Elora could flirt with anyone. It was the same as breathing to her. But I’ve never had that kind of easy magic.
I’ve never had any magic at all that wasn’t borrowed from her.
When I step outside ten minutes later, Hart is standing on the dock looking at something. I take a second to study him. Long legs. Strong back. Cowboy boots and faded jeans. Tight white T-shirt. Loose black curls. My girls up in Little Rock would eat him with a spoon.
But he’s different this summer. Harder, maybe. More unreachable.
He turns around to catch me staring at him, and I hurry across the boardwalk.
“Wonder what happened here.” He’s pointing at the place where the wood gave way underneath me. Somebody has put up a safety rope to keep people back.
“I almost fell in,” I tell him. “It’s all rotted.”
“Holy shit.” His eyes go wide. “You could have been killed. When? What happened?”
“Really late last night. I heard something, so I went to check it out.” The whole memory is so surreal. “And the board just –”
“Goddammit.” Out of nowhere, Hart wheels on me and wraps his fingers around my upper arms. His voice is low and tight, like a stretched rubber band. “You shouldn’t be out here late at night, Grey.” There’s something in his tone that’s half-angry and half-frightened. It reminds me of when I was a kid and Honey caught me playing with matches in the shed.
“You’re hurting me,” I say, but mostly he’s scaring me.
Hart gives me a shake. “You wanna end up like Elora? It’s not safe. Not out here. Okay?”
“Yeah.” I’ve never seen Hart like this. I’m caught off guard. “S-sure,” I stammer. “Okay.”
“I need you to listen to what I’m sayin’。” Hart relaxes his grip on me, but he doesn’t let go. “There are things out here in the dark, Greycie.” He finally releases me, and I stagger backward a step or two. He’s still got ahold of me with his eyes, though. “Dangerous things.”
I nod. “I’ll be more careful. I promise.”
“I can’t lose you, too.” Hart sits on an old wooden crate, and it’s like I’m watching him disintegrate, just like that rotten board. “Please. Greycie.” If I touched him, he’d turn to dust.
For the first time in my life, I think Hart’s about to cry. But he doesn’t. He just stares out at that wide, muddy river. And it’s a long time before he says, “She’s not coming back. You know that, right?”
“Hart,” I beg him, “don’t. Please.” But he ignores me.
“Somebody killed her. And I think you need to prepare yourself to deal with that. You know? And if it wasn’t Case, then I have no fuckin’ clue who it could have been.”
And there it is.
Out loud.
We sit in silence for a really long time. Minutes creep by in slow motion like river barges. Hart pulls out a cigarette and lights it in one fluid movement, then we watch the little tugs moving up and down the Mississippi. He tips his head back to blow smoke into the air, and it reminds me of the vapor from an old-fashioned steamboat funnel.
“We had a fight,” I confess. “A really bad one. That last night. Back in August of last year.”
Hart finishes the cigarette and crushes it under the heel of his boot.
“What about?”
I shrug. “Everything. Her wanting to leave. Me wanting to come back. A whole bunch of other stuff.” I focus on the cigarette smoke hanging in the still afternoon air. I detach myself and try to drift away like that. “It’d been building all last summer. She was feeling suffocated, I think. By this place. By me.” Hart is staring at me now. “And I didn’t handle it well.”
I can’t be your one and only, Grey! God, we’re not six years old any more. I need more than that! Shit, maybe you do, too.
“She was sneaking off a lot. Lying to me. Leaving me out of things.” I take a deep breath. “That’s why I was thinking, maybe Case was right. Maybe there was someone else. Someone secret. Because things weren’t the way they’d always been between us.” It feels weird to finally say that to someone. I’ve kept it locked away for so long, afraid that telling would make it true. “She didn’t love me the way she used to.”
Hart lets out a long puff of air. I see the damp curls lift off his forehead before they settle back against his skin. “She still loved you, Greycie. Whatever was going on between the two of you last summer, Elora loved you more than she loved anybody in the world. I know it for a fact.”