Page 9 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

“Max Tailor.”

I swung my eyes back to hers. “What?”

Her stare was aimed directly at the badge I wore around my neck, the one that would've been hidden from her view the night before. Her lips were open, mouth agape, her eyes soft but unblinking. “Oh my God. You're … you're Max Tailor .”

I eyed her through skepticism and a hearty dash of hope as I took a small step toward her. “Wait … I thought I was going crazy, but you’re … you’re Melanie ?”

It sounded insane. Of course she was Melanie. It was her name. But could she possibly be the Melanie? The one who had haunted my dreams for the past two decades? The one I’d longed for, yearned for, in the pit of my gut and the hollow of my heart?

Her lips spread into a wide, laughing grin as she nodded. “Oh my God, this is so wild. I thought it was you yesterday, but I didn't want to say anything in case I was wrong. But …” She gestured toward my badge. “Oh my God, I can't believe it’s you. I can’t believe you're here .”

Oh my God.

I looked at her, not knowing what to say, what to do, what to think .

It was her . It was really, undoubtedly her .

That woman I'd met at the repair shop over twenty years ago.

The one I'd shared a few wonderful hours with after my heart was broken for the first time.

It was her . She was here. And I couldn't begin to keep up as my mind raced, trying frantically to understand what that meant.

I shook my head, staring at her now like she might be a ghost, afraid that if I blinked, she might disappear from view to fade away, never to be seen again.

“Wild,” I agreed, remembering the nights I'd lain awake, wondering what might have happened if she hadn't been—

A whispered gasp escaped my lips as recollection seeped in.

“Luke,” I said, recalling the guy who'd fixed my old truck.

He had told me he had the same one. Her husband had driven the same truck.

Oh my God, how could I have ever thought it wasn't her?

She nodded, a familiar sorrow twisting at her lips. “Yeah.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said again, but now, it felt different. More personal somehow.

“Yeah,” she repeated, turning to find the cigarettes and lighter on my desk. They were right there, in plain sight, and she asked, “Do you mind if I smoke in here?”

“Honestly, I wouldn't care if I didn't have to share the place with the guy who works here during the day.” I gestured toward the single window. “I'm just gonna air the place out a little.”

As I undid the lock and pushed the old wood-framed window open a crack, my heart began to thud, rattling against my bones.

Every nerve in my body was pulled taut, threatening to shatter with every stuttered breath taken.

She was here . Standing just shy of three feet behind me in a space too small for one person, let alone two and a large dog.

It shook me to the core to realize I had known all along.

My mind might've doubted the possibility, but my body, my soul's reaction to seeing her … I knew .

And, holy fuck, she knew me .

She hadn’t forgotten.

“There you go,” I said, gesturing toward the open window.

“Thank you,” she said, sitting in the other chair and pulling a cigarette from the pack. She held it out to me. “Want one?”

I eyed the long white cylinder between her fingers. “Wow, I haven't smoked since my Army days,” I mused, reaching out to accept it and, in the process, brushing my fingers against hers.

She pulled back immediately and rubbed those fingers against her thigh before pulling another cigarette out.

“Were you a regular smoker?” she asked without missing a beat, despite her shaking hands.

I shook my head as I boldly reached out to pluck the lighter from where it balanced on her knee. “I only smoked when other guys were. It was a, uh, social thing, I guess, but I never hated it. Just wasn't my vice of choice.”

“And what was that?” she asked, watching as I placed my cigarette between my lips and brought the end toward the dancing flame.

I held out the lighter, its flame illuminating her face as she leaned in to set her smoke alight. I was transfixed, mesmerized by the way her eyes sparkled silver in the firelight, and I was too oblivious to the fact that I hadn't smoked in twenty years.

I coughed, pinching the cigarette between my fingers as I pulled it from my mouth and clasped a hand to my chest. Melanie sat back, amusement in her eyes as she took a drag, her lips twitching and deliciously threatening to smile.

“Booze,” I answered, my voice choked as I caught my breath. “That was my poison.”

The amusement was defused instantly. Her gaze dropped, her eyes blinking rapidly as she pulled in another lungful of smoke, this time shakier than the last.

“What is it?” I asked.

She shook her head quickly. “No. It's, um … it's nothing. I just …” She exhaled, a tendril of smoke escaping those rosy-red lips. “My husband was an alcoholic.”

Stupid , I berated myself as my jaw worked from one side to another before I replied, “Oh.”

Melanie's face reflected her sadness for only a moment before she smoothed out the creases on her forehead and between her brows with a forced smile and a flutter of her fingers as she brought the cigarette back to her lips. “It's fine. I'm being ridiculous. But …”

She looked at me and gave her head a shake, her eyes sparkling once again. “I just can't believe you're you .”

With my lungs settled, I brought the cigarette back to my lips and nodded, my gaze holding hers. “And you're you .”

We stared for a moment, smoking and blowing ribbons in the direction of the open window. Then the color of her cheeks deepened still, just as they had all those years ago, and she looked away with a nervous laugh.

“Honestly, I can't believe you even remember me. That was so long ago.”

“Of course I remember you,” I said simply, not wanting to add that, even if I'd lost all memory of everything that had ever meant anything, there was little chance of forgetting her.

But this situation was crazy enough. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her.

She pulled in a deep breath as she nodded slowly, watching every move I made.

Her eyes danced across my face, and an image of her twenty years younger flashed across my field of vision.

Her skin might've been more youthful then, softer.

Her cheeks a little rounder and full. But her eyes hadn't changed.

They still held that same maturity and wisdom she'd possessed all those years before, but there was something else now.

The evidence of an emotional scar, so deep that it had altered the chemistry of her soul.

And it only made her so, so, so much more beautiful, if for only the reason that she understood .

But, God, how I wished I could wrap my arms around her and protect her from every terrible thing that had carved those wounds in her heart.

She looked around the office and waved her hand in the air. “So, this is what you do now.”

“This is what I do,” I replied.

“You work the graveyard shift in a graveyard.” She flashed a pair of teasing eyes in my direction, and I smiled, nodding.

“You know, all those years ago, I never would've pegged you to be as weird and spooky as Charlie, but I think it takes a special kind of strange to feel okay in a cemetery at night,” she said cooly, a bit conspiratorially, and a hearty chuckle rumbled through my chest.

“What can I say?” I said with a shrug. “I prefer the clientele.”

“You mean the dead,” she pointed out before taking a long drag.

“Some of the best people I've known are dead.” Then I tipped my head with consideration and added, “And also some of the worst. But … they talk less than the living.”

“I don't know that I agree with that,” she replied. “I've actually found the dead to be pretty obnoxious. Some of them never shut up.”

“Have you tried asking nicely?” I offered, cautiously joking.

To my relief, Melanie smiled, and there was nothing sinister about it. “You didn't know my husband.”

“I know enough to know he was very lucky,” I said, immediately wondering why I'd said it at all.

My stupid, stupid mouth.

But Melanie didn't flinch at the flirtatious comment. She kept smiling and bringing her cigarette to and from her lips with slow, intentional movements. Then she laughed, and I cocked my head curiously.

She waved a hand, dismissing my confusion. “No, no, it's just …” She licked her lips, and her smile seemed to be aimed toward something other than me. Something farther away and just barely out of reach. “Luke was anything but lucky.”

“Hmm,” I grunted, lowering my gaze to watch the almost-depleted cigarette roll between my fingers. “I guess I know the feeling.”

“Ohh,” she drawled, and I looked up to see her waggling finger. “There's a lot to unpack there. Don’t forget you once told me you were a shit show.”

I chuckled, unable to contain my grin. “I remember.”

“Well”—she stood, disturbing Lido from his comfortable position at her feet—“we’ll have to catch up tomorrow.”

I reached for a glass tumbler on the desk and snubbed my half-smoked cigarette inside before offering it to her.

“Tomorrow?” I asked as she accepted the glass as an ashtray.

“We are going out, right?”

“O-oh, right, yeah,” I answered, nodding reassuringly. “I just, uh … I wasn't sure if—”

“Charlie spilled the beans about Stormy's little plan earlier,” Melanie confessed, punctuating the remark with a roll of her eyes. “I was so mad.”

I frowned as a sudden rush of shame worked its way up from the collar of my shirt. Melanie huffed an incredulous laugh as she pulled her leather jacket from the back of the chair she'd just occupied.

“I was actually coming here to threaten you and take back my cigarettes and lighter.”

Amused, I exhaled and smirked. “I see.”

As her arms disappeared inside the big sleeves, she nodded, as if to herself.

“Yeah. I had it all planned out too. I was going to ambush you, ask what the hell kind of psycho agrees to take advantage of a lonely widow he only just met, and hightail it out of here before you even knew what happened.”

“I would've been stunned,” I replied, the corners of my lips twitching with amusement. “But not surprised.”

Zipping up the jacket, she asked, “Oh, no?”

“Not at all. A widowed woman raising three boys on her own …” My cheeks puffed out with my exhale. “No, you wouldn't take shit from anyone, especially not some random guy you just met.”

She leveled me with a point of her finger. “You're damn right about that.”

“So, why did you change your mind?” I asked, standing to show her the door. Even if it was a handful of feet away.

I opened the door, and Lido whined from behind me. “Stay, boy,” I said as Melanie passed through the open door.

I closed it behind us to enter a quiet world, laden with snow and specters and the faintest whisper of wind whistling through the blackened branches above.

It would scare most people, I thought, but I found relief here.

Safety and peace. Things I'd never felt anywhere but in the comfort of my home with Laura.

Could I feel that again with someone else? I caught myself wondering. Could I feel that with her ?

“You're not a random guy,” Melanie said, pulling me from thoughts I shouldn't have been thinking.

“Just because we spent a few hours together twenty years ago doesn't mean you know me,” I argued as we approached her car.

“No, I guess that's true,” she conceded, opening the driver's door. “I don't want to interfere with your work schedule, and I want to be able to put my boys to bed. So, do you think you can pick me up around three?”

Without talking to Grace first, I wasn't sure I should commit, yet I found myself nodding and saying, “Whatever works for you.”

In the dim light burning from a single bulb beside the office door, she studied my face for a few resounding beats of my heart before an apprehensive smile tugged at her lips.

Her gaze floated to mine before pulling away, and if I thought she'd listen to the words, I would've begged her to look at me again just for the opportunity to stare at her for a few seconds more.

She rolled her lips between her teeth, her eyes aimed at my chest and the badge around my neck. “I just … can't believe it's you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “And I can’t believe you remembered me.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” I said.

She uttered a small noise, hardly a hum, as she nodded thoughtfully, then climbed into the car.

“Wait, what about your cigarettes and lighter?” I asked, bracing my hand against the roof of her SUV. “You want me to run in and grab them?”

She pressed a button that brought the engine to life, then swung her gaze back to mine for a heart-stopping moment.

There was a playful glint in her eye, fun and mischievous, and I wondered how a person could convey so many emotions with just their eyes alone.

And how she'd managed to remain this beautiful after all this time.

“No, I was right the first time,” she replied. “They're safer with you. I'll see you tomorrow, Max.”

“Tomorrow.”

The word was uttered as a promise. One I couldn't make years ago, no matter how much I'd wished. And as she pulled the car door closed and drove out of sight, I felt truly, overwhelmingly lucky for the second time in my life.

“If things were different,” I remembered her saying.

And now …

They were.