She can’t bring herself to say it, but it doesn’t matter. They both know what she means. The word hangs heavily between them.Dead.She could be dead. They could be looking for a ghost.
Poppy is quiet for a long time. Finally, she says, “Have you ever felt so tightly threaded to someone that it hurts when they’re away?”
She has. She does. She is inextricably knotted, her heart pinched so tight it’s gone black and blue.
“Yes,” she says. “I feel it all the time.”
Poppy nods sagely, as if everyone does. As if it’s normal, to be bound so thoroughly to another person that it hurts to breathe without them.
“I think,” she says softly, “if Ellie was gone, my soul would know it.”
They lapse back into quiet, watching the waves rush in. Shea peers back in the direction of the camper and finds Asher under the lopsided overhang, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders rounded. She wonders how long he’s been standing there, listening to their conversation. She wonders if he’s already given up, or if he’s clinging to some secret, quiet hope.
He hasn’t brought up Camellia in days.
She isn’t given the chance to try to parse out the look in his eyes before Poppy is on her feet, tugging Shea up after her.
“Enough of this. If Ellie were here, she’d make us all stop moping and go in.”
“That doesn’t mean wehaveto do it,” says Shea, but she lets Poppy drag her to the water’s edge, kicking off her boots and socks as she goes.
The clouds are ablaze with color, pink as pomegranates. The water is ice-cold, the last of the sun glancing off the surface in a blinding halo. A wave rinses over her ankles before rushing back out to sea. She leaps up with a yelp, the sand beneath her sucked along with the current. It sends her toppling into Poppy, who cackles and throws her arms wide.
“Thorley, c-come in here,” Shea calls, teeth chattering. “The w-water is p-perfect!”
“I don’t believe you,” he lobs back.
The sun sinks lower, deepening the sky to a bloodred hue. A second wave follows the first, and this time, the current nearly bowls them both over. They collapse one into the other, shrieking, water soaking their clothes. With a curse, Asher shrugs out of his jacket and kicks off his shoes, balling his socks into pellets. He jogs into the surf after them, stopping short the minute the water rushes up to meet him.
“Shit, that’s cold,” he yelps, yanking his elbows up by his ears. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Lightenup,” goads Shea, catching his arm before he can escape back onto shore. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
He stumbles, catching himself, as a wave nearly takes him out at the knees. The sight makes them roar with laughter. Grimacing, he whips his hand through the water, dousing both of them in an icy spray. His assault has a countereffect—they laugh harder, their fingers numb.
They’re still laughing when the sun extinguishes beneath the water. The sea goes dark as oil, only the faintest vestiges of gold left in the sky. With the color leached out of them, the clouds look like true storm clouds. The wind picks up. The surf slaps against their shins. Catching her breath, Shea glances up to find Asher looking down at her, his T-shirt soaked through and his expression serious.
“Your lips are blue,” he says.
“It’s a little c-cold.”
He closes his fist in the hem of her T-shirt and pulls her to him. She trips easily over the shifting sand, sea-foam girdling her ankles. He pauses for a fraction of a second—just long enough for her to realize what’s about to happen—and then he bends down and slants his mouth over hers.
It’s a kiss. Chaste. Sweet. The sort she used to dream about, back home in Little Hill. Another wave hits. Her knees knock together and she braces herself against the hard plane of his chest. The heat of him cuts through the cold, ignites a flame low in her belly. He pulls back just as it begins to rain, searching her face to gauge her reaction.
“They’re a little warmer now,” she admits.
The skies rip open, the rain becoming torrential. The flame within her sputters out, turning her smoky with panic.
“My hearing aids,” she gasps.
“Shit.” Folding his arms over her head, Asher tugs her back to shore, hollering for Poppy as he goes. She comes racing after them, her pockets stuffed full of pale shark-eye shells.
Tripping out of the surf, Asher tugs his coat off the sand and holds it over Shea. It’s soaked through, but dry beneath, and they scramble back toward the RV, slipping over sand gone pocked with rainwater. They find Lys waiting beneath the awning, his expression indecipherable in the gloom.
“Nice work, Sunshine,” he says. “You came through. Just when I was beginning to think you were a lost cause.”
Some of the color goes out of Asher’s face. “Don’t.”
