Page 93 of The Same Backward as Forward
Eventually, I hear a clatter—Jackson’s fork dropping from his hand and onto his plate. The fingers on his right hand curl into claws. Scowling, Jackson brings his left hand up to rub at it. When that hand starts to cramp, too, I risk life and limb toreach across and take over the job, massaging the muscles in his palm.
“Don’t need your help,” Jackson grunts—but he doesn’t draw back.
“Of course not,” I agree. The skin beneath my touch is calloused and scarred, a fisherman’s hands. The knuckles and joints are swollen. “Got anything for this?” I ask him.
“Hannah brings me a cream.” Jackson glowers at me. “Horrible girl.”
Horrible girl. Horrible boy.For some reason, that parallel makes me think of the day that Jackson pulled me from the ocean.
“You brought her to me, didn’t you?” I say quietly. “That first day, you fished me out, you brought me back here, and then you brought Hannah to me.”To save me.
Jackson doesn’t deny it. Instead, he pulls his hands back from mine and painstakingly picks up his fork again. For a full minute, I just watch him eat.
“About last night…” I don’t even know why I’m saying it, let alone how I’m going to explain why Hannah and I were both out all night.
“I don’t want to hear a damn thing.”
“She needed me.” I don’t know whyIneed for him to know that. I have always needed Hannah, but last night, she needed me.
“Damn kids,” Jackson grunts. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
“Me in particular,” I say, “or everyone who’s nineteen?”
Nineteen.Until the word left my mouth just now, I never even realized that I knew my age.
Jackson sets his plate down none too gently. “I was seventeen,” he says gruffly, his gaze fixed straight ahead. “With Eden.”
“Hannah’s mother.” I give Jackson yet another chance to tell me that I’m wrong about that, but he doesn’t.
“She was a year older than me. Bad home life. Rough upbringing. And I was her way out.” Jackson shakes his head. “Until I wasn’t.”
Suddenly, I want to tell him what Hannah told me last night—that her mother has cancer—but that isn’t my truth to tell. “What happened to her?” I say instead. “Hannah’s mother is a monster.”
“She wasn’t always that way.” Jackson goes quiet for a moment. “Or maybe she was. At seventeen, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
Just like me.“What don’t I know?” I ask, pulling the metaphorical bandage off.
“You really want an answer to that?”
No.I don’t. But I also don’t want to admit that out loud, so I offer up a different truth instead. “I love her.” I shouldn’t be tellinghimthis, but I cannot tell her.
“I know.” Jackson stares out at the horizon. I wait for him to tell me again that itcannot happen, this thing with Hannah and me. He doesn’t say a thing.
“She doesn’t hate me like she used to,” I say quietly.
Jackson keeps his eyes on the horizon. “I know.”
Chapter 24
Night falls, and I don’t even try to hide the fact that I’m waiting for Hannah, just like Jackson isn’t being particularly subtle about the way he’s sticking around tonight to watch me wait. The moment I hear the faint sound of footsteps on the other side of the metal door, I open it.
Hannah doesn’t so much as bat an eye. “We’re going back to the lighthouse.” She does not phrase that as a question, and I force myself to assume that when she saysthe lighthousewhat she really means isacross the rocks—more grueling rehab and that is all.
And yet… there’s something different about her tonight.
“Your wish,” I say, stepping out into the night, “is my command.”
Hannah gives me a look. “Anyone who knows anything about fairy tales knows not to trust a statement like that.”
