Wrecked Book 3 by Rachel Hanna

Chapter 1
     
    “It’s been a long time, Adrianna.”
    Miranda stood in the open doorway bundled up in a dark pea coat and polkadot rain boots. Her hair hung about her shoulders, long and parted down the middle. She was pale—paler than she had been the last time I’d seen her—and there were dark, purplish circles beneath her dark green eyes. She was a mixture of death and a woman haunted.
    I knew at least one of those things she actually was.
    “Miranda,” I said, shock freezing me in place while fear made me want to run and be anywhere but here. “I… I didn’t think you’d come here.”
    “Didn’t think ?” she asked, her voice icy and her expression a study in pale anger. “Or hoped that I wouldn’t?”
    “Miranda, I...” I didn’t know what I wanted to say. It was true, I had been hoping that she just wouldn’t come. That she would simply disappear from my mind once again. Instead, she was here on my doorstep staring me down with those icy, haunted eyes. “I thought you were in Maine,” I finally said lamely.
    She gave a bitter laugh. “Haven’t you heard?” she asked me, her tone snide. “You can’t run away from your problems. Or your nightmares.”
    I cringed, remembering my own nightmares. I’d been dreaming of Beck for a long time now, her last moments haunting my subconscious thoughts when she finally started drifting from my conscious mind. My memories of that awful night were enough fuel for a lifetime, but at least they were definite. They didn’t change, at least not the facts, and the nightmares never strayed far from the awful truth.
    But Miranda wasn’t there. Her imagination had to supply her with what happened that night. It had to piece together what really happened, and I knew how that worked. Our minds were capable of imagining things that were always going to be worse than the truth—if that was even possible.
    At least I knew .
    Shaking my head, I tried to explain as best I could. “Miranda, I know how hard things must have been for you—” I started, but she wasn’t going to let me off that easily.
    “You don’t know anything!” she accused, pointing a bony finger at me. “You have no idea what I’ve been through! I lost my sister . And you killed her.”
    My chest constricted and I found it hard to breathe. I’d been waiting for this moment for a long time, dreading it with every breath I took, but I’d almost managed to convince myself that it would never come, that I had gotten away with murder and wouldn’t have to pay any toll.
    I should have known better.
    “I’m so sorry,” I tried again, my voice hoarse with the threat of tears. I held them back. They wouldn’t do me or her any good. “I can never take it back,” I murmured, trying to keep my voice steady. “I wish every day that I could.”
    Her eyebrows rose at that statement. “Every day?” she asked, skepticism clear in her voice. She looked around the hall of the house I shared with my roommates. For the first time, I felt self-conscious about how nice it was. Expensive looking. I split the rent between the three of us and it was being paid for by financial aid on my part, so it wasn’t as though I was just rolling in money, but as she scanned over the hardwood walls and the large living room, I realized that it looked a lot like I was.
    And it made me feel ashamed.
    “You spend every day in this beautiful house, attending this prestigious college, with all your new friends,” she said, putting venom in each emphasized word, “thinking of my dead sister? Because it seems a lot like you’re enjoying yourself just fine. In fact, it looks like you’re living the life Rebecca should have been living.”
    That last part cut deep. She was right. This was the life Beck was supposed to be living. She had always been a good kid, a smart kid. She got the grades, despite my party-going, negative influence. She was the one who had always planned on attending a major University and working