“Dude,” Jimmy muttered to himself, as Vicki compared her last one-night stand to this one. That one had been messy and unsatisfying. She and Rich were technically broken up, but she’d still felt guilty. It had felt unnatural. But in this country club tower, the sex felt right. Vicki didn’t feel like her old college self or even the new depressive western New York self who spent much of the year watching cable in chain hotels. She didn’t feel like a woman who needed to stare at a lamp to save her sanity. Tangled up with Jimmy Fee on the floor of a tower by the water, Vicki felt like one of her favorite V. C. Andrews heroines.

She moaned dramatically, almost making herself laugh as Jimmy Fee bounced on top of her, his body propped up by his hands, which remained flat on the floor next to her ears. With his dark hair flopping over his eyes and his lean, muscular arms, which were just about all Vicki could see in the dark, Jimmy was the embodiment of a V. C. Andrews hero or villain—attractive, overconfident, and cheating on a woman who was just downstairs. “What’s so funny?” he asked, panting.

“Nothing,” she said, also out of breath.

“Excuse this,” Vicki said, and then lived her dream by digging her nails into Jimmy Fee’s back. “Goddamn it!” he exclaimed, sounding stunned but pleased.

She was stunned just a few seconds later by a vicious, almost blinding fluorescent light.

Joe

Joe was embarrassed by the volume of his inhalations and exhalations.

He wasn’t out of shape—in fact he was more athletic in his forties than he’d been at twenty or thirty—but the run up the spiral staircase had winded him. And the sight of the intercourse on the floor in front of him now made him feel as though his lungs were filling up with fluid.

He’d started his sprint to the tower when, after twenty minutes, Vicki had failed to return to the reception tent. She’d gone on what was supposed to be a quick run to retrieve Hannah’s belongings, a task that should only have taken her five or ten minutes at the most, even if she’d stopped to use the bathroom. Joe and Bee began to worry that there had been an accident. Perhaps Vicki had stumbled in her heels or had fallen down the spiral staircase while struggling with Hannah’s bags. It was almost pitch dark outside of the tent near the tower, the moon blanketed by a thick layer of fog. It was entirely possible that Vicki was injured and was waiting for someone to help her. He shouldn’t have let Vicki make the trip alone, Joe thought as he ran out of the tent with Bee to find her.

Joe had imagined discovering Vicki in the grass, her ankle twisted. He’d fantasized that he would carry her to his car and back to his room in the historic inn. They’d make love under that horrendous print of the Naval Academy chapel that hung just a few feet above the pillows.