Ghost in His Eyes Read online

  That was the funny thing about time. While you were wrapped up in it, you didn’t realize how much was passing. You run through it, like milk in the refrigerator or cell phone data.

  It’s only when you return to a place that time stops, ceases to move forward or passes by in slow-motion like the sand in an hour glass, that you realize how truly precious it is. That the weight of how much you’ve wasted sets firmly on your shoulders.

  4

  Blake

  There are billions of faces all over the world. Ones you will never even see, those you will merely glance at without a second look, and some you know like the back of your hand.

  And then there are the very select few that are burned into your brain, as if their features were your most studied subject, like you could reconstruct them just from memory.

  He may be a man now, but Carson Cole's face was one of two that would be tattooed to the front of my brain forever.

  When I'd first rounded the shelves, I thought it was a dream. I'm not joking, I thought I'd passed out and clocked my head on a bunch of canned corns. I'd actually felt my wrist, counted the rapid beats of my pulse there, to make sure I was actually conscious.

  But when he'd turned, I knew the instant our gazes locked that Carson had the same ghost tapping him on his shoulder, warning him of my proximity. And when he'd turned those eyes on me, the darkest shade of midnight I'd ever seen, all of those haunted days of the past came roaring up between us. A Pandora's box of the worst moments of my life, spread there in the space separating our bodies.

  Those eyes, I'd studied every fleck of them over the years. Sometimes the deepest shade of blue, sometimes the most chocolaty brown. But my favorite had been when he tipped his head up to the sun, turning the windows to his deepest thoughts a beautiful shade of gray.

  My breathing still wasn't normal as I recklessly handled the wheel of my car through the choppy beach. My lungs were seizing, the complete guttural shock to my heart throwing off the whole system, causing organs to compensate for the atrophied muscle.

  What in the world was Carson Cole doing back in North Carolina?

  I hadn't laid eyes on the man in ten years. Not since he left. Not since I'd vilified him, sent him fleeing, cursing his existence.

  It's about an hour before I can even trust my legs to carry me out of the car, the whole time Rhett lays a paw on my leg as if letting me know he's there for moral support.

  Finally, I muster the strength and unload the groceries, placing everything in its right spot to give myself some order and calmness.

  The sun is descending by the time my OCD loosens its grip, but I still can't shake the cobwebs from my mind. And then I glance out, beyond the rooftops surrounding my house.

  To the one place that used to be Carson’s and mine alone.

  I didn't know that it was humanly possible to be so nervous. But I am. My palms are sweating and my legs are jumpy, I spooked at every sound on the way over here.

  Carson and I have never been alone together. Okay, so maybe we have, but only so much as a second in my kitchen, or passing by each other in an empty hallway at school. Usually, I'm just the third wheel, or the odd girl out at the lunch table.

  But tonight, he'd wanted it to be us. Just us. He wasn't shy or indirect, he'd simply asked me to meet him at the Horse Shack after midnight, with nothing but a canister of hot chocolate. He'd bring the rest.

  I'd almost fainted, looking at his earnest eyes, the way his dark brown hair blew in the breeze outside of school.

  I didn't care what people said. I was thirteen, and there was no way true love felt any different than what I felt for Carson Cole.

  When he was around me, I felt sick to my stomach and pure joy all at the same time. He was funny, kind to everyone he knew and even strangers, and when I'd fallen down during dodgeball in gym class, he'd lifted me up and carried me to the nurse. The way I'd pressed my cheek to his chest, heard his heart thumping around in there ... I just knew he felt the same. He had to.

  I'd devised a plan, one I knew had been used before. During the day, I'd crack open the French door on the bottom level of the house, the one that led out into the carport. Dad never checked it, and it would be done before everyone went to sleep. Then, I'd wait. Once my digital wristwatch struck twelve, I'd tiptoe down the stairs and slip out the French door, undetected since the alarm would already be disabled due to it being open.

  My heart had been in my throat, it still was, at the thought of sneaking out. Especially to the Horse Shack. Especially to meet Carson.

  In the dark, everything appeared a little more mysterious, a little more scary.

  "Didn't know if you'd actually come." A familiar voice spoke from the shadows.

  "I don't back down to a dare." I approached, seeing Carson leaning against the ramshackle house in the woods.

  "Already knew that. But just you and I, it's never been just us." The way he said us made my blood heat up.

  I didn't want to appear eager, ask him the question I was dying to. "Why here?"

  The moon illuminated the old house, a ghost ship in the woods of Carova. Four stories high, with wood exterior and walls made of windows, it had been here for decades, long before we were born. Grandma used to tell me stories about the family who built it, how they'd left and the Trust for the wild horses drew a boundary, the house falling on the other side. Now it couldn't be lived in, it just stood here, empty and missing its owners. I'd only come here once, with Carson and some friends on Mischief Night two years ago. It had freaked me out so bad that nothing could calm me except Carson taking my hand in his own, lacing our fingers like a bond of security.

  “Promise not to call me a sissy?” He dipped his head, peeking up at me from under his long eyelashes.

  I could never call him anything, not when I couldn’t even take a breath without my stomach dropping to my shoes. “Promise.”

  “I … I love watching the horses. They love this house, come here to graze all the time. They’re wild, you know.”

  Carson still looked embarrassed. But my heart was a puddle of sentiment and adoration. “I think that’s awesome. Not stupid.”

  Just then, the boy I’d spent my school hours daydreaming about got the strangest, most somber look on his face. I wasn’t exactly sure if he might be about to cry, or if Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out of the bushes and tell me that this whole thing was a prank.

  So I about keeled over when he put his hands on the top of my arms, shut his eyes, and leaned in with his lips pursed. I was so caught off guard that I squeaked before he pressed his warm, wet lips to my own.

  I’d never been kissed before, had never laid my mouth on top of a boys. Of course, I’d dreamed about it. Kicked my mattress in giddy anticipation thinking about possibly doing this with Carson Cole.

  But now, it was actually happening. My heart beat so loud that I could hear the thumping in my ears. I didn’t know exactly what to do, so I followed Carson, moving my lips when he did. I never wanted it to stop, and yet I couldn’t breathe I was so on top of the world. His hands pulled me closer, until I was wrapped up in his larger form.

  My crush, the one I’d harbored in my chest for years, began to bloom, unfolding like the petals of a rose into full-blown, body-shaking love. The puppy love I’d been infatuated with before, that idea of loving Carson … it didn’t even compare to the fireworks that exploded inside my head when he kissed me for the first time.

  The minute he’d kissed me, he’d sealed our fate forever. Stole my heart forever. Eclipsed my life in the rays that were so purely his, trapping me in his orbit for the rest of my days.

  Carson Cole’s aura was otherworldly; he had a way of sucking everyone around him in like a blackhole.

  I should know. He was my moon, my star, and my galaxy for a long, long time.

  Until it had all come crashing down, imploding on itself and wiping out any hope for survival.

  5

  Carson

  There was usuall
y some kind of resentment when children were expected to go into the family business. Too much pressure, expectations of grandeur, unfulfilled dreams for the child and animosity towards the parents.

  So it was a good thing that my dream was to run my family business, or I would have been lumped right into the group of unhappy adults performing jobs that left them emotionally unsatisfied and bored. My love for what my family had passed down in its lineage had carried me to veterinary school, and to a degree rooted in the exact nature of the job I was about to put on my shoulders.

  My great-grandfather had started the North Carolina Wild Horse Association seventy-five years ago as a way to preserve and protect the sanctity of the beautiful animals that inhabited the islands. They were being pushed out of the mainlands, as houses went up and tourists came flocking, the herds etched out to the furthest ends of the shores. Great-Granddaddy Cole, and a few other members of the community, began raising awareness and then formed the Trust, thus enacting rules and bylaws for the humans who lived and vacationed here about what they could and couldn’t do where the wild horses were concerned. The Trust also protected the horses; it allowed the Association to grow food off of the land so the animals could sustain; we tracked their movements and tried to facilitate breeding. Our biggest moneymaker, and the thing that kept us in business, was doing tours through the neighborhoods that the horses frequented.

  One of which was Carova.

  “I’m glad to have you back.” Dad slapped my knee as he steered the pickup towards Duck.

  The Association office was located in Corolla, but nothing in the Outer Banks was easily accessible. And by not easy, I meant that there was a one-lane road connecting absolutely everything. That was something I’d forgotten in Boston, with its winding highways and jam-packed traffic. Things down here were slower, less hectic. I leaned my head against the rest and sucked in a lungful of sea breeze through the window.

  “It’s good to be back.” And I genuinely felt that way. “I can’t wait to see them.”

  My trip to see the horses alone when I’d first gotten back had completely backfired, but I wasn’t about to divulge to my father that I’d seen Blake.

  "You should see the new foal, I'll try to find her out there today if I can. She's a beauty."

  My blood had started tingling already. Caring for animals was in my family's genetic makeup, and I'd definitely gotten the bug. Maybe I'd been influenced because my father ran the company solely responsible for taking care of them in the Outer Banks. Whatever it was, I never really had a say in what it was I would do when I grew up. He took me down to see them when I was about five, the ponies galloping and playing along the waves that crashed onto the shore, and that was it. The rest was history as they say, I was gone, hook, line, and sinker.

  Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" fuzzed through the old speaker system in the truck, and dad hummed along. No matter how much money he made, or what kind of status he held in this community, my father had never cared much about material items. I loved that about him, and now that I was a grown-up, appreciated that he'd never let me become so caught up in what I did and didn't have. This pickup had about two hundred thousand miles on it, and he'd drive it into the ground. That was just the kind of man he was. I worked everyday to measure up.

  "I figure we'll integrate you slowly. I've had some new staff come on since you were home last, and I'll need to teach you some of the systems we've put into place. But for today, let's get to the fun part. We'll drive out to the beach, see if we can't spot some of your old favorites."

  Dad got just as excited about the horses as I did. This was our passion, and I knew I was a lucky son of a bitch to have such a close relationship with my father. As an only child, and an only son, I obviously had priority. But we'd always had an easy relationship; I was as much of him as the world had allowed me to be.

  "Haven't been back to Carova in a long time." I didn't mean to say it out loud, but now it was there, floating between me, him and Billy.

  We'd lived in Corolla throughout my childhood, just off the beach highway that connected Carova to civilization. So naturally, I spent every waking moment in the stranded sand town. It had been my sandbox, my schoolyard. My best kept secret and my worst memory. It was the place I'd fallen in love, and the hell that threw it all back in my face.

  "There aren't a lot of the old neighborhood kids left." Dad is trying to avoid getting deep, mainly because I know how much it upsets him too.

  Maybe he doesn't know that Blake still lives there. My heart drops into my balls thinking about seeing her. The deer-in-headlights look in her big, hypnotizing blue eyes. Her long blond hair, so thick and radiant I used to tell her it was like a horse's mane.

  Would she be sitting up on one of those balconies, waiting for me? Looking out onto the beach, trying to spot me?

  No. My head slapped my heart hard, grounding it in reality. Blake Sayer wanted nothing to do with me. But that was going to be awfully tough now that I'd be living a mere town away from her.

  "Yeah, right. Well, the horses are still there. I'm anxious to start tracking their patterns. I haven't studied their behavior in years, it'll be interesting to get acquainted with them again."

  After I'd run out of the Outer Banks ten years ago like the devil was trying to drag me down to hell himself, I'd solidified my plan in a year of healing. Attend Tufts University, graduate with top honors, then get my masters in either veterinary medicine, or animal psychology. Lucky for me, friends and relationships were not anywhere on my radar after I left home. So I loaded up on courses, double majored, and had spent every second of the last ten years studying, logging clinical hours, and attempting to pass my exams.

  And now I was home, with two Tufts University degrees in hand, to take over the family business. It had been a long, hard road, but nothing worth working for until every brain cell in your head was screaming was easy.

  Dad passes the Harris Teeter where I'd nearly gone into cardiac arrest just hours before, and winds through downtown Corolla. No matter how long I stayed away, nothing really ever changed. The old baseball field, with its rickety dugout where we would get drunk on high school nights. The ice cream shop I spent thousands of hours in, flirting with girls and being a general menace.

  The side street where Blake and I had gotten into our first fight, when she'd walked home in the middle of a lightning storm and I'd basically tackled her to the ground to save her life.

  Everything here reminded me of her. Relics of a lifetime ago.

  And what reminded me of her brought every last whispered thought of him back to life.

  6

  Carson

  Surfing lessons are for babies. That's what I think at least.

  Anyone who is cool already knows how to surf, we live practically on top of the ocean for crying out loud.

  But Timmy Major would have his birthday party on the beach, learning how to surf. So fine, I'll go, but only because everyone in class is going.

  My mom drives the car up onto the beach highway, the one I've been down too many times to count. Dad has taken me almost every week this summer to see the horses, to teach me about something new when it comes to them. One day, he says I'll even take over the family business.

  A bunch of kids are standing together when I walk up to the group, my surfboard tucked under my arm. If this stupid instructor makes me go over basics again, I'm outta here.

  "Sick, dude, you have your own surfboard." A kid the same height as me, with white blond hair and freckles on his nose, comes towards me.

  "Yeah, I surf a lot. It's easy." I puff my chest out, wanting to look cool.

  "Learning how to surf is for babies."

  I have to glint into the sun for a second to see the girl who comes up beside the blond boy. And when I do, I feel that tumbling sensation in my tummy. She's cute. Probably the cutest girl I've ever seen.

  "I said the same thing. Let's just go out into the water." She put her arm around the boy's
neck, and now I could tell that they looked a lot alike.

  "Are you guys family or something?"

  The boy spoke up. "She's my twin sister, Blake. I'm Joel. What's your name? You don't go to school with us, right?"

  I shake my head. "Carson. Nah, I'm in Timmy's class."

  They both nod, and the more I look at them, the weirder it gets. They look so much alike.

  "What's it like to have a twin?"

  Blake shrugs. "Kind of like having a partner in crime. Want to ditch this party and go look for the horses?"

  Joel tries to rub her scalp with his knuckles. "We can't just ditch. We promised Dad we would stay for at least an hour. Plus, you can't even touch the horses."

  All of a sudden, I wanted to impress both of them more than I'd ever wanted anything. "I know how to track the horses. My dad taught me."

  "It's settled then. Come on, last one there is a rotten egg!" Blake sprinted ahead of us.

  That day, I'd met the two people who would sculpt my life in their own hands. Blake and Joel Sayer were the most important people to ever touch my life, to influence the person I was today.

  That day, I'd learned that there were not just wild horses on this last frontier. There was a wild girl, one I'd follow to the end of the earth and jump over the edge with if she asked me to.

  I'd only been seven years old when the world brought the twins into my universe. And ten years later, it tilted our axis, sending each one of us spinning off course in different directions. That night, the one that blew us all to smithereens, was one that still woke me from a dead sleep, cold sweat rolling down my back. It had ruined me so incredibly that I couldn't step foot back on Carova in ten years.