Stone gave our tangled fingers a slight squeeze, and I felt his muscles relax as he exhaled. “Not even then,” he replied.
I stoodon the wooden staircase, working the door handle and battling the ripping cold winds. Snowfall hit my face, and I peered up to see gray clouds sliding across an acrid sky.
“Is there a problem?” Stone asked.
A loose step creaked under my boot when I glanced at him.
He was where I’d propped him, leaning against the lighthouse.
“Nope.” I jiggled the handle again and used my shoulder to give it a shove. I didn’t know why I assumed the door would be unlocked. Since Kane’s family owned the property, only they had a key.
Stone’s voice came again. “Are you certain no one lives here?”
“No one has been here for over twenty years.”
Stone steered his head away from a nearby window and plunged his elbow into the glass. A loudcrackstabbed my ears, and the window shattered into pieces.
My eyes grew wide. “What are you ... how ... That glass must be at least four inches thick! How did you do that? Not to mention, if you’re not careful, you’ll break a stitch—”
Stone removed his jacket, causing the tee beneath to lift up and expose a rigid and wounded torso. The sight managed to silence me.
Shivering, he fell back against the curved wall and wrapped his jacket around his hand to remove the rest of the glass from the sill.
“As you said,” he hunched over, possibly regretting the pain that took him afterward, “the island is abandoned, and we need to get inside before the snowstorm comes.”
I picked up the bag and walked through the rocky shrubs to where he stood.
Stone laid his jacket across the sill, and we came face to face when he took a step back.
A moment passed where we held our breaths.
A shade of purple scalloped under his hooded eyes.
His body was already exhausted, almost wanting to give up on him.
Then he took the bag from around my shoulder. “After you.”
Inside, the floor creaked as I walked carefully through the abandoned space. Though it was dark, murky daylight shone through fogged windows, revealing spider webs in every deserted nook and white dust sheets on furniture.
After Stone came in behind me, he instantly collapsed to the floor, propping himself against a wall.
The lighthouse was even colder, with a draft blowing in from the broken window. I lit a fire in the hearth using old, dried-out logs and matches I’d shoved inside my backpack, seeing a bedroom on the other side through the hole. The flames cast a vintage glow across the room, allowing me to look around.
We had entered the living room. On the opposite end of the fireplace, I assumed it to be couches under the dust sheets. By the door, a small table and chairs, with a bundle of fishing rods in the corner. Next to the living area was a tiny kitchen, and to the right of that was a bathroom. To the right of that was the door to the bedroom. The two-way fireplace separated the bedroom and living area. In the middle, a steel pole shot through the structure with a spiral case wrapping around it.
I walked to the shelves beside the fireplace, where antiques were hidden under layers of dust. Books, records, a projector, reels, trinkets, vases, and old picture frames. I spotted a record player plugged into the wall, and I dragged my finger through the dust across the edge of it. “I wonder if it still works.”
When I flipped the switch, even though there was no electricity in the lighthouse, the record spun, pouring a song into the room. As if by magic.
It was a song I hadn’t heard before, and it crackled, filling and rushing to the deprived holes of my soul like a wave meeting the shore. The tune sounded crispy and far away as if we accessed a piece of a world outside the barrier. I closed my eyes in its cadent touch, having not heard any collection of notes since the Panic started because Freddy in the Mourning was gone.
With the song combing my heart, I opened my eyes and looked at Stone.
He was already watching me.
I let a few seconds pass, and then—“I like this song,” I finally said.
Stone’s mouth parted as if he didn’t know what to say.
