Page 12 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

I was a different man now than I had been years ago when I first made Melanie’s acquaintance.

I was young then. Confident. Untouched by impairment, trauma, and grief.

Back then, I’d been awkward, instantly smitten, but I hadn’t been scared .

Not like I was now, sitting beside her in the cab of my truck as we drove toward the heart of Salem.

Holy shit, I was absolutely terrified. I was scared of hurting her.

Of hurting myself. Of saying the wrong thing. Of overstepping.

But I thought, most of all, I was scared that I would find none of that was going to happen at all.

The most frightening thing to me was that we would likely enjoy each other’s company, just as much as we had twenty years ago.

But now, we were both alone, both single, and yet … I’d still have to say goodbye.

We hadn’t even started, and I was already terrified of letting her go. Again.

“Can I put on some music?” She gestured toward the touch screen in my truck.

“Oh, sure,” I said. “I have satellite radio, or if you want something specific, you could use my phone.”

“Oh, I’m not picky,” she said, already reaching over to tap her finger against the screen. “I can just hear you thinking over there, and I need something to drown it out.”

I smiled. The playful jab felt good, natural. So, why couldn’t I untie these knots that had formed in my gut?

“We’re not strangers, Max,” Melanie said gently as she scanned the stations. “I know we only spent a few hours together that night, and I know it’s been decades since then, but I felt like I knew you. Didn’t you feel that way too?”

I released a breath, feeling some of the tension ease from my shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, gruff. “I did.”

“So, then go with that. We’re old friends, catching up. That’s all.”

She settled on a classic rock station. George Harrison’s “What Is Life” played through the speakers, halfway through the song, and I glanced across the cab to find Melanie looking out the window casually, tapping her fingers against the ledge and bopping her head to the music.

Her hair was pulled back, as it’d been last night, but this time, it was in a braided twist that looked more complicated than it probably was.

My eyes drifted over the smooth length of her neck to the collar of her sweater.

A gold chain sparkled there, lying over her collarbone.

A pendant hung from the chain, something I couldn’t quite make out.

It was probably a gift from her husband, I assumed, and a shameful tinge of jealousy heated my blood before I could stop it from happening.

Melanie looked over and followed my gaze. Her fingers touched the pendant.

“My mom gave it to me,” she said without prompting.

“Ah,” I said, looking back to the road and driving toward nothing in particular. “I couldn’t make out what it was.”

“It’s just a silly little thing,” she said, rolling the charm between her fingers.

There was reluctance in her voice, and I backpedaled.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it,” I said, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I was just asking. No big deal.”

George Harrison stopped singing, and the DJ’s voice filled the cab.

Melanie bit at her bottom lip, looking out the window and twisting the pendant between her fingers, until an iconic guitar melody streamed from the speakers and we both turned to stare at the screen, as if it had some nerve playing this song at this moment.

My heart stopped as Eric Clapton started to croon, romantic and sweet, and time slingshot me back to a bar in Connecticut, when I had wanted nothing more than to ask a pretty girl to dance with me, to kiss her on a dingy floor as we swayed to the music.

Fuck, what I would give to truly be back there.

When the words flowed easily and my heart was open and the only pain I’d truly known was learning that Laura had met someone else.

Laura .

I lifted one hand to rub a spot on my forehead, as if to soothe a part of me that longed to linger in the past, locked in a musty old cellar with ghosts and the things that should’ve been.

“We’re old friends,” I said, almost as if I was thinking aloud.

“Yeah,” Melanie agreed quietly.

I let go of a deflating breath and gave my head a quick nod before saying, “Then tell me stuff. Tell me everything that has happened since that night.”

I turned down Washington Street as a slideshow of memories flickered through my mind. All the things I could tell her about if she cared to listen … and I hoped she would.

“That’s a lot of stuff to tell,” she said.

“Yeah, I bet it is,” I said, nodding. “But if you’re willing to tell me, I’m willing to listen.”

I turned the truck into a parking lot off Washington. I wasn’t sure where we were going just yet, but for a day in February, it wasn’t all that cold, and I thought maybe a walk wouldn’t be such a bad idea. To wander around, get some air, see where the day took us.

Honestly, all I wanted was just to be with her. Anything else felt like an unexpected gift.

***

Melanie walked through the city like she’d never been here before, face upturned and lips smiling. Like a tourist in awe of the architecture and history.

We walked for a few minutes in the unseasonably warm weather before I finally chuckled and said, “I thought you had been here before.”

She turned away from admiring another old storefront to smile over her shoulder. “Not like this,” she said.

I huffed an acknowledging sound and looked at my feet.

Laura and I had brought the girls into Salem a few times, though not as often as tourists would think.

I remembered Sid had once said he'd never been to the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, despite having lived in New York until his mom came to Massachusetts to visit his uncle—her lover—and never left.

At first, I'd thought that was wild, having two of the country's most iconic structures in your backyard and never visiting them.

People all over the world traveled to see them.

But could I say I'd ever been to Plymouth Rock?

And in all my years of working in one of our nation's most famous cities, I could count on one finger how many times I'd visited the Salem Witch Museum.

Maybe we should've taken the girls. Maybe we should've appreciated it more, being so close to so much history.

“Yeah,” I muttered, looking up to swing my gaze over this bit of Salem's downtown, seeing that it really was beautiful. “Neither have I.”

My eyes dropped back down to witness more of her astonishment, only to find hers on me.

She smiled, and in that moment, the din of the passing cars faded to nothingness.

The backdrop of the city blurred, a muddied canvas of brimstone and brown.

On that sidewalk, her eyes danced from mine to my mouth and back again, and my heart thundered in my useless ears.

I could've kissed her, I wanted to kiss her, I needed to …

but much like that night twenty years ago, something was holding her back, so I, too, was held back, keeping my feet firmly beneath me instead of edging closer to hers.

I swallowed against the torrent of desperation flooding my bones and asked, “Are you hungry?”

She sucked in a tremulous breath and licked her lips—the unintentional little tease—and replied, “I didn't think I was, but … I might actually be starving.”

Without tearing my eyes from hers, for fear that she might disappear and prove that I had actually gone insane, I gestured with a weak hand. “There's a pub over here, O'Neill's. They're not great, but—”

Melanie laughed abruptly, her eyes glittering beneath the winter sunlight. “Wow, you're already selling me on this place. Please, keep going.”

I snorted. “No, no, hear me out. They're not great as a whole. Like, if you want some Irish food, this isn't where you wanna go. But they make a Guinness stew that's pretty decent—”

“Oh, thank God. It's actually very funny you say that because I woke up today thinking, You know, I could really go for a decent Guinness stew right now .”

I laughed, my shoulders bouncing with the sound as I wiped a hand over my mouth, knowing damn well I was blushing like a little kid. Humiliated, embarrassed, but it was so good , and I couldn't remember the last time I’d felt like that. I couldn't remember the last time I’d felt good. Happy. Alive.

“Okay, let's forget the decent stew,” Melanie said as I caught my breath and ran my palm over the top of my head. “What is your favorite thing to eat here?”

I tipped my head, perusing the library of choices in my mind. “Wow, okay.”

“Like”—she held out her hands, then laid them against my chest, and, holy fuck, my heart needed a moment to remember how to beat—“if you could take me anywhere right now, where would it be?”

“Anywhere?”

She nodded as her hands—much to my disappointment—dropped back to her sides.

“Hmm … actually, if I could take you anywhere , it wouldn't be here.”

“Okay,” Melanie said, laughter in her voice and a glimmer in her eye. “So, if you could take me anywhere in the world , where would it be?”

We began to stroll down the sidewalk again, my hands tucked deep in my pockets, if only to keep them from grabbing hers. And I thought about the greatest meal I could remember eating.

“So, I had this buddy in the Army. His name was Greg, and at our basic training graduation, his parents took us all out to this place in Columbia, near Fort Jackson.” I sighed, noticing that I'd begun walking closer to her, the sleeve of my coat brushing against hers.

“They told us to get whatever we wanted, which was wild because it wasn't like these people were rich or anything. But it was about celebrating their kid and his friends, and … I dunno … that concept was crazy to me at the time, I guess. But—”

“There's a lot to unpack in that statement,” Melanie interjected, astounded.

I barked an incredulous chuckle. “Oh, you have no idea.”