Fuck.
Swiping the moisture from her cheeks, now pinked, she shakes her head. “I haven’t talked about it with someone I hardly know before. Guess it feels different telling you. Somehow it doesn’t feel as hard.”
My heart aches for her.
Because I’ve been where she is. Was.
No car accident, something slower. More preventable. Something I took the blame for, and still do.
I resist the urge to hug her. It won’t help, if experience has taught me anything. Being wrapped in sympathy only serves to prolong things. Who in their right mind would want to prolong a grief so deep?
“Now, you tell me yours.” Her eyes hold me to the spot.
“Mine?”
“Yeah. The reason you’re holed up on an island by yourself, in the prime of your life.”
A huffy laugh escapes my lips.Prime, my ass.
“Just the consequence of many choices—some good, some bad.”
“You ever think about leaving the lighthouse and rejoining civilization?”
“Not too often, no.”
“Really? You don’t get lonely?”
I didn’t. Not before she turned up on that damn marina dock. Now, the thought of going back to me, myself, and I seems more wrong than it should.
“Nah, I enjoy my own company. Besides, the conversation’s always on point.”
She raises one elegant brow. “You talk to yourself often?”
“About as much as you do,” I say, throwing her my biggest shit-eating grin.
Her cheeks pink again, and she shifts her gaze to the water. I hear her talking to herself in the bedroom. Testing out lines of dialogue and reading out loud when she thinks I’m busy elsewhere.
Shaking her can, Evie rises and takes mine. Her fingers brush over my knuckles, and my skin buzzes to life.
“Trash?” She looks toward the cabin.
“Left console cabinet. Thanks.”
She disappears into the cabin, but not before I lock eyes on the sway of her hips. Those long legs, that hourglass shape, her narrow waist. It’s all my imagination needs to take off at full speed. I need to readjust myself in my jeans when she bends over, putting the cans in the trash, and her jeans slip down. The red band of her panties peeks over the top.
“What’s this yellow device by the trash?” she calls back.
“EPIRB. The emergency position-indicating radio beacon. It activates when it gets wet. So, if you?—”
She returns, excited and flushed. “You sink. If you sink, it activates?”
“Yep, that’s the idea. The front portion is removable if you’re ever in crisis and need immediate assistance.”
Evie frowns. “Isn’t that what mayday is for?”
“That too.”
“Oh, okay.”
