Page 88 of The Same Backward as Forward

“What was her name?” I can barely keep my balance on the rocks, but I will not fall. For the first time since I met her, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward needs me. “Your sister.”

Asking that doesn’t feel like prodding at Hannah so much as like sawing a rope, one of many that needs to be cut to set her free.

“Kaylie.” Hannah gives me my answer.

Kaylie.Something about the name or maybe the way she says it hits me in a place both deep and dark. I slip on the rocks and have to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying out, but by the time Hannah turns to face me, I’ve caught myself enough to ensure that Hannah the Same Backward as Forward will not feel like she has to reach out, to brace my body with her own.

“How did she die?” I know better than to gentle those words. Hannah does not wantgentlefrom me.

She turns back toward the lighthouse. “You didn’t win our wager. I don’t have to answer your questions.” She sets off again, and I match her speed.

Too much for my body.

Too fast.

Too far.

But it doesn’t matter. How could it when this is the only thing she wants and needs from me? “Have I ever given you the impression that I actually know how to lose?” I say, but what I mean isI am right here, Hannah. I will keep up with you if it kills me. I will be whatever you need me to be.

“You don’t have to tell me a damn thing, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” My voice is a rumble in my chest, an oath in the night. “But whatever you want to give me, I’ll take.”

I’m not just talking about right now—or just about her secrets. If she needs someone to hate, let it be me. If she needs someone to listen, I will hang on her every word. If she wants to scream but can’t, I will scream my own throat raw.

And if all I can do for her is make it across these damn rocks to that lighthouse, then I don’t care how much it hurts.

My jaw clenches. I keep going. And going. And then one wrong move sends me stumbling. Hannah’s hands catch my arm just above the elbow. By all rights, we should both end up on the ground, but she keeps us vertical through sheer force of will, her body bracing mine.

Even once I regain my footing, she does not let go.

I stare at her, at that face I know so very well, and she stares right back at me, both of us shrouded in darkness, the moon giving me the only light I need. I want to kiss her, but even I am not that much of an ass—no matter how she’s looking back at me.

“You’re an ugly crier,” I murmur, the quip and its disruption to this heightened moment as much of a self-sacrifice as I can ever remember making. “For what it’s worth.”

Nothing about her is ugly to me.

“How’s your pain?” Hannah asks, dropping my arm but failing to take a single step back.

“Irrelevant,” I reply. “How’s yours?” Her pain is far less tolerable to me than my own.

“Can you do this?” Hannah demands. She’s talking about our trek to the lighthouse, but in my mind, she’s asking me if I can do the right thing, if I can pull back, if I can break this moment between us by taking the first step away.

I fix my gaze on the lighthouse and do exactly that. “Agony only matters if you let it.”

I focus on the hike, on taking her cue. This isn’t about me. None of this is about me.

“My mother has cancer.” Hannah’s voice is steady, unmarked by the emotion that a sentence like that would evoke if her mother were someone else. Hannah has never confirmed the fairy tale I spun for her, but I am certain that I was not wrong about the evil queen. “I’m not supposed to know,” Hannah says, pushing on, “but I do.”

“I take it you’re also not supposed to care?”

“Stop it,” she snaps. “Stop acting like I’m…”

“Like you’reyou?” I know she won’t like that. She never likes thinking of herself in heroic terms, as an empathetic person, as a resolutely moral one.

“You don’t know me.” Hannah says the words like an indictment of everything that I am, like she would wish me into nothingness if she could.

She is a liar.

Perhaps it would be a kindness to let her lie to me tonight, but even at my best, I am not that kind, and I cannot shake the feeling that mercy is not what she wants from me.