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Skye nudged her sneakers off near the crooked high tide line. Heart pounding, she walked to the edge of the ruffling low tide. Whatever was calling her led to Lithus Rock. The destination felt inevitable. She stared up at the small brooding island. At least one emotion racing through her was pleasure. Everything about this felt familiar. And impossible, and dangerous... And so right. There had to be a reason this place made her heart sing. Unless the obvious answer was the right one, and she really was simply losing her mind.
She hadn’t hesitated to take her shoes off, and now she confidently stooped to roll up her jeans. And when the cool water of the shallow moat tickled deeper up her calves, she was sure she had done this recently. As recently as her three missing days? Whatever she was about to find – or whoever – she wasn’t leaving until she had answers.
Her feet slipped a little as she carefully stood on the seaweed-covered ledge exposed by low tide. She heard scuttling sounds near her feet, no doubt furtive crabs she had disturbed. This was so familiar. Should she turn back?
White noise buzzed in her head, louder as she climbed higher up the small island. The hollow emptiness filled with each step. Her emotions were a silent roar by the time she rounded the last curve of the rock and saw him.
Hunter.
His hand on his chest mirrored hers, pressing where the ache inside her had all but vanished. His hungry, desolate eyes watched her as if she was...everything.
She couldn’t move, floored by their overpowering connection. The sunset behind her laid a wash of colour to his velvet skin, casting the shadows of his face into high relief. She saw he was trembling, like a beautiful statue from some ancient place, shaken by a tremor of the earth. Like she was his earthquake.
Their eyes locked. “I need answers,” she pushed the low words out. “What is happening to me? I don’t understand this...connection to you. I hate feeling like this.”
He moved almost imperceptibly, as if holding himself in place. “I feel it too. I don’t hate it,” his husky words were sad, “but I hate that you do.”
Something shifted inside her, aligning. “This is all so familiar,” she whispered. “But why?” Without speaking, he reached into his pocket. Her heart pounded, her hand moving unconsciously to Ethan’s shell hanging from her neck. But although she didn’t know what she’d expected, it wasn’t the MP3 player he held out on his palm. The little stickers on it were instantly recognisable. “That’s Morgan’s.”
He walked towards her, each loping, graceful stride diminishing the emptiness inside her. When he reached her, he halted, so close she saw sea-tinted flecks in his charcoal eyes, and long black lashes ringing them like rock-pool anemones. So close she could lift her arms and link her hands behind his neck. Why was it so easy to imagine what that would be like? Why did she want to so much?
The deeper breaths she drew in didn’t seem enough to fill her lungs. Her pulse hammered through her until her skin seemed to pulse too. Silently he offered her one earbud. With a shaking hand, she took it, and watched him put the other into his own ear. Dazed, she lifted her other hand to move her hair out of the way. But Hunter’s hand was there before hers.
Goosebumps raced over her skin as he gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his icy fingers grazing her cheek. The rock beneath her seemed to flex, the sense of déjà vu was so overwhelming.
She swallowed, but her voice still cracked when she spoke. “What am I going to hear?”
“I don’t know. But I think I can guess. A gift to us from Morgan.” He studied the device as if navigating unfamiliar territory and then pressed play.
Low rapid notes tumbled over each other, with the single sweet note of the singer’s first words, filling Skye’s ear and making her heart lurch. “This is my favourite song.”
“I know. That’s why it’s mine.”
It was his? Because it was hers. This was the song she’d heard this afternoon at Bliss. The one that sent tears streaming down her cheeks.
The song’s rippling notes and beats danced through her chest, matching the tempo in her veins.
“Shall we?” he offered her his hand.
Once again, the rock seemed to flex. An invitation: to dance? Now, here? With him...
She put her hand in his. His palm was as cold as the water she’d waded through to reach him. As if it came from everywhere, and not just the earbud in her ear. Music wrapped around her, sweeping through her as he closed the last small step between them, sliding his arm about her waist. Her breath stuttered to a halt, her arms slipping around him.
Enfolded in the racing beats that wove through the melody, they moved almost imperceptibly, eyes locked on each other. This was a dream. Had this happened before? Just like this? Swaying together, barely moving, barely breathing. Floating.
He was so close. Her eyes raked his features; dark, winged eyebrows, high cheekbones, the twists of his long burnt-umber hair falling across his forehead. His compelling charcoal eyes that studied her as closely as she studied him. His straight nose and finely shaped mouth. Her pulse thudded in her throat. She already knew what those lips would feel like on hers. Impossibly cold, deliciously tender...
This boy, looking at her as if she held his heart in her hands – was he the key to her forgotten summer? He wouldn’t look at her with such...love otherwise. Her heart wouldn’t be trying to get out of her chest to him otherwise. Could she trust him? Morgan did. Rowena did. “My heart, it’s...”
He stood back and gently pressed his palm to the frantic beat. “...it feels like a trapped bird, fighting to be free.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Let it,” he whispered. It sounded like a prayer.
And she knew what she wanted. She wanted what she saw in his eyes, and the sense of being whole when she was near him. Everything in her felt he was someone vital to her happiness. Someone she could trust. Completely.
The breeze caught her hair, tossing it across her cheek. He lifted his hand and caught it, studying the silver-blonde strands as if they were precious. Instead of tucking the flyaway hair behind her ear again, this time he stroked it from her face, his cold touch tracing a feather-light trail along the curve of her hairline, over her cheek, and then gently combed the strands back, running his fingers through her tousled hair. Her insides somersaulted, goosebumps racing over her skin as he lifted his other hand to cradle her head.
She felt his cold, sweet breath flutter again her lips, like dawn across the sea. And with it, the bliss of being complete. She couldn’t hold out any longer; she wouldn’t. This was right. It felt like the most natural thing to rise on her tiptoes, lifting her face to his, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Skye...” His breathless groan ricocheted through her chest when she kissed his ice-cold lips. Cold as the ocean, silken as water. Perfect. Exactly as she knew they would. But better. So much –
Pain seared through her temples, agonising, wrapping her head in molten barbed wire. The head-splitting pain was so intense that she couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t feel anything but his soft, firm lips moving exquisitely against hers, and blinding agony.
Perhaps she made a sound, because he began to draw back. But somehow she knew he mustn’t stop – this couldn’t stop or... Through the searing pain, she held tighter to him, pulling him closer. “Don’t let me go,” she begged against his lips.
“Never...” he whispered.
Her kisses equalled his for need, desperate to be closer, even as tears spilled down her cheeks from the burning blade splitting her head in two.
Images cascaded through her mind, staggering in their terror and their beauty, a bewildering montage: this boy, rising below her through shifting seaweed. This same face disappearing in a ripple of black velvet; his husky whisper, find me. These arms keeping her safe, carrying her through high tides, and stretching between her and danger.
Morgan staggering out of the dark ocean, collapsing into her arms, bereft. An auburn-haired beauty whispering come with me; cruelly gripping hands, and a shell ring taken by force. Water far above, flooding her lungs. Desperate for air. And then...not.
Endless rippling colour, an empty city deep beneath the ocean. Breaking down a wall to set this boy free. Dancing with him in a sea of light. Wanting nothing more than to dance with him there forever.
As his lips slowly warmed against hers, the agony ebbed, like mist rolling back, dissolving and lifting off, leaving a clear serene sky.
Skye drew back, opening her eyes, and stared, unable to look enough at the precious, familiar face she loved with all her heart and her soul. Hunter.
