Laughter.
Wanting a better view, I move along the rail to where the land drops into a steeper incline and crane my neck.
“There’s so many of them!”
Suddenly, I’m yanked back, my heels skidding across the pathway. The umbrella clatters to the ground as he pulls me flush against his chest.
“Don’t,” he chokes out that single word, jaw as hard as granite, but those eyes are the true betrayers.
Wide and unblinking.
Dilated…panicked.
“I was just looking at the seals.”
“You were hanging over a two-hundred-foot drop.”
“I was leaning against the rail.”
“The railing is old, Novalee.” Rain streams down the tense angles of his face, collecting in the hollow of his throat. “Maybe allowing you near a cliff wasn’t such a good idea.”
His veiled accusation cuts deep, curdling confusion in the pit of my stomach.
Because he knows I wouldn’t…
Doesn’t he?
“Why are you acting like this?”
“I shouldn’t have to spell it out.” Fear and pain bleed through his tone, and that expression tugs at the heartstrings still attached to him. It only takes a second for understanding to crystallize.
My attempt that night weighs on him, even now, despite how far I’ve come.
Despite time passing, because time…
It doesn’t erase trauma.
Doesn’t erase Talitha.
And now we’re connected in a way that can’t be undone.
I guess we both have misbehaving heartstrings.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.” My palm finds his chest, pressing flat against the violent drumming beneath his ribs.
His gaze drops to my hand, as if my touch is the most disorienting thing that’s happened today.
It stuns me too, because I touched him without thinking.
The moment stretches, held together by rain and the sound of the sea. Water hangs from his dark lashes, highlighting the vulnerability there.
His focus shifts to my mouth, and the air between us stalls altogether.
I’m frozen in his sights, unable to move or speak or think as his breaths ghost across my lips as if he might?—
A seagull lands on the railing, startling us both. Oliver clears his throat and steps back.
Relief floods me.