I automatically grabbed his hair. The rain had washed it soft and silky. “It…it’s only a scratch…” I finally stammered. “I…it was a joke…I didn’t mean for you…”
His grip tightened when he realized I had lied. Then he jumped up as quickly as if he had superhuman powers. His fear-shadowed face hardened and his lips thin. For a moment, Ithought he was going to slap me, but he wordlessly grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly behind him.
“I…I’m sorry, Nathan…”
Under his withering gaze, flames would have turned to ice. “Oh, you will be, believe me!”
“What…why?” I stumbled clumsily after him, brushing against a tree and scraping my arm. “Do you think you can play the spoiled billionaire’s daughter who gets stubborn just because she doesn’t get her way?”
“No, I didn’t mean to…”
“Save your words! Your father can buy you anything, can’t he? You’ve always gotten everything you wanted! But I…I can’t be bought! Remember that!”
“I didn’t mean to buy you either,” I replied impatiently. “I simply meant to…”
“That I’d get scared? You wanted to punish me for not letting you get close to me. I may not have your education, I didn’t have private lessons at home, but I’m not stupid!”
“It was unfair, I know…”
He stopped abruptly. His eyes were like two gray crescent moons. “Unfair?” he asked, breathless with anger, his cheeks glowing green in the misty light of the forest. “You call that unfair?” Then he marched on without saying a single word and I didn’t dare open my mouth about it again.
He held on to me the entire way, and when we reached the hut, I sighed with relief, hoping he would come to his senses around the others, but he didn’t head for the stairs.
Instead, he pulled me toward the tiny shed next to the shack.
“What are you…?” The words caught in my throat as he fiddled with the rusty padlock on the shed with one hand.
“What are you doing?” I tried to tear my hands from him, but he had obviously expected it and gripped them tighter.
“I wouldn’t fight back if I were you.” Sounding worryingly calm, his nimble fingers worked the padlock until it opened. He was correct, of course, a test of strength would be pointless. “Now get in there!”
“In the shed?”
“Do you see anything else here?”
“Nathan,” I began but stopped when he shoved me in.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, but a vague fear flickered in my stomach that I had finally broken him. “Are you trying to punish me like a child by locking me in a dark room?”
He was standing in the doorway. “I don’t want to see you for the next twenty-four hours. But I don’t want to have to tie you up somewhere or fear that something will actually happen to you on the island.”
“You don’t want to see me? That’s not true. Of course you want to see me. And that’s not what this is about. All you want is revenge. Revenge for what my father did, revenge for my words. Revenge for this whole unjust world. Even revenge for your feelings for me. But that doesn’t solve anything and it doesn’t make anything better.” Tears crept into my eyes and I hated that he saw them. “Do you think a single person will come back from the dead if my father is in prison? Nothing will change. It won’t change anything inside you either. It will only make everything a thousand times worse.”
He stared at me from head to toe. “And your words just now—that was a kind of revenge itself.”
“I told you I was sorry. It… I didn’t think…”
“Didn’t think?” His eyes narrowed and then he slammed the door shut. I was standing in the dark, but it wasn’t pitch black since the shed was made of boards that weren’t quite flush with each other. I heard Nathan attach the padlock to the door. “You used my greatest fear to get back at me for something you knownothing about,” he replied angrily. “If you were a man, I would have beaten you.”
I had to swallow. “And because you can’t do that, you lock me up? Like in the beginning?” He hated me. Obviously, he did. What I’d done even if it lasted only seconds for him, had been unforgivable. “I’m sorry…” I whispered.
“Yeah, right,” he said mockingly, hitting the boards. “Now!”
From the musty shed, I heard him march away, and then I sank down onto a tarp on the ground and hit a board angrily before tears of anger welled up in my eyes. Anger at him but also at myself.
Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? I knew he was afraid to get involved with me.
And now you’re locking me up because you want me to hate you. That’s how it is! Because it will be easier for you.
