Page 39 of The Same Backward as Forward
Seventy percent of the way there.
Eighty percent.
“Sometimes, when I look at you,” Harry said, his voice rougher now, as it echoed through the night, “I feel you, like a hum in my bones, whispering that we are the same.”
We’re not. We can’t be.But every puzzle he gave me, I solved.I have to stop.We had to. But damn it all the way to hell—I kept walking.
And so did he. “But then you do something, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, somethingselfless, somethingkind, and I know—I know—that you’re different. Different than me. Different than the whole damn world.”
“Stop talking.” My voice shook. Maybe my body did, too. In the back of my mind, I could hear Harry describing my emotions:It’s like watching stormwater rise and rise behind a dam.“Just stop.”
We were close now—ten yards away, if that.
“I don’t know how to stop,” Harry said quietly. “I’m not sure I ever did.”
I thought about the boy I’d met in the bar. Aboutkerosene. About every singleimpossiblemoment with him since.
I hated him.
Idid.
But as he reached the lighthouse and slapped a hand against its crumbling stone wall like a swimmer finishing a race, I also believed him: He didn’t know how to stop. He wasright there.
And I didn’t want to be alone.
The bane of my existence stared at me through the darkness like it wasn’t dark at all. “I don’t know how to quit this,” he told me. “Quityou.”
What’s there to quit?I thought, but I couldn’t say those words out loud, because I couldn’t stop thinking about bits of folded paper and lemons, about palindromes and puzzles—
“But I’m a selfish bastard, aren’t I? I probably wouldn’t quit you even if I could.”
I placed my hand on the crumbling stone, next to his. “You are a selfish bastard,” I breathed. “And there’s nothing to quit.”
“Liar,” he murmured, and when he brought his hands to my face, when he buried his fingers in my hair, I didn’t fight it.
Butnot fightingwasn’t enough for him. He brought his lips to just almost touch mine.Almost.And then, damn him to hell and back, he waited.
For me.
Forgive me, Kaylie.I closed the gap. The moment my lips touched his, he shifted his body and mine, and suddenly, my back was up against the lighthouse and nothing else in the world existed exceptthis.
Moonlight and him andthis.
I’d never kissed anyone before. Twenty years old, and I’d never evenimaginedthat it could—
“This is a mistake,” I gasped, barely pulling back. “You’re…”
“Horrible,” he filled in, and then his lips crashed down on mine.
Horrible.“Yes,” I said.
“I have no redeeming qualities,” he murmured, as I turned and pressedhimback against the lighthouse.
“None,” I said.
His hands still in my hair, he tilted my head back, trailing kisses along my jaw and down my neck. “You hate me.”
I hate you, I thought, my back arching.
