I coil my hands into fists, glancing up at the house. I could be up the porch steps and through the front door in thirty seconds. I could be back at the bonfire with a lit candle in less than a minute. It’ll take some time for the tinder to catch on the larger chunks of driftwood, until the fire is bright enough for the ship to notice. Massive enough to draw the attention of whoever is on night watch.
“I don’t know—” Fuck. I think of Nana, worrying herself into sleeplessness, illness even. The last time I saw her, she looked so bone-thin; I don’t know how long she could go on waiting for me. But if I leave, if I go back to her, the island will drift away. And I’ll lose him with it. For good. I press my palms to my eyes. I don’t know. How can I decide my whole life in a single, fragile moment? How do I know what’s right? What choice will I regret? Which one will keep me awake foryears to come, wondering, wishing I’d done something different on this awful night?
Before tears can spill from my eyes, Nana’s words find me, as if brought in by the tide.Go find your island, she said in the driveway, just before I climbed into the rental car.Be a little reckless for once in your life—you just might find exactly what you’re looking for out on that ocean.
Tears shed down my cheeks.
I found far more. I found a dizzying, unshakable feeling that I never thought I deserved. And Nana wouldn’t want me to give that up. For her. She’d want this, this life, the one that makes me feel like I’m drowning, like I’m punch-drunk, senseless, and impractical.
And in love.
I drop the piece of kindling in my hand. Like a static shock—sharp and unmistakable—there is no question of the choice I should make.
I cross the few paces between us, bare feet against the hard soil, my heart settling into a cadence I know—I trust. I touch his lips. This man who is certainty and shelter against the worst storms. Who I know I love. Who I won’t lose. I hear his breathing change, the rhythm growing heavy, desperate, like he’s afraid of what I’m going to say.
“I don’t care about the ship,” I whisper, my lungs burning. “A hundred ships could anchor at our shores, and it won’t change anything. I’m not going anywhere.” I rest a hand against his chest. “I don’t want my old life. I want this one.”
His arms fold around my thighs, lifting me up against him. My naked flesh against his, still dripping with seawater, the heat of the night air pulling into our lungs, we leave the lights of the ship behind as he carries me up to the house.
We don’t make it to the bedroom. The couch is as far as we get. And when his hands press against me, when he eases himself inside me, gentle, slow, it feels different from all the times before. It feels like sorcery spun between us. Irreversible. Stronger than husband and wife, than a ring on a finger, than everything we’ve left in our past. The terrain ofhis body is not written down on any map; it belongs to me. My hands are the only marker. He mutters ancient Gaelic words against my flesh, his tongue tracing my earlobe, and my hands get lost in his sun-kissed hair, all while the ship makes its way farther out into the dark, past the island. The closest I’ve ever come to rescue. A thing I once wanted. But maybe I’ve already been saved.
With Clay’s mouth against mine, tugging against me, breaking me apart, how could I ever leave?
How could I ever want what I had before, in my old life, when I have this?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
What does it mean to start over?
To dismantle yourself and begin again?
I am living my life without instructions, off the edges of the map—outside of anything I ever thought possible.
And for the first time in my adult life, I don’t feel afraid.
The days grow warm, the nights muggy and windless. We haul blankets, pillows, and the last of the whiskey down to the grassy bluff overlooking the sea, and we sleep under the stars. He traces the veins along my forearm like he’s charting a course, mapping constellations. Thin tufts of grass poke through the blankets, sand finding its way between the covers. But we don’t care.
I never went camping as a kid, or as an adult, but I find myself craving this, the dirt and the stars and the night air in my lungs.
This place has made something different of me. Woven in with the wild. I feel settled, calmed, like I’m remembering something so pure it’s always been there, waiting, dormant, lost to time. A truth known by my ancestors.
I think of all the children I’ve counseled over the years, the parents who’ve shared their grief, their stress, their worry and pain andlistlessness. The endless number of phobias and panic attacks and unraveling nervous systems.
If I only knew then what I now understand, I would tell them to run.
Fucking run for your lives.
Flee the life they bought on credit: the sterile house in a square, ordinary town, with false expectations and fast internet and pills to swallow down the numbness of it all.
I would tell them to burn all of it down.
So they can build something new.
I wasn’t the only one dying back there on the mainland. We all were; our lives poisoned by the very things we thought would save us.
Now, I sit with my knees pulled up, looking out at the black sea, Clay’s hand at the small of my back while the sky deepens into the colors of night. And I know I have left things behind that I love.
But I love myself more.
