Page 41 of The Same Backward as Forward

Anything is possible when you love someone with no regrets.I couldn’t say a damn thing.

“No regrets, Hannah. Not about me. Not about him. Not about finally letting go. I need you to say it.”

My throat closed in around the words. “I can’t.”

“Don’t stop dancing, okay?”

I didn’t want to stop. What if I stopped, and she disappeared? “I’m not going to stop.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, you glorious thing, you—and not just about the dancing.” Her hair was going wild in the wind. How was it that the wind could touch her, but I couldn’t?

How was any of this possible?

“Don’t stop,” Kaylie told me fiercely. “Living. Loving. Dancing. Don’t you dare stop for me.”

I thought about Harry. About the lighthouse. About his lips on mine, the touch of our skin. “He killed you.”

“It was an accident.”

I felt the dam inside me break. I couldn’t stop dancing, couldn’t risk losing her again, so I let everything I felt—everything I’d been trying so hard not to feel—out into the dance.

“I always knew,” Kaylie said. Her movements were slowing, like gravity couldn’t touch her quite so much, like she was dancing on a different plane. “I knew that I was going to burn bright and fast. And, Hannah? If you loved me, you won’t waste a second of your life regretting a damn thing.”

I love you, I thought,present tense.

“No regrets,” Kaylie told me, her voice rising over the wind. “And, for the record, I like him.”

Him. Harry.“You would,” I scoffed.

“He sees you.” My sister had absolutely no mercy. “He makes you feel.”

I couldn’t form a single word, and the ghost of my sister went silent in a way that made me afraid that she was fading.

“Promise me,” she said, her voice fainter, “that you’ll keep dancing.”

Tears were streaming down my face. “Every day.”

“I’m sure you’ll get better at it eventually,” Kaylie said with faux seriousness, her voice solid again for the moment. “And don’t miss me too much, okay?”

This felt like good-bye.No.

“Absolutely no naming your children after me,” Kaylie continued, twirling, her arms held wide. “I mean, I guess a middle name would be okay—an homage, notKaylieexactly.”

I couldn’t bear to lose her again.

“No regrets,” Kaylie whispered. I could nearly seethroughher now.

I repeated her words back to her, hoping to pull her back to me: “No regrets.”

And just like that, she was gone. Just like that, I was alone, looking up at a sky where one star shined brighter than all the rest.

And just like that, I woke up.

Chapter 32

My legs weren’t entangled with Harry’s, the way they had been in my dream. I was lying on my side, and he was on his, my body curled slightly inward and his curved around it. My head was nestled against the spot where his shoulder met his chest.

I wondered if I was hurting him, and the sense of déjà vu that hit me then was almost as palpable as my memory of Kaylie dancing.No regrets.