Page 49 of All the Ways You Save Me
His arm brushes my shoulder, and the warmth seeps into my skin. “Sometimes it’s important to get closure, even if it breaks your heart. Then you can say goodbye to old memories and move on to new ones.”
“How do you know so much about getting closure and saying goodbye?”
A shadow crosses his face. “Everyone has lost something—or someone.”
I want to ask who he’s lost. I want to know more about his life, what brought him here, what matters to him. Not just to find out if he’s Adam, but to fill in all the blank spaces of who he is now. I settle for, “Why did you move to Sandy Harbor?”
He takes a few steps in silence, as if he’s thinking it over,and finally, he says, “I grew up outside of San Diego, and after high school, I took a road trip to see the rest of the country. Up until that point, my little corner of California was all I really knew. I ended up in New York City, at a job working in the facilities department of a downtown high-rise. It took about six months of cleaning up after those Wall Street bros and fighting my way through crowded subways to make me realize that maybe I was a beach guy after all. I came down to Sandy Harbor to get away for the day.”
Garrett pauses his story to guide me toward the path through the dunes. “This is our street,” he says.
Hearing a voice that’s so like Adam’s define something asours, I’m hit by an irrational sense of longing. What if itwasour street, and Adam and I were walking to the home we shared? But this man says he’s Garrett, and he’s in the middle of telling me a story to back it up. “So, you came for a day and… never left?” I nudge him to continue.
His lips twitch into a half-smile. “I was in a diner having lunch when Ian sat down on the stool next to me. He was my age, barely out of his teens, and it was the middle of August, but he was wearing a three-piece suit. He looked like a little kid wearing his dad’s clothes. It turned out that his dad had actually died a couple of years earlier, and Ian had taken over the business. He’d just come from some meetings with his lawyer and was completely in over his head. We got to talking and found out we had a lot in common. He ended up offering me a job.”
We arrive at the intersection of the path and the street, and Garrett stops walking to look down at my bare feet. “How’s the cut on your heel? Do you need to put your shoes back on before we walk on the concrete?”
I lift my foot to check the thick bandage I put on my heel before my shift. It hadn’t bothered me at Hudson’s or on the walk, but with the friction from the sand and water, it’s starting to fall off. “I think I might need to put myshoes back on.” I look around for a bench, but don’t see one. “Do you mind if I lean on you?” I wobble on my good foot and reach out a hand in his direction.
He steps closer and takes my arm to steady me. “Maybe this would be more efficient,” he says. The next thing I know, Garrett is scooping me off my feet and holding me securely against his chest, just like he did the other day on the beach. In my surprise, I let out a little gasp and throw my arms around his neck, clinging to him.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Maybe you should have been a lifeguard and not a carpenter,” I say with a breathless laugh. “You’re really good at saving people.”
Garrett carries me up my porch steps and stops to lower me to my feet by the front door. The streetlamp slants across him from above, highlighting the angles of his face and the contours of his body. Sometimes he looks and sounds so much like Adam it takes my breath away. But I don’t remember that freckle being on Adam’s cheek or the habit that Garrett seems to have of rubbing the back of his neck when he’s thinking. I search my memory, but the details of Adam are starting to fade. Would the Adam I knew have learned to swim, or surf, or build beautiful houses?
An awareness vibrates across the narrow space between us. Is this gravitational pull for Adam or for Garrett? For the sweet boy I loved half a lifetime ago, or for the thoughtful man who pulls me from the waves and walks me home at night and sweeps me off my injured foot?
My gaze drops from Garrett’s eyes to his lips. If I kissed him, would it feel familiar and comfortable, or new, exciting, and electric?
Garrett freezes for a whisper of a moment, his eyes glued to mine as if his thoughts are drifting in the same direction. And then he leans in, sliding one hand into my hair and the otheraround my back, pulling me closer and pressing his mouth to mine. With a gasp of surprise and pleasure, I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck. He angles his head for better access, dragging his tongue against my bottom lip, and I open my mouth, deepening the kiss, savoring the scent of cut wood and ocean air on his skin.
The kiss moves from exploring to urgent, and as he lifts me up onto the porch railing and slides his hips between my thighs, I forget that I’m supposed to be analyzing this experience and looking for signs that I’ve been here with this man before. I fall into the moment, into the feel of him, the heat between us. For the first time in years, maybe for the first time since the day Adam died, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
That thought has me shoving him away and sliding off the railing. “I have to go,” I whisper, while inside I’m screaming,What were you thinking?I hurry across the floorboards and swing the front door open.
“Madeline, wait,” Garrett calls, but I’m halfway in the house and already turning to close and lock the door behind me.
I slump onto the couch and press my hands to my flushed face. I just kissed a man I don’t know and definitely don’t trust, and now the only thing I’m clear about is that I’m more mixed up than ever. Outside, I hear Garrett’s footsteps slowly thump down the steps, and the wild, irrational part of me who blows up her engagement and packs up and moves to the beach for the summer wants to fling open the door and stop him from leaving. Because I might be confused about whether he’s Garrett or Adam, but Iamclear about one thing.
I want to kiss him again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
PRESENT DAY
Garrett
After tossing and turning all night, I sit bleary-eyed on my couch, nursing my third cup of coffee and going around and around in my head about the events of the night before. I can’t believe I kissed her. I can’t believe she kissed me back, and I would have kept kissing her if she hadn’t backed away and fled for the house.
Thank God she backed away.
Because I couldn’t seem to slow what was happening. Kissing her was like hopping on a surfboard. One moment, you’re in control, and the next, you’re powerless, at nature’s mercy, and you just have to let it carry you along. Last night, I would have let the force of Madeline carry me until I drowned. She was the love of my life, and I knew a part of me would always feel that way, but I wasn’t prepared for how intensely I would be drawn to her again.
I press my hand to the sore spot on the back of my neck that always aches from bending over my worktable. I gaze around the house that I built, from the cabinets I shaped and sandedwith my own two hands to the furniture and art I painstakingly chose. The mantel is covered in framed drawings that Ellery has given me over the years and a couple of photos of me surfing with Chloe and Ian. Seventeen-year-old Adam would be amazed at how his life turned out. Except the one person that kid was working so hard for is lost to him forever.
What I did last night wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous. Every minute Madeline stays here on Sandy Harbor puts everyone I love at risk. She said she believes I’m not Adam, and I hope to God that’s true. But if I’m being pulled by the undeniable force that had us crashing together a decade ago, she must be feeling it too. So, what the hell was I thinking, dragging her against me, kissing her like I never wanted to let go?
