Ethan was watching her, waiting for a response. “Ashlyn?”
She reached for her beer and took a long pull. Was she actually considering this? Revealing a secret she’d never felt safe enough to share with Daniel, simply to make her point? Risking whatever it was that might be starting between them?
“Can I tell you something?” she said quietly. “Something that’s going to sound a little weird? Okay, a lot weird.”
Ethan straightened, as if sensing the conversation was about to change. “Sure.”
“I have this thing. This . . . gift. There’s a name for it—psychometry. Most people think it’s made-up, but it’s real. At least for me.” She paused for another sip of beer before continuing. “I can . . . feel things. Echoes, I call them.”
He was frowning now, clearly perplexed. “Echoes?”
“They’re what’s left behind when we touch something. You. Me. We all leave echoes. And we leave them on the things we touch, like a residue. The stronger our feelings when we touch an object, the stronger the echoes. And I can read them, with my hands, with all of me, I suppose. At least that’s how it feels.”
She went quiet then, holding her breath as she attempted to glean his reaction. She could see him trying to work it out in his head, weighing what he’d just heard against the academic side of his nature.
Finally, a furrow appeared between his brows. “You’re saying everything you touch gives off these . . . echoes?”
Ashlyn released the breath she’d been holding. A question was good. “Not everything, no. At least not for me. For me, it’s just books.”
“Books.”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, blank-faced as he tried to digest what he’d been told. “And you just happen to own a bookstore.”
“Go figure, right?”
“How did . . . When . . .” He paused, shaking his head. “I don’t even know what to ask. What must that be like? All day. Every day. Surrounded by books that are talking to you. How do you hear yourself think?”
Ashlyn couldn’t help smiling at his description. “It isn’t like that. It’s not words; it’s emotion, feelings that come through like tiny vibrations. But it only happens when I touch a book. I can feel what the owner felt when they were reading it—or in this case, when the authors were writing them. That’s why I’m certain there was something else going on with Hemi and Belle. Because I feel it when I touch the books. The same betrayal and loss from both of them. The same certainty that they’d been betrayed by the other.”
Ethan shook his head, clearly struggling to comprehend. “I’m sorry. I’m still trying to get my head around this. You’re saying you can read Belle’s emotions—and Hemi’s—with your fingers. All these years later. How is that even possible?”
Ashlyn shrugged. “I don’t know. It just is. But these books are different from anything I’ve ever come across. The feelings on both sides are so strong—and so similar. They’re just flipped, like mirror images. I know it sounds crazy, and maybe I am obsessing a little, but this isn’t some romantic fantasy I’m indulging. I feel it in my bones. There was a reason they both believed they’d been betrayed by the other. I felt it the first time I touched the books, and I still feel it.”
To her relief, Ethan gave no sign that he found any of this implausible, though he did take several moments to process. “Have you always been able to do it?” he asked finally.
“It started when I was twelve. At first I thought everyone could do it. Then I did some reading about it.” She looked down at the beer bottle in her hand, scraping at the soggy label with her thumbnail. “Turns out I’m a bit of a freak.”
“Or maybe you’re just more tuned in than most people.”
She scrunched one eye as she looked at him. “You don’t think it’s weird?”
“Oh, I think it’s totally weird. I also think it’s amazing.”
Ashlyn found her throat suddenly choked with tears. “Thank you.”
“For calling you weird?”
“For taking me seriously.” She blinked hard and looked away. “I don’t talk about it much. Or at all, really. When I told my mother, she made me swear not to breathe a word to anyone, especially not my father, who would say it was the devil’s work. The only person I ever told was Frank Atwater, the man who used to own the store . . . and now you.”
Ethan came to stand beside her, and for a moment, they stood elbow to elbow, watching a pair of gulls skim over the harbor’s silvery surface. The tide was going out. In another few hours, the water would have retreated completely, exposing a stretch of dull gray mud, providing a veritable buffet for hungry gulls and kittiwakes.
“You never told Daniel?” Ethan asked at last.
“I could never have trusted him with something like that, given him that kind of weapon to use against me.”
Ethan studied her a moment, his expression thoughtful. “But you trusted me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad you did. But why?”
Ashlyn ducked her head, shy suddenly. “You told me that first night that you weren’t interested in your family history. But you’ve been so great about letting me pick your brain. So patient with all my questions. I guess I wanted you to understand why it’s so personal for me.”
Ethan stared at his hands where they gripped the railing, quiet again as the breeze whipped the hair back from his forehead. “Before . . . ,” he said finally, awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to make light of how you feel. I get now why you’re so invested. But it’s different for me. I’m not sure how I even got involved. I should be upstairs writing, or at least working on finals. Instead, I’m up to my ears in some romantic whodunit and I have no idea how it happened . . . except that it gave me an excuse to keep seeing you.”
His final remark caught Ashlyn off guard. “You thought you needed an excuse?”
“Didn’t I?”
The question brought a flush of warmth to her cheeks. “At first. Maybe.”
He reached up to push a lock of hair out of her eyes. “And now?”
It felt like the most natural thing in the world to lean into him, to melt into the circle of his arms, to yield when his lips touched hers. Natural and yet terrifying. It had been so long since she’d let herself surrender to anything, since she’d felt anything. Now, at a touch, all those denied sensations flooded through her, like the steps of some long-abandoned dance. The winding of his hands through her hair, the rasp of his breath against her cheek, the dizzying awareness of crumbling barriers.
This is how it starts. Exactly like this.
Ashlyn stiffened as the warning bells began to jangle. Memories of another first kiss and all that had followed. She’d been so swept up, so eager to be loved, that she’d forgotten to protect herself. And here she was, on the verge of doing it again.
Ethan must have registered her sudden misgivings. He eased out of the kiss and took a step back, looking uncertain and slightly off-balance. “I seem to remember saying something about going slow. Should I say I’m sorry?”