Page 48 of The Same Backward as Forward

It was so dark, I could barely see him, but I didn’t need to. We might as well have been playing The Close Your Eyes Game, because I couldfeelhis presence, his body,him.

“I can’t go with you,” I said. The words were almost lost to the wind, but nothing was ever lost on him.

“Why not?” he demanded. He kissed me to punctuate that question, but there was nothingdemandingabout the way he kissed. Every one of his kisses was an invitation, a love song, a beckoning to something more.

I was going to miss this—like a drowning person misses air, like I’d miss the sun if it went black.No regrets.

I didn’t answer his question. Back in the real world, he was a billionaire’s son. He was presumed dead. He was responsible for a tragedy that I didn’t even want him toknowabout, one I couldn’t bear thinking about myself.

Soaked and freezing, I shivered as he traced the lines of my jaw with his thumb. He nuzzled me, then took my hand and began pulling me back up the rocks, toward the lighthouse.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.What am I doing?WhathadI been doing all this time?

“For once,” Harry told me, his voice cutting through the downpour and to my core, “you get to be the patient.”

We made it to the lighthouse door.

“For once,” Harry said, pulling me through that door, out of the wind and out of the rain, “let me be the one who takes care of you.”

Chapter 36

There wasn’t much he could do inside the lighthouse, where there was no light, no heat, no blankets.

Nothing but Harry and me.

He started by wringing out my hair, then his fingers worked their way gently through it, ridding it of tangles one by one. His own soaking shirt came off next, and he pulled me back against him, the heat of his body spreading to mine as he gathered the fabric of my shirt and began wringing it out, too.

Water trailed down my neck, down my back, and his fingers traced the same path.

I wasn’t shivering anymore.

“You don’t have to do this,” I told him.

He didn’t have to speak for me to hear his response.Don’t you know, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward? I would do anything for you.

We made it back to the shack just before dawn. Jackson was there—and awake. The fisherman took one look at the two of us and grunted. Then he went to make himself scarce. “Damn kids.”

Giving Harry a warning look, I went after the man who’d pulled him from the water, all those weeks ago. “Jackson—”

“None of my business,” Jackson growled. He had to have noticed that I’d stopped leaving, had to have noticed the way Harry and I disappeared at night, but he hadn’t said a word about any of it to me.

“Itisyour business,” I said, and when Jackson didn’t reply, I forced myself to say something that I really didn’t want to be saying. “He’s better now. Not completely healed, but well enough to make it across the rocks.”

I wasn’t sure if Harry would ever becompletelyhealed. He’d certainly always have the scars.

“He’s leaving.” I looked away before I elaborated. “And so am I.” That was the first time I’d spoken the words out loud. “I’m leaving Rockaway Watch, Jackson—not with him, IknowI can’t go with him. But once I get him far enough away that we can make the call without it being tied back to you, once his father’s people come to get him, I’m leaving, too.”

Jackson stared at me, hard. For a moment, he seemed like the old Jackson Currie, like he might be considering shooting me, just for the hell of it.

“What are you doing, little Hannah?”

I knew somehow that he wasn’t talking about me leaving. He was talking about the rest of it.Harry and me.

I shook my head, refusing to even try to give him an answer to that question when I didn’t have one myself. I couldn’t tell him that I was dancing, living, letting go. I couldn’t begin to describe what it was like, for once in my life, to be seen, tofeel.

“I don’t know.” I could admit that. I had to. “But he’s ready.”

Jackson gave me a hard look. “Are you?”