By the time Seb and I returned to the cottage, my thoughts were completely tangled around the night’s events, and I couldn’t make sense of anything. It was already one in the morning, and Punkin barked at us from inside until we’d unlocked the front door. That was a good thing, I figured. She made a decent guard dog.
“Do you have anything to drink?” Seb asked after we headed inside and turned on a lamp. “I’m dying of thirst.”
In a haze, I got out two glasses from the kitchen cabinets and filled them with tap water. I handed one to Seb, and he tipped his head in thanks, then headed out the back door, letting Punkin run out with him.
Okay, then.He was taking the porch-swing conversation quite literally.
Nana’s porch swing was built for her by an old woodworker who lived down the beach—probably the same guy who carved the Mr. Legs tree-trunk sculpture, but I never asked. More raft than swing, it was wide enough to take a good nap in, whether you were human or canine. The turquoise canvas pad that lined the bottom and backrest had always been there, and when Seb plopped down, it seemed he’d always been there, too.
Don’t think about the kiss.I set my glass of water into a cup holder built into swing’s wooden armrest and sat next to Seb, a respectable distance away.
“Last time I sat in the hot seat with Nana Malone,” he mused, “she was cussing me out for stealing cigs from Mr. Hammond’s trailer.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I remember that. We must’ve been fourteen. Nana was hot for Mr. Hammond. You were harshing her love life.”
“Found that out a little too late. She was so mad at me.” He smiled to himself, and the dimplesalmostappeared. “I couldn’t believe a trailer would have a security camera. Lesson learned—never assume.”
Right. Maybe that was a lesson I needed to take to heart myself.
The swing didn’t do much swinging. You could get it going if you really tried, but mostly, you just floated. And that’s what Seb and I did, we slowly floated in the moonlight, staring at Punkin’s dark form running around the beach.
“Talk to me,” I told him, kicking off my sneakers to pull my feet onto the swing. “Tell me everything I don’t know about Jazmine and Paul.”
“Everything?”
“As much as you can. She’s already told me some, but clearly not the whole story.”
He nodded, scooting farther back, then he reached over the armrest on his side and patted around the underside of the swing. With a small noise of victory, he pulled out a purple disposable vape.
“What the hell?” I complained. “You’re hiding weed around my property?”
“Not anymore. You tossed most of it. This has been here a couple months.” He offered the vape to me, but I shook my head.
“Harvard made you prim and proper, huh?”
“Not really. This year has been tougher than anything I’ve ever done, academically, and I never have time for much else.”
“See, I imagined you going to frat parties and dating one of those crew rowers who competes with Yale.”
He’d imagined my life in Harvard? That surprised me. “You should’ve been imagining me sitting at the same library cubicle every day for nine months. I’ve never worked so hard in my entire life.”
Seb clicked a button on the vape several times, and the digital screen lit up. Whatever it said made him groan, and he tossed it onto the swing cushion, muttering, “Useless.” Then he kicked off his Converse and scooted farther back in the swing to lazilybend one knee. “I respect that, Paige. Seriously. I’m just giving you a hard time. Besides, can’t tell a fib on the porch swing. Nana Malone said it, so it must be true.” He slid his eyes toward mine and gave me a soft smile.
I smiled back, then exhaled a long breath. “Okay, so tell me about Jazmine and Paul.”
He sighed and leaned an arm atop his bent knee. “She told me it started around Christmas. I was back in town, staying at Benny’s place, out in the pool house. Benny was still at school in Kalamazoo, but he and Jaz had been staying in touch, and he started to get really worried about her about a month ago. So I... started tailing her.”
“In secret?” I said.
He winced. “I know, but she wouldn’t tell me anything, and Benny was right. She needed help. I tailed her to the fucking Vanderburg prepper compound outside town.”
It was a farm, at least it used to be. The Vanderburgs sold off most of their land, and all the boys in the family had built homes there. The compound was surrounded by a ramshackle fence andkeep outsigns. I’d never been inside the fence.
It mildly terrified me that Jazmine had been.
“As you already know by now, Jaz was hooking up with Paul,” Seb said. “No need to sugarcoat it. She’d told Benny it was just casual, purely for the sex, no emotions. She could have any guy in Haven Beach, so I have no idea what she was thinking . . .”
“Maybe she wasn’t,” I said quietly, as our roof kiss popped back into my head.Don’t think.
