Once we’ve gathered half a dozen buckets, Clay climbs up the bank and we stand for a moment, breathing heavy, drinking from the canteen I brought down from the kitchen. The afternoon feels stretched, brittle, and I sense something in him. His razor-sharp eyes stare past me, up the shoreline, as he rubs the back of his tanned neck. “Let’s get it up to the garden before it dries.”
And the moment is gone. Maybe it was nothing at all.
That night, my fingertip traces his collarbone. His arm draped across my hip. It’s well after dark, the bedroom window open, but there’s not even a breeze. Only a carpet of stars and no moon.
He is quiet, eyes lidded, drowsy.
I plant a soft kiss on his shoulder. “Tell me about her.”
His eyebrows come together, chest rising with a long breath. “Who?”
“Her. Your wife.” I don’t say her name, and I’m not sure why. Alice. It feels sacred, a name only he can speak. Her initials were carved into the locket I stole and kept hidden for years.
He shifts beneath me but doesn’t get up from the bed. “What do ye want to know?”
“You just never—” I know I might be tiptoeing into territory he won’t want to discuss, memories he’d prefer to keep in the past, but I want to know something about the woman who once slept in this bed. Who haunts this house with her memory… haunts his heart. “You’ve never really talked about her.”
“This was her family’s land,” he says.
I tilt my head to look at him.
He nods to the window. “Ten acres, been in her family for three generations.”
“I thought it was yours,” I say.
“Nae. We had land nearby, not on the shore. When her father died,her mother was struggling to keep things going. I knew Alice since we were kids, went to school together. Was the right thing to do…”
“What was?”
“Marry her. Take care of the house, work the land as well as my own up the ridge. Her mother passed on, an’ we made a go of it.”
In all the rumors I’ve heard over the years about Clay Lockhart and Saltwell Island, no one ever mentioned this part.
“It was a good marriage. We understood each other, mostly. We both knew our part, knew what needed to be done to keep things going—this house, the land, us. Marriage isn’t always…” He exhales. “We respected each other, even if it wasnae the kind of love ye read about in books. An’ I thought that was enough.” He looks away, pulls his mouth down, a rattle in his chest. “That night, when the labor started, I could tell something wasnae right. Too much blood. But we couldnae travel in the storm. After it was done—” He wipes at his eyes, looks at me. “After it all happened, losing her, I knew it was punishment.”
“Punishment for what?”
“Not loving her like I should’ve. Not looking at her like she deserved.”
I shake my head, thinking of James. I was a woman who didn’t know her own heart, and he could see it. He could see the past following me wherever I went. He could see the island in my eyes.
“Fate wouldn’t punish you for that,” I say.
He makes a sound at the back of his throat. “Until ye blew in from the sea”—he shifts his weight, turns to place his lips on mine—“I thought I’d live alone, in this house, for the rest of my days.” I run my fingers up to his chin, along his mouth, and he kisses each one, slow. “I didnae know being with someone could feel like this.” He looks lost to a memory, before he blinks and refocuses. “I’d do anything to protect ye—” he tells me now, eyes shivering in the faint light. “To keep ye safe.”
I wonder if this is what haunts him, the guilt he feels from Alice’s death. As if he could have prevented it, if only he’d kept her safe. Kept death at bay.
“I know,” I answer, because I can see it in his eyes.
His chest rises, then stalls as he stares down at me, fingers coiling through my hair. “Maybe it’s always like this for ye… maybe this is how it was when ye were with James. But I’ve never known this feeling with a woman before.”
I reach up and kiss him again, breathing him in. “It was never like this with James.”
Two days later, the weather turns, the temperature so hot that sweat pricks my temples before I’ve even stepped outside. “Do you think we’re drifting south?” I ask, standing at the cliff’s edge, sea grass blowing against my ankles as we watch the waves churn and crash against the shore.
“Most likely.”
I run my hand along his arm, up to his bare shoulder, working the stiff muscles, then touch my lips to his upper arm, his collarbone, motions that have become habit. An intimacy between us that feels both familiar and ancient, instinctive, like there will never be enough of him, never enough moments between us—like I will never tire of his body pressed to mine. I turn my gaze back to the sea, watching, and for a fraction of a second, I think I see something out there. A thin band against the horizon. Land rising up in the distance, but then it’s gone. Only a trick of the wavy afternoon heat.
