Page 86 of The Lightkeeper

Her confusion deepened. “Did you get my note?”

I exhaled loudly. “Note? No. What note? I never got a note.”

Her eyes bulged.

“I was at the hospital for several days with my dad, but I checked all the mail?—”

“It wasn’t in the mail. It was in the box. Didn’t you open all the boxes?”

My jaw slackened, heat flooding my cheeks. “No,” I admitted softly and then led her to the back of our old brownstone townhouse to the office where I’d only partially unloaded all the things Kit had shipped back.

I told him to ship me all my specimens, not because I needed them to finish my paper—I was too close to the end for that—but because by leaving them, it felt like I was leaving a piece of me with a man who didn’t want me. So, when the boxes were delivered, I’d only opened two of the three, the last still sitting taped up in the corner of the room.

“That’s the one,” Frankie said softly, folding her arms. “I leftyou a note in there to message me when you got it.”

My throat bobbed as I tried to swallow. “Frankie…”

“You have to open it, Aurora,” she insisted, her voice pleading. “Otherwise, you’ll never know.”

Know.

I stared at her. That was all I wanted. To know him. To know his secrets. His pain. His smiles.His love.And when he shut me out, I thought it was safest to not let my mind know any more—think any more about him.

“Please.”

My head thudded quicker, and I paused for a second, letting my brain catch up to the reckless ruler in my chest that had already decided what I was going to do. And then I bent and slid the box to the center of the room, carefully picking at the end of the tape to peel it open. It zipped off the box with a tearing sound.

I folded the ends back, my brow creasing when the first thing I saw was some of my textbooks on top.

“I had to hide it so he wouldn’t know I’d sent it with your things,” she said as I lifted them out of the box and then stopped short when I saw the smaller, leather notebook tucked in their midst.

His journal.

“Frankie…” I sighed and shook my head, my fingers trembling as I lifted it. She shouldn’t have taken this for me. It belonged to Kit. On top, I found the quick note she’d scribbled on one of my stickies.Message me when you get this. We need a plan.

My chest panged.Frankie and her plans.

“Just open it.”

I couldn’t resist, even if I wanted to. I was weak. I missed Kit with every breath, and if I could know some of his thoughts for just a few minutes, I’d take that relief like it was one more hit of a drug, willing to pay the price for my addiction later.

I peeled open the worn flap, the first page dating backtwo years ago, and on it were the notes of the lighthouse keeper: the state of the lighthouse, the weather and sea conditions, and notable activity near the shore. Using my thumb, I let the pages flip by, watching the scribbled dates in the corner tick closer to the present. And then I hit a page that was dogeared.

The day I arrived.

My eyes greedily scanned his notes.Student at lighthouse. Says she’s studying sea creatures. Aurora Cross.But it wasn’t the notes that held my attention; it was what was below them. A sketch. Of me in my waders standing on the rocks. There wasn’t much detail, just a rough outline of the moment he first saw me.

I flipped to the next page, finding another mention, this time of thenudibranch,an outline of the shellcarcassI’d left on the counter.

As the days went on, I watched the notes change. Grow. No longer were the pages only sparsely filled with brief meteorological and oceanographic notations, but they grew consumed with details—observations about me.

Sketches of my face when I found Stuart. My smile. The happiness in my eyes. Drawings of me biting my lip as I worked. From the concentrated furrow of my brow to the dimples in my cheeks, I watched each page reveal myself one detail at a time—weeks upon weeks when I’d been the object of his study just as much as he’d been of mine.

When I reached the final pages of the journal, embarrassment flamed my cheeks. The sketches turned more personal. More erotic. Images of me lying naked in his bed. Another one of me smiling at him from the shower. I sucked in a breath when I reached one of the final ones—my head tipped back with pleasure, my hands cupped over my breasts, his hands on my waist—the perspective of a man who was thoroughly enjoying himself from the vantage point between my thighs.

“You saw this?” I croaked, feeling the color in my cheeksdeepen.

“Don’t worry, no one else did,” she murmured.

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