Page 20 of The Same Backward as Forward

“Is that a riddle?” Harry’s tone made it clear: He liked riddles.

“You talk in your sleep.” I wondered if he could hear, in those calm words, the fury I still felt every time I came even close to thinking my sister’s name.

“I talk in my sleep.” Harry’s voice was every bit as dry as mine. “About a tree?”

“Apparently, it’s poisoned,” I said.

Harry’s reply was immediate, his tone as quiet and deep as it had been when he’d talked aboutwanting: “Aren’t we all?”

Chapter 16

On my next day off, I didn’t go back to the shack until well after sunset. When I got there, the metal door was slightly ajar.

It’s never open.My pulse pounded in my throat as I pushed the door inward to find Jackson trying to get Harry off the floor—trying, because Harry was wild-eyed and fighting.

The burns—he was going to tear through brittle, paper-thin flesh.Like hell you are, you bastard.“Stop.” The word burst from my lips.“Now.”

The prince of agony went suddenly, eerily still. “Do people always listen to you, not-nurse Hannah?”

Jackson looked like he was considering homicide. He wasn’t the only one. My heart was still jackhammering my rib cage. When I’d seen that open door, my first, subconscious thought had been that my family had found them.

Foundhim. “I don’t know.” I fixed my gaze on Harry. “I try not to say much.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Why was it that his damn lips seemed to have about a thousand different ways of twisting?

“Just fine,” I said.Until you.“Get in bed.” I crossed the roomto help Jackson, and together, we managed to get Harry back on the mattress.

“Far be it from me,” Harry quipped darkly, “to turn down an invitation from a pretty woman, especially when it involves a bed.”

I didn’t know which was worse: the fact that he was acting like I’dinvited him to bedor the way he’d saidpretty—like he meant it.

“You deal with this,” Jackson growled in my direction. Before I could reply, he stormed out of the shack.

I followed the fisherman as far as the threshold. “What happened?” I called, as Jackson Currie did his best to disappear into the night.

“Stubborn son of a bitch thought he could stand. And walk. He fell.” The outline of Jackson’s body was just barely visible in the moonlight. “And then he lost his damn mind.”

Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that Toby Hawthorne didn’t take failure well.

I stepped onto the porch, knowing I couldn’t go any farther, knowing that I couldn’t leave Toby—Harry, think of him asHarry—alone.

“Jackson, are we doing the right thing?” I hadn’t meant to ask that question, hadn’t meant to whisper those words into the night.

“Sometimes there’s no such thing as theright thing. Sometimes, there’s only Death and whatever you can do to hold her off.”

“Her?” I asked.

“Yeah, well,” Jackson grunted. “Death’s a real bitch.”

I went back in. Harry was lying perfectly still on the mattress, his long limbs marked by lines of tension, muscle after muscle. His eyes were closed. He looked like he’d been carved from stone, like a work of rage-fueled beauty called forth from graniteby a master. But when I got closer, I realized that his face was wet. I watched as a new tear—just one—carved its way from the corner of his eye down his cheek, all the way to the base of his jaw.

I wasn’t even sure he knew he was crying.From pain? From failure? From being trapped here?I didn’t say a word as I went about checking the damage he’d done, and neither did he—not until I was finished.

“I guess that’s it, then. I’m your captive for a little longer.”

The wordcaptivewas barbed, and I tried for just a moment to put myself in his shoes: no memory, in agony, and at the mercy of strangers.

“Trust me,” I said, “the second you’re well enough for us to move you, I will very happily dump you three hundred miles away and leave you to fend for yourself.”