“I used to spend all my time here as a kid. I could literally sit here and watch all the little creatures all day and not get bored.”
He hummed and leaned in, kissing the side of my neck. “I could picture that.”
“Can you picture me getting stuck there,” I said, pointing to a very tall rock with carvings all over the side, “when the tide came in? Because that happened twice. The first time, my mom made my brother use a pool noodle to wade out and get me. The second time, she left me there.”
He stiffened, then sighed. “Were you scared?”
“Not really. I kind of hoped that they’d get tired and leave me, and I’d get to live out here and survive on the fish I caught.”
He snorted and shook his head. “There’s a book like that.”
“I know.” I knew the book. I was obsessed with it growing up. “I always read it on the way here and hoped that it would become me. I’m not sure how many kids fantasized about their parents abandoning them on an island.”
He said nothing. But really, there was nothing to say to that. It was fucked-up.Iwas fucked-up. He tightened his arm around me and hooked his chin over my shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said after a beat. “We’re supposed to be forgetting.”
Atlas hummed, then reached out a hand and pointed. “Crab.”
It was a pretty decent-sized one climbing out of one of the pools. It meandered along like it didn’t have a care in the world. It was weird to be envious of it, but I was, though I wouldn’t trade the feeling of Atlas pressed against me for the fucking world.
“Can you make it up to that rock?” I asked when the crab dipped back into the water.
He hummed and tilted his head to the side. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good.” I took his hand, stopping only a few feet away to lean down and pick up an empty, broken piece of a clamshell before leading him the rest of the way.
The rocks were bumpy but relatively flat, and the larger rock had something like steps formed from people climbing up to the top for years and years. I went first, then offered him a hand, which he took to make his way toward the top, leaving his crutch at the bottom.
There was a flat space that overlooked the side of the cave and the ocean. It wasn’t high up, but it felt like it from that perch.
“Gorgeous,” he said softly.
I nodded, then looked down. There were names carved over names carved over names. There wasn’t enough space for all the new people, but it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.
Childish scrawl at the very edge, theRa little shaky, theYANattempting to be something like cursive because I’d been practicing it in school. Scooting over, I traced the letters with the tip of my finger.
Back then, I hadn’t realized how awful my home life was. At least, not externally. Something deep inside me might have known that I was in a bad place because I had been so fucking sad as a child. But I hadn’t realized it until it was almost too late.
“That’s you, isn’t it?”
I glanced over my shoulder and, for a moment, got lost in Atlas’s eyes. They were so pretty. Light brown with a black ring around the irises. He shifted closer and hooked his chin on my shoulder as I turned my gaze out back toward the ocean.
“I was eight when I put my name here. I was learning cursive in school.”
Atlas huffed a soft laugh against my ear. “Your handwriting was a lot better than mine back then.” He traced a touch down my arm, then plucked the broken shell out of my hand.
Clearly, he understood why I’d brought it. Shifting to the side, he moved around until he found a blank space at the top of the stone. It likely had names on it before, but the weather wasn’t very kind to people leaving their marks in packed sand.
Stretching his legs out, he sat sideways, then began to carve. I watched as his arm moved, an almost hypnotic pattern, up and down, up and down, as he drew the line for theA. Then theT. Eventually, theLAS.
He didn’t stop there.
He drew the smallest heart, and beneath that, my name. A curvyR, a loopingY, and theA Nalmost like a punctuation.
Atlas-heart-Ryan.
I couldn’t hope that was true. It would be too much. Too wild. Too…wrong, wouldn’t it? After all, we hardly knew each other. The feeling in my chest was impossible to ignore, but it had to be something other than love.
