The Man Who Followed Me Into the Sea

On the third day after I died, "Keating Heir Dies for Love" shot to number one on the trending list. But I couldn't work out why the man in that headline was Torrance.

Eight years we'd been tangled up in each other. He hated the underhanded way I'd gotten into his bed, and he hated me for taking the place of the one who got away.

So on the day we were supposed to go get the marriage license, I jumped into the ocean — wasn't he finally free? Chapter 1 It wasn't so bad, really.

The water wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. I just hadn't expected this part. I was all the way dead, and my soul still hadn't scattered. My phone had washed up on the sand.

On the screen was a call somebody had declined. I'd made that call five hours ago, to Torrance. He didn't pick up.

He was probably busy celebrating Gillian coming back to the States. He and Gillian had known each other since high school. Their grades ran neck and neck.

They were the golden couple, and everybody knew it. Word was they'd planned to get married as soon as they finished college.

Then came the night of Torrance's twentieth birthday party, and I climbed into his bed. A party like that, I never could have gotten in.

But I had a mother with schemes and ambition. She said I'd been born too pretty to waste, that I was sure to have the Keatings locked down for good.

I'd been hearing that my whole life. At first she wanted to use me, the illegitimate daughter, to pin down the old man Vinson.

After the Vinsons went under, she set her sights on the Keatings. "Nessa Vinson, whether you and I ever live decently again — it all comes down to you tonight." "It's already in him.

Torrance's room is on the top floor." She pressed the key card into my palm and gave me a shove that didn't leave room to say no.

I looked back at every step, and then, shaking, I pushed open Torrance's door. The presidential suite was enormous, and there was one dim lamp burning on the wall.

Torrance was sprawled across the bed, the flush running all the way down past his collarbones.

He looked toward my shape and said, "Gigi." No one had ever said my name in that voice before. My mother only used my full name. My father called me a bastard.

My first instinct was to run, and then someone caught me from behind and pulled me down onto the bed. The heat coming off him was unreal.

His breath settled warm against the side of my neck. How much had they given him? Enough to kill a person, maybe. I turned to feel his forehead and he kissed me instead.

He held the back of my neck, ran his tongue along the seam of my lips, and said, quietly, "Gigi. Be good." Before Torrance woke up.

I hung up on my mother and hauled ass out of there. He called me Gigi all night. He said he'd take responsibility for me. But I wasn't his Gigi.

I was just an illegitimate girl nobody wanted. Nobody was going to take responsibility for me. I thought that was the end of it.

But I hadn't counted on my mother turning up the day Torrance proposed to Gillian. She brought the hallway security footage and the pregnancy report with her.

A perfectly good proposal, and she left nothing of it standing. Gillian's eyes went red, and she was on a plane to Paris that same day.

Torrance stood there like he couldn't believe it. Staring at me, back in my corner, hard enough to put a hole through me. I wanted so badly to cover his eyes right then.

To tell him. Don't hate me. I didn't have a choice either. A little boy had found the phone. He was turning it over, like he wasn't sure how it worked.

When it started buzzing he almost threw it back into the water. How could that be? I didn't have any friends. Who would be calling me? I drifted over and leaned in, curious.

The name on the screen was Torrance's. We'd come out to this little island on vacation. Chapter 2 I was the one who pestered him about it for a long time.

He finally agreed, and not graciously. Then he gave me two days before news that Gillian was coming back to the States changed his mind. Any other time, I would have let him go.

Picked out the best cologne for him, tied his tie into a complicated, beautiful Windsor knot. That day I didn't let go.

I just looked up at him and asked, "Could you not go?" Torrance didn't so much as look at me. He shook my hand off. "Nessa Vinson, we're getting the license tomorrow.

You got everything you wanted. What else is there for you to want?" He was right. I'd hogged Torrance for eight years. What else was there for me to want?

The phone rang again, and in all the fumbling it actually connected.

The little boy hadn't gotten a word out before Torrance's voice came through, furious. "Nessa Vinson, where the hell did you go? "Ten minutes.

If you're not standing outside the clerk's office by then, we're not getting married." He hung up the second he finished. That left me and the little boy staring at each other.

That's just how he is. He never had much patience for me. Scared you, didn't he, kid. In the very beginning. We actually did all right together.

He'd go all bashful picking out names for our unborn baby. He fixed the spare bedroom up like a nursery. But good dreams break easy.

The day Gillian came back to the States the first time, there was an accident and I lost the baby. I fell down the stairs and there was blood all over me.

That rug was Torrance's favorite. Somebody came to clean it every single day. I didn't want to ruin it, but the blood was everywhere. I couldn't deal with it.

The tears kept dropping off my chin.

I looked up and Torrance was standing over me with no expression at all. "Nessa Vinson, are you done performing?" "Gillian only came back for a class reunion.

You'd miscarry on purpose just to frame her, is that it?" That's not it. I didn't. I fell down a flight of stairs, it hurt so much, and I never said one word about it.

How could he think that of me? The two of them stood side by side in front of me, like they were passing judgment on some shameless creature. Fine. That's exactly what I am.

Shameless. Low. Trying to use a baby to tie Torrance's heart down. And in the end I didn't keep any of it. After the miscarriage we lived apart for a long stretch.

Long enough that I thought Torrance was done with me. My mother started anxiously scouting out the next family for me. The Fenmore boy. I forget what his name was.

He seemed very interested in me. At the party he put his hand on my leg and didn't bother hiding it. I was somewhere else and didn't pay much attention.

I tipped my head back and put down a Cosmopolitan in one go, and caught a familiar shape at the edge of my vision. Probably just my imagination, though.

If Torrance ran into me somewhere like that, he'd be too busy getting away from me.

I was good and drunk by the time I got in the elevator up to the top floor, and someone kissed me before I saw it coming. He kissed hard, and fast. Like Torrance.

Before I could see who he was, I was kissing him back like I couldn't wait. Naturally, he slapped me. "Nessa Vinson, you really will sleep with anybody.

Did you even look at who I am?" It really was Torrance. I wiped the blood off the corner of my mouth and hooked my arm around his waist. "Repeat customer.

I'll give you twenty percent off." When I woke up, Torrance was gone. He'd left a black card on the nightstand. That's not bad. Is it? I moved back into that house.

Chapter 3 A lot of the decorating in the house had changed. Not the rug on the first floor. The stain had been cleaned out of it long ago. Now it looked brand new again.

I brought it up to the housekeeper once when I was bored, and she squinted, remembering. "Oh, that rug's been here for years. One of Mr. Keating's classmates picked it out, I think.

What was her name — Gillian." "They were awfully close back then. After she went overseas they didn't keep in touch much." … I didn't catch the rest. I turned and went upstairs.

That was the first time I ever turned Torrance down. He lifted his head from my neck. "What's wrong? Does it still hurt?" I turned my face away and hummed a yes.

He muttered something about what a pain I was, went to the nightstand for the ointment, and worked a careful layer of it over me.

That was the first time we ever just slept in the same bed. Only held each other. And somehow I felt safer than I ever had. Torrance called again.

He laid into me for pulling a disappearing act, for throwing a little kid's tantrum. This time he made the boy's father angry. "What is wrong with you?

Who are you to the person who owns this phone?" The strange voice stopped Torrance short. When he spoke again he was careful. "I'm a friend of hers.

Where is she?" I was crouched by their fire, drawing a house, and the word friend made me laugh. Sure. Friends. Friends who'd been sleeping together for eight years.

The boy's father made a sour noise in his throat. "The phone and the body washed up on the rocks. I already called the police. She's with the medical examiner now.

You'd better come." Him? He wasn't coming. Gillian was back in the States for good this time. I was dead. Convenient — he could swap me right out. But he came anyway. Alone.

No assistant with him. His black coat lifted in the wind, creased all over. No tie. You could see the stubble along his jaw, and there was a bruised look under his eyes.

I'm not bragging on myself here. I never would have let him go out like that. Every time he went to see Gillian, I got him clean and pressed and perfect.

I liked his eyes when he looked at the person he loved. Clear, young, like he was back to eighteen. Even if the person he was looking at wasn't me. My mother says I'm cheap.

She's right. I've been cheap since I was little. She tried to sell me more than once and I still stayed with her.

Torrance said outright he would never love me and I still wouldn't go. It's not that I can't be hurt. It's that this world doesn't hold on to me very hard. My mother is one thread.

Torrance is another. If I stop wanting them both. Then it doesn't matter much whether I'm alive. Torrance has deepset eyes and a high, straight nose.

Even if he never took over the family business, he could have gone into acting and done fine. But right now he looked like a man who'd just buried his wife. Don't. Don't do that.

We never even got the license, did we? "When did it happen?" Torrance's voice came out rough, like there was a ton of sand in his throat.

The boy's father had a cigarette in his teeth, like none of this was new to him. "By the state of her, she most likely drowned last night when the tide came in." Last night, I'd begged Torrance to watch the tide come in with me. "I've never seen it.

Just once, with me. Okay?" Torrance had a flight to catch, and he left me there. I flew over to the man in a panic and tried to cover his mouth. Don't say it like that.

If you say it like that, it'll hurt him. Like after my second miscarriage, when he kept thinking he was the one who'd done it to me.

That's the only reason he stood by my hospital bed and said a thing like let's get married. Torrance punched the man in the face. "Did you kill her? You want money, is that it?

How much, just say it! Chapter 4 "That's not Nessa Vinson. Give her back to me. I'll pay whatever you want. Is a million enough?

Three million?" The man wiped the corner of his mouth and looked at him sideways. "If you don't believe me, go run a DNA test. She walked in there herself.

That's not on me." I reached for Torrance's hand to make him let go, and came away with nothing. I forgot. I'm already dead. Torrance looked so wrecked it scared me.

He hadn't looked like this even when he found out Gillian was seeing someone overseas.

I trailed along beside him, working it out like an outsider. "Maybe that waterlogged body isn't even me." "Maybe I just didn't get out of the way in time when the tide came in, and it carried me off." "Life's like that.

Accidents happen all the time." … But Torrance only kept following the man, the red in his eyes frightening to look at. "Somebody drowns out here every year, so I put a camera up outside the store." "Take a look.

That your friend?" The man pointed at the figure on the monitor and lit a cigarette. Ugh, careless of me. I never noticed there was a camera here.

If I'd known, I'd have gone farther out to die. Torrance stared at the screen without blinking, and the moment he did blink, the tears came down fat and fast. He almost never cries.

When he found out the second baby was gone, all he did was sit in the hospital hallway all night with red eyes. On the video, I made my last call to Torrance. He didn't pick up.

And then I walked, step by step, into the incoming tide. It didn't feel bitter at the time. But she looks so small from behind, doesn't she.

Being a ghost really does make you sentimental. I sat by the fire and waited quietly for Torrance to leave. But he only dragged the playback bar again and again. "No.

She's too scared of pain." "When she miscarried she cried the whole time. How could she kill herself?" I turned my hands over and kept warming them. So he did see it.

And I'd thought that back then, all he had eyes for was Gillian. "So there was a baby after all." The man's voice came from behind us. "I figured maybe my eyes were playing tricks." I froze, and Torrance lifted his head too. "Was she pregnant when she died?" That's not possible