Page 72 of Tourist Season
“You don’t have to come with me to the hospital.”
I glare down at her. The spark brightens just a little in her eyes when I do. “Like hell I’m not.”
“But you’ll smell like the sea.”
“That’s supposed to be calming.”
“On the beach, sure.” She coughs, squeezing my hand as she does. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or just a reflexive tightening of her muscles, but it makes my heart jump all the same. “You’re going to smell like you rolled around naked in a fish market. They’ll kick you out for disturbing the other patients.”
I roll my eyes, and this time she gifts me a weak smile. “I see a near-death experience hasn’t dampened your humor. Pun intended.”
“That was awful. I don’t think they can let you in. You smell like fish and make terrible, ill-timed puns.”
“Do you not want me to come?”
Harper pauses. My heart sinks as though she’s just tossed it right back into the deep water I just pulled her from. “I don’t want you there if it brings back bad memories,” she finally says. “Don’t put yourself through that for me.”
I stare at her, that image of her unseeing eyes still lingering like a nightmare that clings to consciousness long after waking. And I realize I hadn’t even thought about the hospital and the painful past it could evoke. But she did. Only moments ago, she died in my arms. Beneath my hands. And she’d rather face the chaos and stress of a hospital alone than put me through memories that are difficult to bear.
The woman who put me there. The one who left me to die alone in the dark.
I cup her cheek. Her eyes drift closed. She leans into my touch. Squeezes my hand, and this time I know it was on purpose. Her warmth still feels like magic. I brought her back, and nothing I’ve done in my life feels like as much of an accomplishment as that.
“I’m coming with you,” I say, leaning down to place a lingering kiss on her forehead.
When I pull away and look down at her face, it’s as though everything I thought I’d come here for has been stripped away, leaving only one truth behind. One I’m not ready to put into the world. But one that consumes me nonetheless.
I’m in love with the woman I came here to kill.
SHROUDSHarper
MY EYES PEEL OPEN, ADJUSTINGto the light in my bedroom. Scattered thoughts and fractured nightmares arrange into my first conscious thoughts.
Something is wrong.
There’s motion in the bed. A tremor. A foreign sound.
I roll onto my side and see Nolan facing away from me, his body shaking. His back is exposed, his skin covered in a thin film of sweat. Though I’ve caught glimpses of it before, I can now see the full length of the straight scar that runs down his neck, dotted on either side with the healed marks of sutures or staples. A sound resonates from him, like a word he can’t quite form in sleep. It’s desperate. Like a plea.
I lay a hand on his shoulder. “Nolan …” He lets out another low, rumbling note of distress that forms a crevice in my heart. “Nolan … wake up …”
In a sudden flurry of movement, he flips over, his hand landing on my neck. His fingers notch beneath my jaw as he looms over me. His hair is damp with sweat, his eyes wild. Fear is paintedacross his features. When a few beats of my hammering pulse thrum into his fingertips, he finally blinks away the nightmare, processing the world in front of him. A shudder racks his body, and then he hangs his head, his forehead resting on my collarbone as he expels a long breath. “I’m sorry,” he whispers against my skin.
“It was just a nightmare,” I say, laying a tentative hand on the nape of his neck. His skin is hot and slick beneath my palm.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I gently squeeze the back of his neck, but he doesn’t seem reassured, as though whatever he saw in his dreams is still too vivid to let go. And I know what that’s like. At first, I was too exhausted to dream. But the last two nights, he’s the one who’s woken me from visions of hitting the water. Every time I thrashed or called out, he was there with a quiet word to wake me. But this is the first time I’ve seen him sleep. I wonder if he’s been suffering nightmares all this time, and I just never knew. “Are you?”
Nolan lifts his head. His haunted eyes travel over my face, his fingers still collecting every beat of my heart as though it could stop without his touch. Though Arthur and Lukas and even Irene and Maya came to visit, it was Nolan who stayed. He spent three days at my side in the hospital. I don’t know how he convinced the staff to let him stay, but he did, and he remained at my side the whole time. Whether it was waiting in the hall while I had X-rays to check for broken bones and fluid in my lungs, or watching from my bedside as I was given oxygen and IVs to combat edema and infection, or simply providing a steadying hand to help me out of bed to go to the bathroom, Nolan was there. And it seems like he’s still not convinced that it’s enough.
He wasn’t enthusiastic about my insistence on leaving thehospital so quickly. And he wasabsolutely notreceptive to my suggestion that we resume our exhumations last night either. We finally arrived at a compromise: I would tell him the location of the next three burial sites, and he would handle the dig on his own, returning to my cottage when he was done. I tried to stay up and wait for him to get back, but the fatigue is still so consuming that I collapsed into bed shortly after dark and I never woke when he returned. I didn’t expect him to lie in bed next to me, but now that he’s here, there’s a rightness to it. It feels like he’s meant to be here. And I never expected it, but now I’m afraid of how much it will hurt when he’s not.
“It’s all I can see,” he finally says. His touch travels from my neck to lie on my chest. My sternum and ribs are sore and bruised beneath my thin tank top. But my heart beats through the pain because of him. “Why can’t you swim?”
I let out a breath of a laugh. “I fell into a pool when I was a toddler and nearly drowned. I refused to learn after that. I guess my parents didn’t want to deal with the theatrical tantrum I threw whenever they tried to take me for swimming lessons, so they just … gave up.”
“I hate that very much.”
