Each day, Calla and her fragile heart are that little bit closer to death... but before she goes she'll prove to the world the boy she loves is no murderer.
🖤🖤🖤
With a life steeped in wealth and privilege, Calla Pierce should be protected from t...
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Dear Owen,
I'm sitting on a beach. The wind is cold, but not freezing. There's a paper cup of coffee warming my palm. My bare heels are digging into the sand, and all I can hear is the soft shatter of the waves as they hit the shore. The town is too far to hear. If there's a world away from this, it doesn't exist to me right now. It's just us. The sun is setting, and everything is awash with peach and gold. The moon isn't out yet, the stars are just a memory.
I'm digressing. Maybe you're wondering how I can take the time to describe the feel of the sand under my feet and the colours of the sky when years have passed. When our worlds have shifted so far away from each other. It's been three years since I stood outside your prison. Since you broke my heart.
Do you think about me? And what do you feel when you do?
I should have known. Should have guessed when I read the few words of that pitiful letter. It's the rhythm of us, isn't it? You fear for me, you break my heart to protect me, and I break yours to punish you for it. And around and around we go. Never quite together, never really apart. I'm sorry I couldn't see through the red haze of my anger. That I didn't fight for us. I wish you could have seen that it was my choice to make and not yours. I wish you'd fought for us.
I've thought about writing to you a million times. I've scribbled a million letters and typed a million emails, but I've never sent a single one. Sometimes I think it's fear. Sometimes I think it's anger. I've never had the words to explain how you've haunted me, how those months we shared stay with me. A very annoying, but in the end, a surprisingly loyal person once told me that I had to pick my poison. To move on, to live my life. Or to fight for us. It took me a longtime to realise what I already knew, that despite everything, it's you. It's us. We are the poison I pick.
Will you even read this, Owen? I've had to accept, for the longest time, that whatever happens, we may never get back what we've lost. That maybe it's already too late. But on the mornings I wake up, the echo of your fingers on my skin, the sound of your voice in my ear, knowing you've haunted my dreams - I know I'm just as present in yours. And I know there's still a chance.
But all of this is not why I'm writing. Not really.
I'm writing to tell you a story. I think you've heard tales like it, maybe over and over again. It's about a woman named Moira Ann Whatley. Moira and her husband managed a hotel, the seaside kind that should have drawn nice old couples and families with shrieking children. I can see it now from where I'm sitting. The building is decrepit, a black shard against the faultless horizon. The waves seem to crash harder against the cliff it rests on like it knows the horror clinging to the structure above. I imagine it would have been beautiful once, that its view of the ocean, of the beach would have had it fat with guests and full of life, but right now, it's hollow. Empty of everything but memories.
They had a daughter.
I can hear the sirens. They'll be here soon.
There are stories about this place. That sometimes they let bad people stay there. Bad people who did bad things to those who couldn't fight back. Horrors happened inside those walls. Maybe it wasn't a good place to raise a child. Maybe horrors don't just happen to you, maybe they crawl inside you, bury under the flesh. Curdle your blood. Sour your heart.
