Chapter 39

Dear Hannah, the same backward as forward…

I didn’t read past the salutation on the letter. I ran to the lighthouse. He wasn’t there. I ran across the rocks, miles across them, to the town where I’d planned to take him, where we were supposed to run.

Nothing. I couldn’t find him. I looked, and I looked, and I looked, but he was gone.

Why hide, I thought, feeling like the sky was crashing down on me, like my body was folding in on itself until I couldn’t breathe, when you can run?

Toby Hawthorne excelled at running, and deep inside, I knew, the way I knew his body and his scars and the way he smelled, that I wasn’t going to find him. I knew that he wasn’t coming back, knew it the way I knew how he felt through the darkness and what I looked like through his eyes.

I knew it the way I knew that we could have had something beautiful, if he’d let us.

I went back to Jackson’s, and I read the whole damn letter, cursing Tobias Hawthorne the Second with every breath, aching for him like my body might never stop aching for him. He opened by begging me not to hate him—not for leaving, at least. If I was going to hate him, he wanted it to be for the right reasons.

You can tell me over and over again that I never would have struck the match. You can believe that. On good days, maybe I will, too. But three people are still dead because of me.

I breathed through the pain, the way he had, back when his world had been fire and I’d hated him with everything I had.

I breathed through the pain, knowing that I couldn’t hate him anymore, not even when I read the words: I can’t stay here. I can’t stay with you.

He could have. He could have stayed.

I couldn’t stop reading.

I don’t deserve to. I won’t go home, either. I won’t let my father pretend this away.

Most of the rest of the letter was spent warning me that his father would come, that eventually, the billionaire with his many fixers would figure out that his son had survived. Toby didn’t want me in Rockaway Watch when that happened. He wanted me to leave, just like we’d planned.

But alone.

Change your name. Start anew. You love fairy tales, I know, but I can’t be your happily ever after. We can’t stay here in our little castle forever. You have to find a new castle. You have to move on. You have to live, for me.

He wasn’t playing fair—not when I’d told him about the promise I had made, not when he knew that I had to keep living and keep dancing and keep feeling, no matter what.

If you ever need anything, go to Jackson.

My jaw hardened when I read that part, because I was pretty damn sure it meant that he had gone to Jackson on his way out. The next words confirmed it for me.

You know what the circle is worth. You know why. You know everything.

It was just like the boy who loved codes to use the vague descriptor—the circle. Let anyone who read this letter even try to figure out what that meant. But it was the next sentence that stole my breath:

You might be the only person on this planet who knows the real me.

I knew that he loved puzzles and riddles and games and being a pain in my ass. I knew that he was the kind of person who, when you asked how his pain was, answered irrelevant. He was an artist. He was brilliant. He was hungry. He was gentle. And he never missed picking up on a damn thing, especially when it involved me. He played three-dimensional checkers and quoted poetry, and I wasn’t even sure he knew what a person could actually buy at a grocery store, other than bourbon and lemons. He loved palindromes.

He loved me.

I forced myself to read the last two lines of the letter:

Hate me, if you can, for all the reasons I deserve it. But don’t hate me for leaving while you sleep. I knew you wouldn’t let me go, and I cannot bear to say good-bye.

He’d signed it Harry.

There were no words for what I felt, reading that signature, thinking of him. My insides felt hollow, like a black hole. I couldn’t even remember how to breathe.

But suddenly, there were arms around me. Jackson.

“You let him go.” I pushed against the fisherman, hard, but he held tight to me. That crusty, cranky, gun-toting recluse held me until the dam inside me gave. I clung to him then—the closest thing I had in this world to a friend.

“Some people are like the ocean, little Hannah,” Jackson told me, his voice as gruff as ever. “You can’t let or not let them do a damn thing.”

“Like the ocean,” I repeated. I thought back to what he’d said about Death and made an educated guess. “A real bitch?”

“A force.”

I wanted to sob, but I couldn’t, because he was right. Toby Hawthorne was the damn ocean. He was a force. He was awful and wonderful and whether he was here or not, whether I ever saw him again or not—he was never going to be nothing to me.

I looked up at Jackson. “He says his father will come looking for him. The item that Toby gave you? It could be dangerous to hold on to it.”

Jackson snorted. “I’m not afraid of billionaires. I don’t even use banks. And that item? Harry asked me to hold on to it for you, so I’m thinking that’s what I’ll do.”

There was no arguing with that, not unless I wanted him to go for his rifle.

“My family.” I doubted this would go any better than trying to warn Jackson about Tobias Hawthorne had, but I had to try. “If the billionaire comes sniffing around, it could tip them off, too. My cousin Rory’s already suspicious about what I’ve been up to. If he passes those suspicions on to my mother, if she figures out you helped Toby, helped me—”

“Who says I’m helping anyone?” Jackson chose that moment to press a wad of cash into my hand—a very large wad.

“Jackson,” I said, “you can’t—”

“Change your name,” he told me sternly. “Don’t look back. Sooner or later, Eden will go looking for you. Make sure she can’t find a damn thing.”

“How would you know what my mother would or wouldn’t do?” I asked. He’d used her first name. I thought suddenly about the way he’d told me that I was the damnedest Rooney, like I wasn’t the only one he knew. Personally. “Jackson—”

He cut me off: “None of your business.”

I really should have seen that coming. “I’ll go,” I said. It was what Toby had asked of me. You have to move on. You have to live, for me. “I’ll disappear,” I told Jackson. “But what about you?”

“Someone’s gotta look after the lighthouse.”

I hugged him again. “You’re a good man.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I oughtta shoot you.”

I almost smiled. “Please don’t.”