“Sure,” I say instead. “You’re probably right. I’ve definitely got a wife and two-point-five kids and a Labrador named Biscuit. Real white-picket-fence situation. That’s clearly who I am.”
She stares at me. I stare back. The joke hangs between us, but it’s not funny and we both know it’s not funny and it’s doing the job anyway, which is keeping me from saying what I actually want to say.
Please don’t leave this room.
“Get some rest.” She hesitates in the doorway. Her throat works around a swallow I can see from here. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
I’m not sure she believes it any more than I do.
Without another word she’s gone, and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, shirtless, smelling like sweat and panic, staring at empty space that still holds the ghost of her warmth.
I should sleep.
I don’t.
I stare out the window instead. The ocean is calm tonight. Flat. Silver under the moon. Nothing like?—
It comes without warning. Not like the nightmare, which felt like a door kicked open. This is a window sliding up, slow and silent, and I’m looking through it before I can decide if I want to.
A storm. Lightning fracturing a sky the color of a bruise. I’m on a sailboat, bucking against waves that have no business being this tall. My hands are locked on the rigging and the salt is in my eyes. Moratoc Island. I’m close. I know I’m almost there.
The mast groans. Cracks. Falls toward me in a slow, terrible arc.
Impact. Cold so total it whites out everything.
Then water. Black and churning, in my mouth, my lungs, and my arms are fighting on nothing but animal reflex, dragging me toward shore, toward the shape of a house on the bluff lit up against the storm.
This house. Her house.
The memory lets go and I’m back. Sitting on the bed.
I was coming here. To this house. Toher.
Cold threads its way down my spine, vertebra by vertebra. Deeper than panic, deeper than fear. Like a frequency running through me just shifted, and everything that was almost making sense a second ago is now off by one note.
Bone-deep wrong. The kind of wrong you can’t argue your way out of.
Whatever I was doing on that boat, whatever reason I had for pointing myself at this island, I’m not going to tell Natalia about it. Not tonight. Not until I understand what it means.
I lie back. The ceiling stares down at me, blank and unhelpful. Outside, the waves keep their rhythm. In, out. In, out.
I close my eyes and wait for whatever comes next.
I’m starting to think I’m not going to like it.
5
NATALIA
The surf shoptwo miles down the road opens at eight.
I’ve never had a reason to go inside before, but Johnny’s been barefoot since I dragged him off the beach, and my flip-flops aren’t going to cut it for a man his size. So I went. Grabbed him a couple of t-shirts while I was at it so he’s not living in his only one, and then stopped at the drug store for some basics.
The house is still quiet when I slip back in. No sound from the guest room. I set the bags on the island and start the coffee, and I’ve almost convinced myself this is a normal morning when he appears in the kitchen doorway.
Even in my too-small sweats, even with his dark hair wrecked and wild from a bad night’s sleep, the man looks like someone a casting director would find on purpose.
Noted, filed, and immediately shoved into the mental drawer marked Things That Don’t Matter When You’re Playing Nurse To A Stranger With No Name.
