“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. Just walked toward the water with long, purposeful strides—his jeans getting wet, his shoes still on, which meant he’d either lost his mind or stopped caring about practicality.
He stood at the edge of the Pacific with the golden light blazing behind him, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted.
“I LOVE PAULINE WELLS.”
His voice rang across the water—huge, bright, swallowed by the wind but not before it reached me, every syllable landing in my chest like a bell being struck.
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
“I HAVE LOVED HER FOR SEVEN YEARS AND COUNTING,” he bellowed at the ocean, “AND IF ANY OF YOU FISH HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT THAT, YOU CAN WRITE THEM DOWN AND MAIL THEM TO MY OFFICE.”
A seagull screamed. Whether in support or protest, impossible to tell.
He turned back to me, grinning, his jeans soaked to the knees, his hair wrecked by the wind, and he looked so ridiculous and so happy that something inside me broke wide open.
I was laughing. Laughing and crying at the same time, my hand still over my mouth.
“You’re insane,” I managed.
“Probably.” He walked back up the beach toward me, dripping, still grinning like a lunatic. “But now the ocean knows. And that seagull. The fish are informed. It’s official.”
“The fish do not care, Jack.”
“That seagull seemed very invested.”
“That seagull was judging you.”
He dropped onto the blanket beside me—wet jeans and all, not even caring that he was soaking the corner—and pulled me into his lap. His hands cradled my face. His thumbs wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“I wasted seven years not saying that out loud,” he said. “I’m never making that mistake again. I’m going to say it to everything. The ocean. The seagulls. That pigeon you told me about that lives on your fire escape.”
“Please do not serenade my pigeon.”
“Too late. I’ve already composed a sonnet.”
I kissed him. Right there on the beach with the waves crashing and the golden light pouring over us and salt on both our lips. His mouth was warm, tasting faintly of salt and wind, and when he kissed me back—slow, deep, thorough—the rest of the world went quiet.
CHAPTER 16
Pauline
That night,we lay on his couch in the dark.
The city glittered beyond the glass wall. My head was in his lap, my legs stretched across the cushions, and his fingers moved through my curls with that absent, rhythmic gentleness that made my entire scalp tingle.
On the television, a documentary about a woman who vanished from an Alaskan fishing village was playing in low, measured tones.
True crime. Our thing. The thing that had started everything, back when he’d sat beside me on a college couch and watched my face more than the screen.
“It’s the husband,” Jack said.
“It’s always the husband.”
“No, but this time—the insurance policy. He doubled it six months before she disappeared.”
“Suspicious but not conclusive.”
