Page 112 of The Same Backward as Forward

“I oughtta shoot you.”

The predawn sky is hazy, but I can make out Jackson’s shotgun just fine.

“I’d sayplease do, but I’m not allowed to die.” My voice feels like nails in my throat.

“Won’t die if I only nick you.”

“She’d just have to heal me again.” Air on my wounds was torture once. Talking about Hannah, knowing that I might never see her again, is worse.

“You told me you weren’t going to hurt her.” Jackson gives me no quarter. “How do you think she’s going to feel when she wakes up and you’re gone?”

“You knew,” I accuse, “and you let me love her anyway.” That isn’t his biggest sin, and we both know it. “You knew, and you let me make her fall in love with me.”

“Bullshit. No one canmakea Rooney woman do a damn thing.”

I think about Hannah telling me that she’d hated me until she loved me, that she’ll love me until the end.

“You could still keep that promise of yours,” Jackson tells me, his voice quiet and fierce. “Hold on like hell.”

I can’t—

It isagonynot to, but Jackson must know that agony is what I deserve.

“She won’t let me turn myself in. Her family will kill me if I do.” I need him to understand why I have to go, because I know that Hannah never will. “I’m amurderer, but she doesn’t see it that way, and she doesn’t understand that sooner or later, my father will realize that I am alive, and he will find me.”

That is what it means to be a Hawthorne, to beTobias Hawthorne the Second.

“And with a wave of his hand,” I continue hoarsely, “the billionaire will make this all go away, the way he always does.” I take a step toward Jackson. “Is that what Kaylie deserves?”

I know whatIdeserve.

Jackson stares at me hard for a very long time. “Someday, son, you’re going to look back on this moment—maybe it’s a year from now, maybe it’s twenty—and you’re going to realize that you had a choice between loving her and hating yourself. And you chose wrong.”

He lowers his shotgun to his side, the barrel pointing toward the ground, and I know that this is good-bye.

“Promise me,” I say, “that you’ll make sure she leaves. She’s ready to, and she needs to be long gone before my father figures out that I’m alive.”

Jackson is silent. Knowing the man as I do, I take that silence as assent.

“There’s something hidden under your floorboards,” I continue, my voice shaking more than I would like. “A metal seal, the size of a coin. It’s—”

“Don’t need to know,” Jackson says.

Something in my chest loosens just a little, just from hearinghis voice. “Keep the seal. Never tell anyone you have it, but if my father ever does find Hannah, if she needs leverage over him—”

“I said I don’t need to know.”

He’ll leave the seal exactly where it is. “I have to go.” That’s as close to good-bye as I can come, and Jackson doesn’t say a damn word in reply. I turn, and I start walking away, and I make it five or six steps before I hear a gruff and quiet voice.

“Harry?”

That isn’t my name, and we both know it, but I pause anyway.

“I’m glad,” Jackson says behind me, “that I got more than three days this time.” He takes a heavy breath. “Horrible boy.”

Chapter 38

The days pass slowly, but the months are a blur. I have a talent, it turns out, for disappearing. I run, and I hide, and I survive, more or less. I eat only what I have to, drink only what I have to, sleep only until Hannah appears in my dreams, and then I jerk myself suddenly awake.