Page 60 of The Shadow Sanctum

“I don’t think she killed herself,” he says, shaking his head. “I think she was trying to swim to some imaginary place we made up when I was a kid. I think she was just trying to escape her head, and she didn’t have me there to help her.”

I shuffle closer to him but don’t reach out. His body language is tense. I know he’d pull away. “It wasn’t your fault…”

He smiles the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “Of course it was my fault… But thank you.”

He closes his eyes and rubs at his forehead. “Anyway… Fast forward many years later. I’m a millionaire; I buy an island; I meet a girl with serious mental health issues. She’s poor. She’s lonely. She’s got a kid who her ex won’t let her see. And she wants to kill herself.

“I start thinking about that kid… What his life must look like. What it would look like if his mom died… And I just… I knew what I would have wanted for my mother.”

Sawyer inhales deeply. “So I put her up in a mansion. Got her clean. Gave her nice shit, nice food, and what I felt, what she felt, was a nice life. It was luxurious and sunny every day and like nothing she’d ever dreamed of having—according to her.

“And that feeling.” Sawyer puts a hand on his chest. “That feeling like I was… I don’t know, saving her…”

He pauses, hand still pressed to his chest, eyes pointed straight ahead. Seconds pass without him finishing his sentence, and I realize it’s because he doesn’t want to. He’s embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or just … vulnerable.

“You felt like you were saving your mother,” I finish for him.

He closes his eyes and nods.

“So you did it again. And again. And again.”

Hand scrubbing his face, he nods a second time.

“Until eventually, it spiraled out of control. And you weren’t sure why you were doing it anymore.”

He doesn’t respond. But he doesn’t have to.

I know now.

His heart. His mind. His intentions.

The reason he believes he’s a good person.

The reason he is a good person.

The reason I wish, with every fiber of my being, that he was mine.

He’s tense when I cup his cheek, and his eyes bug when I force him to face me. It doesn’t stop me from kissing him.

It’s the feel of his lips—hardened by the cold, chapped by the wind—that shifts something in my chest and floods a chemical through my veins that is as unfamiliar as it is potent. At once, I’m dense as an oak tree, heavy as an iron ploy. Yet, I can’t feel the wood beneath my rear. We’re high up in the trees, and surely that is the reason that for a moment, I swear, I float.

Sawyer grips my elbow as he turns to me, his firm mouth softening as he kisses me back with a warmth that makes the winter air seem like spring. My tongue is the first to invade, and it strikes me in my core how different it feels.

Every time we’ve kissed before, every contact of skin has felt electric but wrong. A forbidden fruit I promised I’d never eat or a diamond-stubbed path with a caution sign warning me not to enter. It was good. It was free.

But it was also dirty. Guilt-ridden. Guarded. And at many times, strategic.

For the first time, I say hello without a goodbye already perched on my lips.

My nails sink into Sawyer’s shoulders as I straddle his thighs and kiss him deeper, our mouths fusing.

It makes it all the more jolting when he rips away.

“What?” I ask, breathing heavily as I shrink. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not doing this unless you choose.”

I rear my head back, eyebrows pinching as I wait for him to explain.