Page 94 of The Same Backward as Forward

She isn’t wrong. I move past her, ignoring my body’s objections. “It’s a good thing that I’ve never pretended to be trustworthy.”

She pulls even with me. “Do you ever pretend?”

It’s not a question I was expecting. “Now why would you ask me something like that?”

“You turned your guesses about my life into a fairy tale. Maybe I’m wondering about the stories you tell yourself.”

That Hannah is wondering about me at all is almost—but notquite—enough to keep my mind from going to my dreams.Once upon a time, there was a stone room and a voice and a maze. There was fire and water and dirt. There was bone. There was a knife in my hand. Once upon a time, I was complicit.

“I pretend all the time,” I tell Hannah. My body’s objections to our trek across the rocks intensifies, but I breathe through it.

“What are you pretending right now?”

“All kinds of things,” I reply. I’m pretending that my body does not hurt, that there is no pain, that the rest of the world does not exist.

I am pretending that the best and most precious things in life always last.

“Scared to give me a real answer?” This is Hannah, asking for somethingrealfrom me.

Maybe I am scared. Maybe you scare me, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.“Right now, I am pretending that absolutely nothing is going to happen between us when we reach the lighthouse,” I say, setting her up to reject me.

All Hannah has to do is say:That’s not pretending. That’s the truth. What happened last night won’t ever happen again.I wait for those words or something like them.

I wait, and I wait, as we make our way across the rocks.

“I think you’re in pain,” Hannah tells me, “and you’re pretending that you’re not.”

I gave her an opening to shoot me down, and she didn’t take it. And she’s right, of course—I am in pain. “Guilty as charged, madam—emphasis on the wordmadam.”

“A palindrome.” Hannah reaches the lighthouse first and presses her palm to crumbling stone. I lift my hand to place it next to hers, another perfect opportunity for her to shut me down,to make it very clear that neither one of us is going to be opening that lighthouse door tonight.

I wait for it.

And I wait.

And I wait.

And slowly, Hannah’s hand slides over stone and onto mine. For the longest time, she says nothing, and Idonothing except take in the feel of her hand on mine. Her skin and mine.One night was enough for me.I remind myself of that.Being whatever she needed was enough.

I can’t let myself want more. I cannot hope for more. Light is a dangerous thing for anyone who’s spent as long as I have in the dark.

“Last night,” Hannah says, “you didn’t take off your shirt.” Her hand moves tentatively to my chest.

“I’m tempted topretendthat’s an invitation,” I tell her.

“Maybe it is.”

I swallow. “Maybeisn’tyes.” I won’t do a thing without ayes. I won’t even hope.

Hannah presses her palm flat to my chest, her touch still light, and I know instinctively that she is thinking about my scars. There is nothing under my shirt that she has not seen dozens of times before, nothing that her healing hands have not touched.

But this feels different.

Everything about this feels different.

“Show me?” she says, and then her hand makes its way from my chest to the lighthouse door, and the next thing I know, we’re inside.

In the darkness, I peel off my shirt and drop it to the floor as she brings her hands, both of them, to touch my scars. My burnsare healed now, perhaps as much as they ever will be, and even though Hannah’s healing hands were the first part of her I ever knew,this feels different.