Page 102 of Half the Summer's Night

But he couldn’t. He didn’t.

I may be a killer, but I saved her life. And that’s a treasure no one can ever take from me.

37

ABI

Two days later, I’m on a rented catamaran at sunrise. It jostles over the waves as we ride out on the Gulf, toward the horizon where the sun is just starting to come up. The sky is pink and grey and gauzy, like an old silk dress.

I sit at the bow, the wind blowing my hair back from my face, and think I should be traumatized by everything that’s happened. But I’m on a boat in the soft light of dawn, and all I feel is calm and happy. When Rowan led me out of that half-built beach house, his shirt draped over my shoulders to hide my nudity, I wasn’t sobbing the way I was when I left Blake Fletcher’s house that night ten years ago.

I was content. And I was safe.

Just like I’m content now.

“Charlotte says we’re almost to the spot.”

I twist around to find Rowan standing on the deck behind me, looking shy and handsome with his floppy dark curls and pretty dark eyes. I don’t know how I managed to look into those eyes so many times in the funeral parlor and not connect them to the Rowan Hanover—the man I thought was too good for me. The man I thought didn’tdeserveme.

All that time, he was watching me behind the mask of a monster.

“Do you need my help?” I ask.

“If you want.” Rowan slides into the plastic bench beside me and winds his hands through mine. “But me and Charlotte can take care of it.”

Charlotte. She had been waiting beside a rental car when Rowan led me out of the beach house. She smiled and held out her hand and said, “I’m Rowan’s half-sister. Let’s get you home.”

It’s been two days since then, and they’ve passed by in a blur.

They didn’t actually take me home, but to Rowan’s house, a tidy little bungalow set into the dunes. There, he washed me off in his bathtub, his touch shocking gently compared to his earlier brutality. Afterward, he pressed butterfly stitches from a First Aid kit into the knife wound and washed the other cuts with stinging witch hazel. Then he tucked me into his bed.

I slept.

When I woke up, he was still there, and he brushed my hair out of my eyes and said I didn’t need to worry about Kaplan, that Charlotte knew what she was doing, and it was all going to be taken care of.

And that’s what we’re doing now. Taking care of it.

Rowan squeezes my hand a little tighter and smiles at me, that shy, nervous smile I first saw when I went to the Palm Breeze Hotel. When I was investigating him, following the breadcrumbs he left to draw us together.

I’m still not sure what it says about me. But I’m not so confused that I didn’t get on this boat, or that I’m not going to sit beside him as the sea wind blows across my face, our hands intertwined.

“What are you thinking?” he asks suddenly.

I look over at him, the waves spraying us with a fine mist of seawater. “I was thinking about my investigation,” I say. “The letters.”

“Your dark whisperer,” he says.

“What?” I laugh a little, shifting toward him as the boat careens over the wave.

Rowan’s cheeks turn a soft red. “That’s what I was spelling out,” he says. “I was introducing myself.”

I stare at him, the dawn light softening his features. I like it, being able to look at him. To see his big, expressive eyes more clearly. The dimple in his left cheek. The crook in his smile.

“I thought it was about me,” I finally say. “Your darkness, maybe.” I fold my hand on top of his. “I thought you’d seen it. My darkness.”

He studies me. “You only have a little,” he finally says.

“Just enough.” I smile.