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“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he said weakly.

Sarah gave a soft, secret smile from where she stood in the shadows. She looked just like he remembered, exactly the same as when he’d last seen her struggling to hold back tears in the apartment they had shared.

Dark hair, dark eyes, freckled skin. She was tall and thin, with barely enough ass to make a proper cushion (her words). She had always said she wasn’t beautiful. Always insisted he was wrong when he tried to argue otherwise. After a while, he’d decided she must be blind because when she smiled… when she smiled, she made the whole damn room light up.

Sarah.

He craned his head to see her, watching as she took a step, then another, bare feet moving whisper-soft through the dirt without stirring it.

Everything else faded as she knelt beside him, the folds of her dress pooling around her. He had always loved it when she wore white. Even more so when he knew she was wearing it for him.

“Kit,” she said with a gentle smile, brushing the hair from his face with equally gentle fingers. For a moment, he deluded himself into thinking he could feel it. “Why do you keep dreaming about me?”

Kato let his head drop. That small, stupid hope that had flared to life died just as quickly. “You’re not real,” he rasped. He wasn’t dead, and she hadn’t waited for him.

“I’m just a memory,” she said. “Something your mind conjured when you couldn’t bear to be alone.” Those phantom fingers continued to stroke his head. “But you already knew that. The same way you already know why you came here. You’re just too afraid to admit it.”

He choked on a laugh, the pain crushing in on him like a vice. “I came here out of a misguided sense of altruism. The kid looked so pathetic… it made me forget just what he is.”

“And what is he?”

Kato spat, “He’s the little shit who stole everything.”

Her fingers paused. “You make it sound like he came into this world just to spite you.”

Kato’s laugh was sharp, humorless. “Didn’t he?”

“No one asks to be born.”

His jaw flexed. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t undo what he took. It sure as hell doesn’t bring you back.”

Sarah’s eyes found his, and Shards… he had always loved her eyes. Slightly uptilted; brown with little flecks of laughing green.

“Yousent me away, Kit,” she said, soft but firm. Amused. “If you need to hate him, fine. But pick a real reason. One of his failures. Not yours.”

That stung. Then again, the truth always did.

“Why are you here, Sarah? Did you come just to rub it in? To tell me that you could never love the man I am now?”

“Is that what you want me to tell you?”

It’s what sheshouldhave told him. That letter in his pocket became just a little heavier. Why had he kept it? Why had he let a little slip of paper uproot his entire life just so he could come to an island that was nothing but mud and muck?

“I’m happier without you.” The words made his stomach turn, but he forced a smile. “I fuck who I want. I go where I want. I do and say whatever I want. You always tried to make me better.Kinder. You wanted me to use my station to try to change a world that doesn’t want to be changed. But I found my freedom. I’m free now, and I’m happy, so you can just piss off.”

Placing a hand on either side of his head, Sarah leaned forward until they were nose to nose. “Liar.”

“Judgmental bitch.”

Sarah laughed, smiling that damn smile that cut right through him. “Meanness, anger, and jest—that’s always how it is with you, isn’t it? When you’re afraid, you lash out—you joke, you snarl—anything but admit it.” She touched his face, and he felt it. He swore he felt it. “Oh, Kit…”

“Don’t call me that.”

But she whispered, “MydearestKit,” as her fingers brushed gently down his cheek. “Why are you so afraid?”

“I’m not,” he insisted.

“But youare. You’ve given your loyalty to all the wrong people. Who’s to say it won’t happen again? Who’s to say it hasn’t already? What is it about you, you wonder, that makes it so easy for others to use you—then cast you aside the second you’ve served your purpose?”