Page 54 of The Same Backward as Forward
“The tree is poison, don’t you see?” he said, his voice hoarse.“It poisoned S and Z and me.”He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. “I remember. All of it. The whole, sordid truth.”
The story of his life came in bits and pieces through the night. He forced himself to tell me, to relive it, a form of penance that I hadn’t asked for. But I listened, recasting his story as a fairy tale in my mind, the way he once had mine.
The prince had discovered that he was adopted when he was fourteen. His father’s subjects didn’t know. His sisters, the princesses, didn’t know. His mother, the queen, had faked a pregnancy, and even once he’d discovered that much, the young prince hadn’t realized why—not at first. He’d spent years wondering why the brilliantking and the sparkling, joyful queen had gone to such lengths to hide the truth about their only son.
And then, one day, the prince had found the corpse.
I tried to imagine what it had been like for Toby to see human remains and to realize, as he had eventually realized, that it had once been his biological father, a man named William Blake.
William Blake.I had no idea how a nineteen-year-old had even pieced it all together. He didn’t say. And the entire time, as the boy I loved laid himself bare to me, I just kept thinking the words he’d once said:Sometimes, when I look at you, I feel you, like a hum in my bones, whispering that we are the same.
My mother was a murderer, too.
The metal token—the one he’d reacted so violently toward—had belonged to William Blake, and, along with Blake’s remains, it served as proof of Toby’s biological father’s death at his adoptive father’s hands. It was proof ofToby’s identity as the grandson of another very powerful—and even more dangerous—man.
Another king…
He told me every last detail about his grand good-bye to the life he’d lived before: moving his father’s remains, fleeing the palatial Texas estate where he’d been raised, leaving messages—more than one, encrypted of course—to make it clear exactly what he knew. Spiraling, he’d partied his way across the country and ended uphere.
The one thing he didn’t seem to remember was meeting me in the bar.
“The kerosene—it wasn’t my idea.” He closed his eyes when he said that. We were lying on the floor of the shack now, and I laid on his ruined chest, where I could hear his heartbeat and know that he was still there, that he was alive.
He’dpromisedme that he would stay that way, no matter what.
“It wasn’t my idea, but I agreed, because I’mpoison.” He made an attempt to roll out from underneath me, but I didn’t let him. “No matter who gave birth to me or what blood runs in my veins, I’m a Hawthorne, everything myfatherraised me to be. I won’t poison you, too, Hannah. You deserve—”
“You,” I bit out. I pushed myself up into a sitting position and locked my eyes on to his. “I deserveyou. I deserve to be happy, and you make me happy, you impossible, arrogant, self-destructive, infuriating, brilliant,wonderfulson of a bitch.”
He lifted his hand to my face, and in my mind, I could see the way he’d drawn me, could hear him murmuring,There you are.
“If I know one thing about my sister,” I continued fiercely, “it’s that Kaylie would want me to be happy, too.” I wasn’t going to avoid saying her name. He needed to know that I didn’t have to pretend my sister away to look at him, to see him, to want him.
Anything is possible when you love someone with no regrets.
“I liked her.” Toby breathed—in and out, and I tried to do for him what I’d done so many times, back when I’d hated him and he was half out of his mind with pain. I held his gaze, breathing through it with him.
“Your sister was worth ten of me and my friends,” he said quietly, “and she knew it.”
My throat tightened. My eyes stung. I laid my head back down on his chest, a physical, tangible sign to him that he wasn’t going anywhere, and I told him about the dream. “No regrets,” I reiterated when I was done. “She made me promise.”
“God, Hannah, I’m so—”
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry.” I put my hand to his mouth.Words could never be enough, buthewas.Wewere. “I don’t want you to besorry.”
I wanted him to be mine.
He kissed me—just once, lightly, a ghost of a kiss, before we fell asleep. It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning and found a letter where he should been that I realized…
That kiss had beengood-bye.
Chapter 39
Dear Hannah, the same backward as forward…
I didn’t read past the salutation on the letter. I ran to the lighthouse. He wasn’t there. I ran across the rocks, miles across them, to the town where I’d planned to take him, wherewewere supposed to run.
Nothing.I couldn’t find him. I looked, and I looked, and I looked, but he was gone.
