I watched as Bethy opened the door to her old beat-up Ford Taurus and climbed inside. So I'd run, hoping that when I came back in two years, when she was old enough, I could take her with me. I wouldn’t have been able to keep Bethy if I'd stayed.

When I'd been ready to throw away the life I'd been planning for the past year in order to be with her, my father had reminded me of just how much control he had over me. Bethy had stolen my heart the summer I met her at Rush's party. I had been eighteen years old and scared, because in three short months, one sixteen-year-old girl had become my sole concern in life. My father wanted something for me that I didn’t want, and I hadn’t been able to see my way out. I'd run like hell eight years ago from a life threatening to suffocate me. I hadn’t realized how badly she hated me until I’d returned to Rosemary Beach a little more than two years ago. The need to hold her and help her heal was so fucking strong. But just like she'd lost the will to live, she’d also lost weight. The shorts she wore had once been tight and cupped her perfect round bottom. Seeing her like this would break his heart.īethy swung her long dark hair over her shoulder as she stepped out of the clubhouse. Watching her pull away from life more and more each day was so damn hard. He’d been everything I should have been but wasn’t.Īnd we had loved the same girl.

He’d been the little brother I never had. He’d drowned saving her life when she'd wandered into the ocean drunk and got caught in a riptide. My cousin, my best friend, and the love of Bethy’s life. The last words she’d actually spoken to me -not screamed at me, because there'd been a lot of that- had been eighteen months ago on the beach when we'd lost Jace. She never looked at me, even though I wasn’t hiding the fact I was following her. Once she was safely in her apartment, I often sat parked across the road and watched her window until it went dark. So I followed her to work everyday, and I followed her home every night.

You were mine abbi glines