Page 38 of The Same Backward as Forward

Harry didn’t reply immediately. I wasn’t sure if he was struggling over the rocks or respecting the weight my sister’s name held for me. For the first time since we’d stepped outside, I turned around.

Even in the moonlight, I could see the strain along the muscles of his neck. This wasn’t easy, but he was doing it.

“How did she die?” Harry asked me. His tone was neither harsh nor gentle. It simply was.

You killed her.I turned back toward the lighthouse and kept going, taking my speed up a notch. “You didn’t win our wager,” I said. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

The next thing I knew, he was beside me, matching my speed, which was the last thing he should have been doing.I need to slow down.It wouldn’t do either of us any good if I injured him further. But somehow, I couldn’t bear to pull back.

And somehow, his own movements a little jagged, he kept up. “Have I ever given you the impression that I actually know how to lose?”

He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He wasToby Hawthorne.But to me, he was Harry, and he wasright there, and I didn’t want to be alone.

“You don’t have to tell me a damn thing, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward. But whatever you want to give me, I’ll take.”

I have never been disappointed inyou.

Whatever you want to give me, I’ll take.

This was a mistake—coming to see him tonight when I was so raw; dragging him out here; forcing him to push himself this hard. It was all a mistake, one I just couldn’t stop making.

Beside me, Harry stumbled. I caught him. My hands latched on to his arms, just above the elbows. I held him up with strength I hadn’t even realized I had. After a breath or two, he regained his footing, and the tension against my hands subsided, leaving the two of us staring at each other through the moonlight.

Me and the rich boy who’d killed my sister and didn’t even know it.

I felt his gaze like the lightest of touches, like the wind that caught my hair, just like in his sketch.

“You’re an ugly crier,” he told me softly, “for what it’s worth.”

I shook my head at the sheer audacity of him—always. “How’s your pain?” I asked, dropping my hold on him.

“Irrelevant,” he replied. “How’s yours?”

“Can you do this?” I pressed, refusing to tell him a single damn thing aboutmypain.

Harry smiled a small and crooked smile. “Agony only matters if you let it.” He took a step—and then another.

We hiked in silence, the two of us across those rocks. The silence held until we were well over halfway to the lighthouse. For reasons that I couldn’t even begin to pinpoint, I was the one who broke it. “My mother has cancer. I’m not supposed to know, but I do.”

“I take it you’re also not supposed to care?” His tone made me think of the fairy-tale version he’d spun of my life, the way he’d described me.

“Stop it,” I said. “Stop acting like I’m…”Selfless. Kind. Here tonight for any reason other than a masochistic need to self-destruct.

“Like you’reyou?” Harry said, his voice echoing over the rocks toward the ocean.

“You don’t know me,” I told him harshly.

“You don’t believe that.”

The problem was that he was right: I didn’t. “My mother’s a murderer,” I said, hoping to shock him. “Many times over.”

“Has she ever hurt you?” Harry’s voice sounded different: low and almost too controlled. That was the voice of someone who wanted to hurt anyone who’d hurt me.

This is a mistake. Every part of it. Every damn moment.It was a mistake, but we were getting closer and closer to the lighthouse,and there was no turning back. There had been no turning back from the moment he’d opened the door.

“My mother has never laid a hand on me,” I said quietly. “She’s never had to.”

“I think… I think I might know what that’s like.” Beside me, Harry stopped walking. His hair was long enough now to almost fall into his eyes. In moonlight, it looked closer to black than dark reddish-brown. After a long moment, he started moving again, taking one step, then another. I forced myself to walk on, too.