Page 25

He turned away and led me towards the water by my hand, stopping right where the sand shifted from dry to wet, and sat down, releasing his hold on me. I sat down next to him, sinking my toes into the soft sand. I don’t know how it escaped my attention until that very moment that I’d never put any shoes on.

I took a deep breath, pulling my knees to my chest, and rested my head on Greyson’s shoulder as we looked out at the black and white-tipped water colliding with the shore. He leaned his head down on mine, and we just sat there for a long while, in perfect silence.

How had he known exactly where to take me? Exactly what I needed to help calm my soul?

“Do you miss home?” were the first words he said to me that night. They took me off guard.

Did I miss home?That was a loaded question. I swallowed down my conflicting emotions. I barely had a grasp on what they were.

“Sometimes,” I told him honestly. “It just…it wasn’t all good, you know? So it’s hard to miss sometimes, too.”

I felt him nodding his head against mine. “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

I shrugged. I sort of did. More than I’ve ever wanted to. But it still wasn’t enough to get me talking.

He let the question drift away, picking up some sand between his fingers and sprinkling it down onto the top of my foot. He did it again, and again and again. Granules of sand piled onto my foot until it was buried, and then he started in on my other foot.

“You missing your mom?” he asked after a while, after both of my feet had disappeared under the sand.

I swallowed thickly. Let a minute pass, and then another.

“Yeah, I do,” I finally whispered at the ground, afraid to say it out loud. Afraid that if the Universe heard me say it, it would force me to unlock that space in my heart that so desperately wanted to cry for her. And for me. The child me, and the sixteen-year-old me, and for everything we’d lost. Because despite it all, despiteeverything, I did miss her. So much.

Was that sick? Did it make me sick? It felt like it. Because how could I miss someone who was hardly there in the first place? Someone who didn’t care about me. Someone who, at the very least, didn’t even care about my well-being? It made my stomach turn.

And there it was again, that darkness. Instantaneous. Fogging everything. I didn’t want to think about my mom. I didn’t want to think about how much I missed the ghost of someone who was never even real to begin with. It felt like my heart was making someone up, someone different, someone Ishouldbe missing who never actually existed, and it was confusing as hell.

“I’m not sure what to say other thanthat really fucking sucks.And I’m sorry…

“…I wish you weren’t sad,” he said, and I felt how much he meant it. Or maybe I was just feeling how much I wished I weren’t sad, too.

I turned to him, feeling his arm slip from my shoulders.How had I not realized his arm was around me?“Then let’s do something else—anything else, but talk about her right now,” I said. “I—I don’t want to think about it anymore today.”

“Yeah, of course,” he replied right away. “Here.” He dumped a pile of sand into my lap.

“What the…?” I looked down at the sand on my legs and then over at him with narrowed eyes, genuinely confused.

He shrugged, biting his lip as he smiled, before shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he laughed, “It was the first thing I thought of.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t help but smile. He was really good at that. Making me smile. Even when I didn’t think I wanted to.

He looked at me then, eyebrows raised, silently challenging me, and began scooping an even bigger pile of sand into his hands.

I pushed him down before he could dump it on me, throwing my leg over him and trapping his arms against his sides with my knees—and no, it didn’t escape my attention that I was straddling him, but there were more important things to be worried about. Like the way he’d somehow managed to flip me over onto my back in the next second without the use of his hands, for one.

I reached down at my sides and grabbed two fistfuls of sand, but he was quick. He threw himself on top of me, effectively stilling my arms. Even if he hadn’t wrapped his hands around them, I don’t think I could’ve moved.

I was breathing heavily, my chest expanding and contracting faster with the adrenaline that was coursing through me.

He released one of my arms and trailed his finger along the collar of my shirt.What was he doing?I swallowed thickly, watching as his eyes followed the movement of his hand. Watching as he slowly licked his lips. Watching as he brought his other hand up…

…and shoved a handful of wet sand down the front of my shirt.

“Oh my god! What is wrong with you?!” I screeched.

I grabbed my own handful of sand and slapped it onto the top of his head. It didn’t faze him. He shook it off like a dog, splattering it all over me.

“What are you doing?!” I yelled with my hands out in front of me, blocking the rainstorm of sand falling from his hair.