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The sea gently waved toward them, and the clouds thickened above them, but she continued to be distracted from the cold due to Finn’s strong body pressing gently against hers as they perused through the pages.

“Alright, now, goosebumps,” he said, pointing down to another page they’d come across with it checked. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she attempted to focus. “I just get goosebumps when I eat really great food.”

He stared down at her. She couldn’t look up at him due to their closeness, or she’d stare a little too longingly at his lips.

“Really?” he asked. “You really get goosebumps?”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t know why. It’s just always been that way. I looked it up once because I didn’t know anyone else who had it, but it’s like a chemical reaction is taking place in my body. When the food is really good, I just react that way. Like, some people get goosebumps with stirring music or art, I get it with food. So it’s become kinda like a test for myself.”

“That’s amazin’,” he said, a smile on his voice.

She continued moving through the pages, but as Northern Ireland’s section loomed ever closer, so did her nerves. She had to be super careful now. Crazy careful. Focused and attentive.

But as he leaned closer to point at something else on another page, and remained that close to her, her concentration dulled.

“Well,” she said, reaching the first page from Northern Ireland, not daring to go further, “that’s it, mostly.”

“Naw, you can’t stop there,” he protested. “We’ve just reached me own country.”

Maisie hesitated, but if she denied him seeing those pages further, he’d only wonder all the more what she was hiding.

Slowly, she turned the pages one by one, then with careful fingers, gathered two pages at once and flipped them together to reveal the food she’d eaten after the traffic stop and before Dunluce.

“You skipped a page,” he stated devotedly.

Maisie froze, all the magical fog from before disappearing into the air. “Oh, that one was empty.”

He stared at her, his eyes burning a hole in her temple. “Are you havin’ a laugh? I can see the ink through the page right there.”

He tapped on the paper, and she splayed out a hand across it in case he caught his name, even backwards.

“Um…” What could she say? “It was just a page I was doodling on, that’s all.”

He didn’t respond for a minute. “Why do I have a feelin’ that you’re not bein’ truthful with me right now, Maisie King?” he asked, his knowing voice close to her ear.

There was no way around this. She was going to have to be upfront or straight-up lie, and lying just wasn’t her.

“It…is a page I’m not willing to show you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Finn’s smile was enough to melt her.

“Now you’ve got to show me,” he said.

Maisie shook her head, clapping the book closed and holding her fingers over it securely. “I’m just telling you right now, there is nothing you can do to make me ever show you that page,” she stated firmly, her insides flopping all over the place at the very idea of him seeing what she’d written.

“Come on,” he pleaded. “How ’bout we make an exchange? If I tell you a secret ’bout the first time we saw each other, will you show me what’s on the page?”

She thought for a second. His secret would have to be humongous. “Why don’t you tell me it first, then I’ll see if it’s enough to earn looking at the rest of the book.”

“Fair enough. Right. Do you remember how I ran over that curb as I pulled out of Belfast?”

She nodded. How could she forget? “Bob was so huge, you had to mount the curb in order to not run into incoming traffic. Right?”

“Naw. I could’ve easily cleared the curb. I ran over it ’cause I was too busy lookin’ in the rearview mirror at the gorgeous straggler who’d just come runnin’ onto me bus.”