Page 83 of The Same Backward as Forward

“Eat your damn eggs,” Jackson grunts.

“I don’t want eggs.”

“You can’t have what you want.”

Iknowthat, but rather than admit it, I throw down a gauntlet of my own. “Why?” It couldn’t be clearer that the fisherman knows something—about me, about who I am to Hannah.

With a shake of his head, Jackson lifts a scarred hand to the side of my face. “This doesn’t end anywhere good, son.”

I am not your son.Even I’m not a big enough bastard to say that to the man who told me he lost his child at three days old. “I don’t remember asking for your advice,” I bite out instead.

“If you care about her, you’ll stop.”

If?This time, I don’t quell the urge to hit back. “You loved her mother. And she’s the one, isn’t she, your Eden?” Another theory, another test. “She’s the monster who taught Hannah not to flinch.”

“Hannah’s mother is none of your business.” Jackson gives me one last warning look. “Eat your eggs.”

Chapter 18

Hannah greets me by smacking a sticky note onto my forehead: the solution to the circle puzzle. It sticks.

“And here I’d made a bet with myself that you wouldn’t solve it until tomorrow,” I tell her. That’s a damn lie. I am the last person on earth who would ever underestimate her. I don’t even need to check her answer as I pluck the note from my forehead.

Instead, I fold it in half, my fingers itching to fold it into something for her. I don’t, though, because I can still hear Jackson’s warning.You need to stop.

A better man probably would.

Hannah nods to the note. “What’s that supposed to mean?Why hide when you can run.”

It means that youshouldrun—not just from your family but from me.I don’t say that. I accuse her of being an expert at hiding, and the two of us sink into a game of Back And Forth.

She tells me it’s not a crime to be reserved.

I tell her that I know that she feels things—deeply—and that watching her keep her emotions locked down feels like watching stormwater rise and rise behind a dam. I say that she’s grieving. I say that she’s frightened.

I imply that what she’s really frightened of is me.

She tells me that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Back And Forth.“My life is four walls, this bed, a bearded fisherman with questionable survivalist instincts and horrific taste in interior design, andyou.” Humor does little to mask the truth in what I have just said. Sheismy world. “Do you know what I’ve discovered about myself with all that spare time? I’m hungry, Hannah. My brain drinks in every last detail of my surroundings. Of you.”

She steps back, but I don’t let up.

“You have ways of going elsewhere in your mind. It’s like you’re a dreamer trapped in a cynic’s body, a cynic’s life. Your hands are never still but always steady.” I’m telling on myself with every word, and I know it, just like I know that I am giving her an excuse to run.

Maybe I’m a better man than I give myself credit for. Maybe it would be enough for me to know that she’s broken free of this place, of the things that tie her down. Or maybe I’m just a masochist who really, truly cannot stop. All I know for certain is that her lips are incapable of forming a thin, harsh line.

All I know is that no one has ever kissed her the way I would, if she let me.

You can’t have what you want.Jackson’s words echo through my mind, taunting me, because I know damn well that he’s right.

She hates me.

She hates me.

She hates me.

And I can’t stop. “Shall I tell you a story, Hannah? A fairy tale?” I tell her about a princess, a wicked queen. I cast Princess Hannah as a light in the darkness.Selfless. Kind.