It’s crazy how much comfort a piece of clothing can hold, as if I’m wearing his arms around me when the real ones are asleep.
As quietly as possible, I slip through the door and climb up the ladder to where the nearly full moon is bright against the canopy of strange stars. The boat rocks gently, the sails billowing with a steady wind.
Then I see Callie sitting at the stern with her legs stretched in front of her, a flask in her hand, her coppery-blonde hair loose around her shoulders. She’s staring at the dark water behind us, at the white trail of our wake cutting through black.
I should go back to the cabin and pretend I never came up here.
“Can’t sleep either?” she asks, catching me mid-pivot, one foot already angled toward the hatch.
My fingers find my bracelet as I’m suddenly, horribly aware that I’m standing on deck in Logan’s shirt.
Go back downstairs. Nothing good comes from late-night conversations with your boyfriend’s ex.
But Callie’s still watching the water. The set of her shoulders makes her look vulnerable, as if the lotus haze burned away whatever walls she normally hides behind, leaving her exposed to the world.
So, I walk over and sit down a few feet away from her. Close enough for conversation, but far enough that we’re not pretending to be friends.
She takes a long pull from the flask and holds it out to me.
I eye it. “Where did you even get that?”
“I packed it before we left.” She shakes the flask slightly. “It’s whiskey, not poison.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
She gives me a closed lipped smile. “Just take it.”
I shouldn’t. We’re rationing water, and alcohol dehydrates.
But I take the flask anyway.
The whiskey burns going down, cheap and sharp, nothing like the top shelf stuff my parents keep in the crystal decanters I snuck sips from at their parties. But it settles warm in my stomach, loosening the buzzing anxiety in my lungs, and I realize I hadn’t noticed how tight they’d gotten until right now.
“Thanks.” I shake it slightly and hand it back to her.
Silence stretches between us. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not hostile, either.
Finally, she speaks.
“The lotus was the first peace I’ve had in years,” she says quietly—conversationally, almost, like she’s commenting on the weather. “There was no wanting or aching. No feeling like you’re constantly reaching for someone who keeps stepping out of range.”
Every nerve in my body goes on high alert. Because I’ve been on this boat with Callie Bennett for days, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that every word out of her mouth has a purpose. A destination she’s steering you to while you think you’re just having a chat.
“Logan and I were together for three years before his parents died.” She takes another swig, and her eyes are far off, as if she’s seeing moments from the past and wanting to live them all over again. “He was different then. He laughed.Actuallaughing—not that thing he does now where his mouth moves but nothing reaches his eyes. He let people in. He looked at me like I mattered.”
I stare at my hands in my lap. A spark flickers between my fingers, and I clench my fists to kill it.
“Then they died, and he came back wrong,” she says, that far off look still in her eyes. “He was cold and distant. A shell thatlooked like the person I loved. And I keep waiting for the real Logan to come back, but he never does.”
My chest caves in around those words. Because I’ve seen glimpses of those moments when Logan’s eyes go distant and flat, when he retreats behind walls I can’t breach.
I thought those moments were about grief. But the way Callie’s talking about it makes it sound less like grief and more like he fundamentally changed.
Which, given that he gained the ability to burn through time on the night his parents died, totally tracks.
“The sirens spoke to me with Logan’s voice,” she continues, and a chill runs through me at the words. “He told me that the version I’d known since his parents died wasn’t him, but a pretender living in his body. He said he missed me. He said he was hoping I’d find him—therealhim that was waiting for me on that shore—so he could tell me how much he loves me, and we could be together again, like we’re meant to be.”
My heart twists. Because Callie’s describing a version of Logan that died with his parents, leaving behind a stranger who looks the same but isn’t. And now she has to see him every day and be reminded that the person she loved is right there, completely unreachable.
