Finding It (Losing It, #3)(60)

Shivers chased across my skin. I pressed my cheek to his, concentrating on breathing. His tongue tasted the salt on my shoulder, and I dug my fingernails into his back, not because of desire, but because of fear.

I wanted his touch to heal the hurt. I wanted to lose myself in his kiss, so that I could forget. But he didn’t heal or eclipse, he illuminated. Every single second I spent with him was perfect, which somehow only seemed to excavate more pain.

I pulled his head away from my shoulder, needing a break. His eyes locked onto mine, deep and warm. I wasn’t sure exactly what I saw in his gaze, but it felt too big to fathom, like explaining the unexplainable. Like seeing the light of a star and knowing that light is billions of years old. Like the way time slows near a black hole.

And as we stared, unnamed truths passing between us, Hunt’s kicking feet weren’t enough to keep us afloat. The water moved from my chest to my shoulders, from my shoulders to my neck.

And I thought drowning was the perfect word for the way he made me feel. Drowning after a life of drought.

He laughed and said something about deep water not really being the ideal place for the kind of exploring he wanted to do. I might have laughed. Sound was muted, like we’d slipped below the water, and I was still trapped there beneath the surface.

We slipped our clothes back on, and Hunt tried to make me take his shirt.

“I’ll just have to take it off when we get up there. I’m not wearing your soaking wet shirt when I could put my sundress back on.”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

He didn’t put his shirt back on. And when we were close enough to shore that our feet could touch, I climbed onto Hunt’s back, and he carried me out of the water, my bare chest hidden against his back.

He found a small, rocky alcove and he tried to block me from view as I changed, even though no one on the beach was even paying attention to us. Then together we headed back for the tunnel.

I stopped him and unzipped one of the pockets on his bag.

“Let me get your phone.”

“Kelsey, wait—”

I’d already grabbed the phone and swiped my finger across the screen.

He had seventeen voice mail messages.

My brows furrowed, and I looked up at him. “I thought you said this phone was just for emergencies. Why haven’t you listened to your voice mails?”

“Because they’re not emergencies. I’m sure of it.”

I asked, “Who are they from?”

“Nobody important. We should hurry through the tunnel. We’ve got to head back to Riomaggiore for the night.”

I should have pushed. I should have dug my feet in and refused to move until he told me the truth. That’s what I should have done.

I didn’t.

I let him take the phone, and I followed him into that pitch-black tunnel without saying a word.

He kept my hand clasped loosely in his, and I began to consider what I really knew about him. Which was not a hell of a lot. And the more I thought about that, the more I was certain that he was hiding something from me, something that would break apart our already fragile relationship.

Still, I didn’t ask. Not even in the tunnel where he couldn’t see my face, and I couldn’t see those eyes.

Because there was a part of me, small but not silent, that saw this as an escape. It was the same broken part of me that preferred the dark to the light. If I didn’t know his secret, he never had to know mine.





24


WE DIDN’T SLEEP together that night. Not because either of us made an excuse, but just because. When our backs hit the mattress, both of us were so in our own worlds that the thought of closing the distance between us never occurred. At least not for me.

The room was pitch-black. The village was so untouched by society that they didn’t even have street lamps. The occasional house would have a light out front, but not ours.

The darkness was filled with silence covered in stillness, and when I listened for Jackson’s steady breathing, I couldn’t hear it.

I wondered what kept him awake. Could he tell I’d been off? Could he feel the way I recoiled when he kissed me? Or was it his own secrets that kept his brain moving, unable to rest.

I’d thought I was exploring the world, but maybe I’d been running. Maybe I’d been running for a very long time, and perhaps he was, too. And whatever he was running from—a girlfriend, family, a mistake—it wasn’t giving him up easily.

The silence grew a heartbeat, and I listened to the rhythm to pass the time, until finally Hunt’s slow breaths joined the symphony, and I could relax. I slipped off the bed, not to go anywhere, but just because I needed to be on my feet.

I shuffled slowly, my hands outstretched until I found the wall, then I sunk into it, pressed my cheek against it and tried to breathe.

You’re overreacting.

The thought came automatically, like a song on repeat, and it nearly swept my feet out from under me.

Those words had been thrown at me too much, and I’d taken them up like armor, and I’d used them to close off all the ugly emotions inside of me. I guess I’d had to sacrifice some of the good ones, too. Because now that those were back, all the ugly ones were, too.

The effort of pretending all day today had worn on me like sandpaper, and my skin felt raw. There was a truth that I needed to face. It screamed from the back of my mind, and I didn’t think I could survive listening to it.