Page 80 of The Lightkeeper

His words pierced my hope—piercing my heart.

Now, we knew how it could be. What we could have.And that it wasn’t meant to last.

We stood frozen for a moment, our eyes locked in some kind of tailspin that both felt like forever and ended too quick.

“Now we know,” I repeated thickly and let my arm fall to my side. “I’ll get my things.”

I held back my tears while we took ten minutes to pack what we could from the house. I held back my pain on the silent drive over to the B&B, where there was nothing to do but wait a few minutes for Jamie to pull up. And I held back my heartbreak when I turned to say goodbye and Kit pressed a kiss to my forehead.

“Goodbye, sea star.”

My throat was too tight to respond as he bundled me into Jamie’s truck, muttered something too low to hear to his brother, and tapped on the trunk.

I watched Kit in the sideview mirror for as long as I could, and when I finally couldn’t see him anymore, a sharp inhale sank into my lungs, feeling as though I’d lost a piece of myself in leaving him.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t a sea star. If I were, I wouldn’t feel this kind of pain. Not because I could regrow the missing piece, but because sea stars didn’t have hearts.

Chapter Nineteen

Kit

It was for the best.

With every passing minute of the last twenty-four hours, the thought cemented into my bones. I hadn’t pushed her away, but when reality took her back to her real life, I’d let her go and told myself it was the right thing to do. The honorable thing. Just because I could make her come didn’t mean I could keep her. She’d be better off without me. A broken man who lived in a lighthouse.

I’d watched Jamie’s truck drive off from the sidewalk in front of the B&B in shock. In pain. The inside of my body responded in a way I hadn’t felt in over a decade.From trauma.My heart raced. Sweat beaded. My skin buzzed. Every instinct screamed to run. Run after her. Rip the door open. Haul her back here and lock her in the damn lighthouse.But I wasn’t a beast any more than she belonged here.

So, I held onto my thin thread of control—its strength fueledonly by the memory of Aurora collapsing in the drive and the cry that whipped through my bones—and told myself it was for the best. Because it was. It had to be. And when I finally did move from that spot on the sidewalk, the weight on my shoulders was so great, I was surprised my feet hadn’t left permanent impressions in the concrete.

I’d returned immediately to the lighthouse, gravel kicking as I sped down the drive toward my home. My haven. The only place that would feel safe at a time like this—when it felt like a part of my life had been ripped away once more.

By the time I’d made it through the door, I was desperate for shelter, heaving breaths from my lungs like they were made of water. But inside—inside the place I’d taken refuge for a decade, shelter from a life it seemed impossible for me to have lived, I found none.

Instead, I only found her.

Her things. Her books. Her clothes that had once been mine, I now hardly recognized with seeing them on her lush form.Her specimens. Shelves of colorful, interesting creatures filled… well, it no longer felt like my space. It felt like theirs. Hers.Ours.I’d walked over to the shelf and picked up a container, staring at the damn sea snail inside.

Bushy-backed nudibranch.

Pain lanced through my chest. I didn’t know why I thought this place would be better. She was everywhere here. And the pain was suffocating me.

Bare minutes I’d lasted inside the house before I was back in my truck, driving toward town. I needed boxes. Packing material. Tape. I needed to get her things out of my lighthouse.

And that had been my sole focus for the last twenty-four hours. Packing everything of Aurora’s in sight to send to her in Boston.

I’d started with the specimens she’d told me could be released back into the ocean. One by one, I opened the containers and carefully dumped the creatures into the rocky tide pools around the base of the lighthouse. With each one, I told myself that was what she was. Something beautiful and fascinating that I’d kept in my lighthouse for a time but belongs back in her natural habitat. A stupid analogy, but it kept the pain at bay.

I’d spent the night in Jamie’s barn, knowing better than to think I’d get any sleep in the bed she’d been in only the night before.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t get any sleep anyway, tossing and turning, wondering how she was doing—how her dad was doing. Wondering who was holding her if she needed to cry? Who was taking care of her while her focus was elsewhere?

Not me, came the harsh answer. I could hardly take care of myself.

When morning rolled around, I was back to the lighthouse before dawn, clinging to the tasks that sustained me before her. Checking the light. The battery. Cleaning the windows. I willed it to be the same as before. Ineededit to be the same… just as surely as I knew it never would be.

Someone banged loudly on the door.

“Yeah?” I called, rising from the boxes I was in the middle of packing and went to open it.“Frankie?—”

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