He gets up and moves toward the front of the boat to stare out at the gator pond. Hart’s shoulders are slumped. And in the fading light, I barely recognize him.
“It was a good thing,” I tell him, because it seems like he needs to hear it. “What you did for Evie.”
He’s quiet for a minute, then he says, “It wasn’t just the bruises. Vic got busted last fall up in Kinter. Parked at the bayou docks. Had a girl in his car not much older than Evie, even. She was barely seventeen, I think.”
“Jesus.”
Hart sucks in smoke again. “I just wanted the bastard to know I was watchin’ him, you know? That I was watchin’ Evie. And that I’d fuckin’ kill ’im if he ever . . .” His voice trails off.
“You did a good thing,” I say again. “You’re good, Hart.”
He turns back to look at me the way he used to sometimes when we were kids. So tender it could kill me. This is not the Hart that put a big old bullfrog in my bed the summer we were ten. Or the Hart that teased me relentlessly for being afraid of spiders. This is not even the Hart that kissed me once when we were both thirteen.
Or again when we were seventeen.
This Hart is the one that picked me up and carried me back to Honey when I tripped on a tree root out at Li’l Pass and nearly split my head open the summer we were both eleven. The Hart that used his favorite T-shirt to soak up the blood and told me awful knock-knock jokes the whole walk home, just to keep me calm.
“I’m so sorry, Shortcake,” he tells me. “I’m sorry for this whole goddamn summer. You shouldn’t be mixed up in any of this.” He drops his cigarette butt and grinds it out in the bottom of the boat. “Elora didn’t want you anywhere near all this shit. The kind of stuff that goes on down here. That’s why she pushed you away last year.”
“Because Victor was beating the shit out of Evie?” That doesn’t make sense. As awful as it is, that kind of stuff happens everywhere.
Hart shakes his head. “She didn’t even know that then. Besides, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The part that’s visible.” It’s dark now, but there’s enough moonlight for me to see the look in his eyes. And it scares me. “There’s so much more. This whole town is . . .”
Poison.
Hart squats down and reaches for my hand. “You shouldn’t be here, Grey.” He wraps his fingers around mine and squeezes hard. “If anything ever happened to you, Elora would never forgive me.” His voice breaks, and I watch him struggle under the weight of unbearable grief. And guilt. “I’d never forgive myself.”
He doesn’t say anything else. But he doesn’t stand up and move away, either. And I feel that old pull. So strong. So familiar. It’s such a deep part of me, that longing for Hart. I know it so well. Like the feeling of the boardwalk under my feet.
Or the sound of Elora’s laugh.
There’s a kind of comfort in the timeless ache of it. Something about it that makes sense.
I reach out and run my fingers over his cheekbones and his jawline, like I’m trying to memorize the map of him. I see him flinch. But he doesn’t pull away from my touch.
All I want in the whole world is for him not to hurt any more. And for me not to hurt any more.
Hart shuts his eyes and leans in closer. I can feel his breath on my lips.
So I kiss him. And he kisses me back. We kiss each other so hard and so deep that it’s like we’ve both been snakebit and we’re trying to suck out the poison. Like we need to draw out each other’s pain.
We kiss each other like it’s a matter of life and death.
Tongues and teeth.
Hands.
I hear him moan my name, and the sound of it vibrates against something deep inside me. I try to speak his name out loud, but it gets all tangled up on my tongue.
Hart presses his lips against my ear, and the heat of his mouth makes me half-wild. “Shhhhh,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to talk, Greycie. I feel you.”
The night is so hot, and we melt so far into each other, that I’m not sure whose arms or lips or searching fingers are whose any more.
Hart stops and pulls his shirt off over his head, then he turns and spreads it out over the cushion of cypress needles in the bottom of the boat. I pull my tank top off, too, then he scoops me up off the seat to lay me down.
For just a second, I think about Elora.
How she lost her virginity right here in this very spot. With Case.
And I wonder if the old pontoon boat will be the spot for me, too.