“Tell me where she is, you bastard.”
Theo looks up at me, the glint in his eye deadly—and solemn. “She’s gone.”
“Don’t fucking say that. You don’t fucking say that.” Then I’m on top of him.
He turns his head at the last second, deflecting some of the blow, but I’m not done with him.
Chapter Two
Theo, forty-eight minutes earlier
I spent my whole life trying not to turn into my father.
Even when my mother was sure it was too late for me, when she condemned me as the devil, when she cast me out into the storm. I huddled under the dubious shelter of an evergreen forest, waiting out the worst of the rain and wind and thunder.
It was a hurricane. I know that now.
“Repent,” she cried out, pushing me out of the cabin. I couldn’t tell whether the drops on her face were tears or rainwater. “Repent before God, Thaddeus.”
“I do,” I yelled over the roar of nature. “I’m sorry. Please.”
Her eyes were full of fear. And anger. I represented every man who’d ever hurt her. My father. The men in the factory. I was her son, but I was also her last link to mankind.
There was a moment of tension. She held onto the front of my shirt, the thin fabric clamped tight in her fist as the heavens boomed around us. The wind was louder than I’d ever heard.
I begged her to believe in me, but my words were whipped away before they could reach her. At least that’s what I told myself when she slammed the door in my face. And so I joined the rest of the animal kingdom, crouching between a tree trunk and a cliff face.
For a time I thought the hurricane would never pass.
I thought I would die like that, with wind assaulting me from every side.
It’s not raining today. It’s overcast, as though a storm might be coming. Not today, though. Today we still have the warm kiss of sunlight on our faces. But I recognize the fear in June’s beautiful blue eyes. She’s looking at me the same way my mother did that night. And I feel the same way I felt before I was pushed into the whip-sharp arms of a hurricane.
“What’s wrong?” she begs. “And why isn’t Carter here? Tell me where he went.”
I started down this road in order to save June.
But I might save myself as well. My salvation. My hope. Along with whatever semblance of humanity is left in me after over a decade on this island.
“I came here with Carter. I’m not going anywhere without him. What’s wrong? What happened? We were just—we were in bed together.”
We were in bed together, which felt delicious. It was wrong, though. I should have known that. Nothing that feels that good could be right. I was in bed right before my mother threw me into the hurricane as well. “That was a sin. It has no place on the island.”
“Is this about your mom?”
I narrow my eyes at her, this blasphemous woman with her white sundress. Even my mother’s nightgowns covered more than that dress. The only place I’ve ever seen such revealing clothes is in secret magazines. Revealing clothes and naked bodies. A naked body as beautiful as hers.
No, no naked body could be as beautiful as hers.
Only Carter’s comes close.
If I hadn’t been taught about sin, I would have believed that what we did together was good and right and natural. But I have been taught about sin. And even if part of me always wondered, if some aspect of me always questioned, that only proves that I have to do this. It only proves that I’m weak when it comes to temptation. “What do you know about my mother?”
“Carter said you came here to—” She falters, stumbling over the words. “To leave the secular world. Did we—did I do something to upset you?”
Did she upset me? Yes. She made me question every tenet I’ve lived under for years.
My mother eventually let me back into the cabin. I had cuts all over my arms and legs and face. There was an infection in my right ear and a cough that took forever to go away, but I was alive.
And I never forgot that my place there was tenuous. I always knew that with one wrong move, I would be cast out into the storm again. So I put aside my doubts. And my skepticism. I let myself believe in the God my mother worshiped, no matter how spiteful and unkind he seemed to me.
Then June fell into my life, already feverish from the poison.
Carter was with her, almost delirious by then.
They were the apple. I took a delicious bite. I look at June’s full, pink lips, wanting another bite. And look what it’s wrought? Lies. Deception. Sin. “This isn’t about my mother. It’s about getting you off the island. You’re the devil’s children, and you don’t belong here.”
“Devil’s children?”
I speed up, because if I slow down then I’ll think about what I’m doing. I’ll doubt myself. I’ll become what my mother feared I would become. All the way until her deathbed she worried over my soul. She died some years later, after a bout of coughing. I buried her on this island. She’s part of it now—the trees and the animals. She’s become the island, and I can’t let June stay here.
“All of you will die away, and the new world will be ours.” It’s something she said a thousand times. I’m not sure I’ve ever believed it. Or if I did, I knew that I would die. The new world should not be mine, not with the impure thoughts in my head.
Thoughts that turned into shouts when I met June and Carter.
“Theo.” She yanks her arm, but I don’t let go. “That sounds like—I’m not sure if that’s true. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk. Let’s just stop and talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Then we’re at the beach, sand burning hot beneath the soles of our feet.
There is the man who gave me the message. The one who told me the truth. He told me that he would get June to safety. That he could save her from Carter. And I knew he could also save her from me. Except now he has two other men with him. And I don’t like the way they look.
One in particular gives June a lewd smile.
No. This isn’t right. I’m sending her out of the frying pan into the fire.
“Who are these people?” June asks, her voice panicked. She fights me, which is good. We need to put up a show right now. “I don’t want to go with them. Don’t do this.”
We have the same tense moment that I had all those years ago, a woman’s hand fisted in my shirt, fear and betrayal stark in her eyes. Except she isn’t the one pushing me into a hurricane this time. Somehow I’m the one pushing her out. Dear God.
Except these men are armed. Clearly they’ve tricked me. Which means they’re also prepared for me to fight them. One man against many. I have a knife in my back pocket. They have machine guns. There’s no way that I can get us out of this alive, but I don’t mind dying. I don’t mind dying to repent. And maybe I can at least injure the one with the lewd smile.
I need them to believe, though. Right up until the moment I strike.
“This is evil,” June says, frantic now. “Sending me away like this? It’s evil. That’s the real sin. Nobody’s going to forgive you for this. Definitely not God.”