, the floorboards squeaking under my shoes. The bathroom door was closed, thankfully not locked, and I stumbled inside. Light blinded me before my eyes started to adjust.

  “Jesus. Lord. Fuck.”

  Blood everywhere.

  In an instant, I went sober. The sight before me was beyond horrific. Serious slasher movie shit. Was someone fucking murdered in here? Because all I could see was red, contrasting sharply against white tile. Then my eyes finished adjusting, and I realized that Ellie's younger sister Georgina had slit her wrists. Well, not just her wrists. It looked like she'd slit her whole fucking arm. Both of them. There was way too much blood to know for sure. Her body was slumped, propped up against the side of the tub, while her arms were turned up as if she were meditating with her eyes peacefully shut.

  Dropping straight to my knees, I yelled her name and for help. My voice sounded shrill, barely recognizable as my own. Terrified she might already be dead, I brushed her long brown hair away from her neck and felt for a pulse.

  She had one, a faint one, but it was there.

  Thank Christ!

  Commonsense told me I needed to slow the blood flow. And by the way she'd dug into her arms with the big-ass kitchen knife on the tile floor beside her, I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. I moved her body flat on the floor and pulled her legs up to rest on my lap. Blood stained everything. Yanking my shirt over my head, I ripped at the fabric and tied the pieces around her arms. It wasn't enough. I used my hands to put pressure on the cuts. By this time, Mr. and Mrs. Turner were awake and in the bathroom, yelling frantic things at me while they called 911. But I pushed out the noise and the ringing in my ears, focusing all my attention on her.

  Amongst the chaos, her blue eyes flickered open for a single, brief moment and hope shook through my body. Her eyes were glazed-over and distant but managed to connect with mine.

  “Noah, I'm cold,” she whispered, before her lids fluttered closed once more.

  “You will not die on me,” I told her with absolute certainty. “I won’t let you.” I leaned over to press my chest against her body, hoping that might keep her warmer. Then I did the one thing I never thought I'd do again—I prayed to God. He'd let me down a few too many times, and we weren't on speaking terms these days, but I'd never needed anything more. I begged. I pleaded. And then the next thing I knew, the paramedics were there, taking her away from me. I asked them frantic questions, needing to know if she would live, but my questions went unanswered, time and everyone moving faster than my foggy brain could keep up with.

  I blinked.

  Georgie was gone.

  Ellie stood in the bathroom with me now. I hadn’t moved from my spot on the ground, and Ellie yanked on my arm, trying unsuccessfully to pull me to my feet.

  “Go with them to the hospital,” I insisted. “I'm fine.”

  “Noah, you're covered in blood. Get up.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I can't go to the hospital. Mom went in the ambulance, and Dad already left. I'm too drunk to drive, and someone had to stay here with Rose. I think you're in shock. You need to get up.”

  Glancing up, I took in the sight of my best friend. She had black stuff streaked down her cheeks and some of Georgie’s blood smeared in her spikey brown hair. Ellie was tough. She never cried. It hurt my already churning stomach to see her so upset—especially seeing it for the second time today. “I'm not in shock,” I assured her. “I'm fine. Go take care of Rose. Don't let her near this bathroom. She's too little to see something this fucked up. Let me know when you know anything new about Georgie. In the meantime, I'm going to try to clean some of this.”

  “You don't have to do that.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve, shaking noticeably.

  “Yes, I do. You know how I get.”

  She nodded, reluctant but agreeing. “Okay. I'll go get you some towels and bleach. Thanks, Noah.” She went for the door.

  “For cleaning? I have nothing better to do right now.”

  “No, for saving her life. The paramedic said if you'd found her even a few minutes later or hadn't done all you did…she'd be—” She sighed a big huff of air and continued, “She’d be dead now, too. You saved her.”

  I’d never saved anyone or anything in my whole life. I didn’t like the idea of it. I was nobody’s hero. But the alternative option would have been to let Georgie die, so I guess just this once an exception had to be made.

  Ellie left and returned a few minutes later with towels, bleach, and cleaning supplies. I might have known I needed to get Georgie flat on the floor and elevate her legs when that had mattered, but I didn't have the first clue on how to clean up a giant bloody mess. Once I started, I realized the smell of blood and bleach didn't mix well, and all I'd done was spread the red further over the tile floor. My cleaning wasn't helping jack. Dammit. I sighed, taking a step backward, trying to come up with a better plan to tackle the mess. That was when I noticed a pink cellphone laying rather ominously on the bathroom sink. Georgie's cellphone.

  Being nosy as hell and not caring, I grabbed it and slid the unlock button to turn on the screen. The notes app on the phone opened. She'd left a goodbye letter. It read:

  I'm sorry. I know my
timing is horrible, but I couldn't let Ben go into the dark alone. He's my other half. Please understand. I love you all, but I love him, too. And now I'm with him. Love, tons and tons of love, Georgina

  It was the sweetest and the stupidest fucking note I'd ever read. She'd lost her brother. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground was hard for all of us to watch today. I understood she was in pain. I understood she wanted to ease that pain. She wanted to follow him into the dark… I even understood that. What I didn't understand was why it was cutting me up inside. Because it was. Finding her on that floor, holding her cold body, watching as the paramedics took her away, and staring at the evidence of it all still staining the bathroom floor—it was ripping me to fucking shreds. And it had been years since I’d let something affect me like this.

  “Noah—” Ellie came rushing back into the bathroom. “Dad just called.”

  “Tell me she'll live,” I demanded.

  “She’s gonna live.”

  I let out a breath of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in.

  CHAPTER 2:

  FOUR MONTHS LATER

  GEORGINA

  There comes a time in every person’s life when they hit rock bottom. And it is how you handle yourself when that time comes that defines you. It was safe to say, when my rock bottom came screaming in my face, I’d failed. Miserably. I had tried to commit suicide—tried being the operative word in that statement. If it hadn’t been for my sister’s friend, Noah Clark, then I’d be dead. The most depressing part of all, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Noah saving me was a good thing.

  But, nevertheless, he had saved me. Maybe I was still trying to figure out how to be okay. Maybe I was still missing my brother every single moment of the day. And maybe I was still nothing close to the person I wanted to be. But I had a smidgeon of hope now, where before I’d thought I had none, and I had Noah to thank for that.

  I sighed, staring out the window at the rows and rows of beach houses ticking by. The Cove—the recovery facility I’d been sent to and had spent the last four months ‘recovering’ at—was a three hour drive from our seaside home in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Four months and three hours had flown by, and we were minutes away from the house. It had been an uncomfortable drive, given that my parents had forgotten how to act normal around me, and I feared being home and facing reality again.

  I guess I feared it all because I’d loved The Cove so much. It was a residential treatment center for young women suffering from anything from drug addiction to eating disorders, which focused on building skills for the future. Pure ‘let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya’ bullcrap, but surprisingly I’d fit in rather well there. Before Ben’s death, I’d been so caught up in my own little world of friends, parties, and my boyfriend, that I hadn’t even noticed how wildly unhappy I was until it was too late. Take me out of that world and I’d done shockingly well. But put me back into my old world—what if everything just came crashing down on me all over again? What if I wasn’t strong enough to exist in my old world?

  “Ellie’s making dinner,” Mom announced. She’d run out of random things to chat about two hours ago.

  “Oh,” I answered.

  Mom continued on, talking to me in a sweet, soft, careful voice. “I wanted to have a nice family dinner tonight. I wanted it waiting for you when we arrived home. Ellie volunteered.”

  Ellie’s cooking would probably be disastrous, but that actually sounded better than whatever overly-healthy, latest-diet-trend dinner my mom might have fixed instead.

  “I’m sure it will be great,” I replied politely, but my heart was now pounding just a little harder than it should have been. Because if Ellie was at home, then Noah Clark would surely be there with her.

  Noah was my sister’s best friend. They went to high school together, graduated together, decided to forego college together to start their own business, and currently lived together. The two were pretty damn inseparable. And if my sister wasn’t a lesbian, I’d have assumed the next step in their undying friendship would be marriage and babies. But my older sister liked girls, and Noah was just her really good friend. Her really good-looking good friend. Her really good-looking good friend who saved my life and now kept creeping into my thoughts at random moments like now…

  A second later, Dad pulled into the driveway of our house. A.k.a. ‘The Shore Thing.’ It was standard around here to name your house and to post that name like a name-tag over the front door on a wooden placard. The neighbor’s house to the right was called ‘Beachy Keen.’ And to the left sat a vacation rental by the name of ‘Sol Mate.’ Kind of cheesy, but the tourists seemed to like the different names. Or at least that was what Dad was always saying. He was a realtor so I guess he would know.

  Dad grabbed my luggage, Mom grabbed her purse, and I fidgeted with the hem of my long-sleeved shirt. It was early June, already hot as balls in North Carolina, but I had on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt because razors at The Cove had been banned, and I desperately needed to shave…everywhere. Not to mention, I liked long sleeves since they were good at hiding my scars.

  I pushed open the front door, entering the house through the lower level. Basements were impossible this close to the ocean, but in all practicality, the lower level was our basement. It had Ellie’s old room, a guest room, a bathroom, and a game room. I took the stairs two at a time, leaving my parents behind—no sense in delaying the awkward-ass meet-and-greet coming my way—and headed for the main level. That was where the kitchen, living room, and all my other family members would be. It was also where Noah would be. Might as well get that nerve-racking, thanks-for-saving-my-life-even-though-I-didn’t-want-to-be-saved, did-I-mention-I-can’t-stop-thinking-about-you-lately weird moment over with as well.

  But the only person I found was my little sister, Rose. She was sitting on the couch, watching some pointless reality TV show. She gave me a menacing glare from across the room when I entered, and then resumed watching whatever she was watching. Okay? What was her problem? She was nine for crying out loud but acting like a moody teenager.

  “Hi, Rose.”

  She flipped her long, chocolate-colored hair over one shoulder. “Hi, yourself.”

  “Aren’t you going to give me a hug? I haven’t seen you for almost four months.”

  “Nope.”

  BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEP!

  Just then the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen. Oh God, Mom never should have left the cooking up to Ellie. The smell of burning hit my nose just as I heard my older sister shout, “Shit! Noah, get the fire extinguisher!”

  Jeez! I plopped down on the couch by Rose rather than dealing with that. Mom, surely hearing the commotion from all the way downstairs with her mom-hearing, hurried through the living room a second later and dropped her purse on the floor as she rushed to help out in the kitchen. The next thing I knew, Ellie—with Noah following close behind her—came laughing out into the living room like they’d both just been banished by Mom. She and Noah had little specks of white stuff all over them.

  “That was hella awesome!” Ellie was saying. “Who knew macaroni and cheese could catch on fire like that?” She grabbed Noah’s shirt dramatically. “Noah Clark, you’re my hero.”

  From the couch, I watched them—neither had noticed me yet. Once, a few years back, I heard one of Ellie’s girlfriends refer to her as, “butch in the streets, femme in the sheets.” I was not sure what that meant, if it had been a compliment or not, but I took it as…Ellie sure looked the part of a masculine lesbian—all macho and swagger, short hair and tattoos—but deep down she was a sweetheart. Kind, caring, and loving. As for Noah…well, no point in denying it, the guy was all man.

  His golden, sun-bleached hair was just long enough to tie back haphazardly into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, little pieces always falling loose. He had brown eyes and a strong jawline, rivaling someone like Brad Pitt. Sometimes he shaved, but not today. His shoulders were wide enough to fill a do
or and I had a fleeting image—one scarred on my cortex—of the way his muscular chest looked shirtless. Holy hell! The guy was a delicious cross between a California surfer, a mountain man, and Thor, and I tried to keep my eyes glued on the TV. Really, I did. But still, my cheeks burned, and my wild, ridiculous thoughts would not stop. I’d been hoping that seeing him in person after four months would squash these unwanted feelings. Maybe being locked away at an all-girls facility caused me to over glorify and hype him up to more than he was. But nope. Noah Clark was just as striking in person as he was in all my late-night fantasies.

  Crap on a crap-stick. I dug my fingernails into my jeans. He and Ellie still hadn’t noticed me sitting there, and I didn’t want to be blushing or hyperventilating when they did.

  I’d always found Noah to be attractive, even during his high-school emo/Goth phase when his hair was dyed black and he wore combat boots in the summer. But I’d never seriously considered him, because truthfully, I’d been a little scared (and a lot intimidated) of the guy. He was almost six years older than me and not much of a talker. He had the whole brooding ‘I-hate-the-world’ thing down perfectly. But that same tormented oddball had also done everything in his power to save my life when it had mattered most. So yeah…now, and over the past few months, I suddenly found myself seriously considering him. I wanted to know who Noah Clark really was. What did my sister know that the rest of the world didn’t?

  To make my insane crush worse, I still technically, kinda-sorta had a boyfriend. Logan Tyler. We hadn’t spoken in almost four months, but we hadn’t officially broken up yet either. That would be corrected soon, but still. Either way, I shouldn’t have been thinking about Noah in any capacity, especially when he was standing six feet away from me.

  “Hello. Earth to Georgie!” Ellie called out, pulling me out of my thoughts and back into the present. She was the last person on the planet to still call me Georgie and that used to bother me, but as she bear-tackled me against the couch—the first person to hug me this tight in months—I found myself wondering why I used to always fight her so much on something as stupid as a name. She tickled me until I was crying ‘uncle,’ then she let up. “It’s good to have you home, kiddo. Did Mom make you want to slit your wrists all over again on the drive home?”