She rolled her eyes at him. “Come on,” she said. “Don’t we have a boat to catch?” But she felt it, too. That outfit, his smile. She felt lighter around him, happier, more alive.

She should go home. But even though she knew it was what she should do, she also knew it was not what she would do. She wanted to see this through. She wanted to play tonight. She wanted to recapture at least a small piece of who she’d been.

“What time do we have to be back to get ready for the show?” she asked, as they walked out the door.

“We’ve got an hour and twenty minutes.” he said.

“Then let’s go!” she said, and took off running across the sand, the breeze in her hair and the salt air in her lungs a balm to her heart, just like she knew the music would be.

54

Soon Emily found herself on a twenty-four-foot bowrider bobbing peacefully in the water. Rob was driving the boat—he had passed on the additional offer of a chartered captain—and had cut the motor and dropped anchor. There was nothing to see but deep blue water lapping at the boat all around them.

Emily walked to the front of the boat, sitting down on one of the padded seats in the bow. The wind whipped through her hair. A seagull cawed over head. She wished Ezra were there with her. And then she didn’t. Her heart kept up its yo-yo.

“Are you sunscreened?” Rob asked, sitting across from her in the bow. He’d taken his shirt off and his chest was more defined than she remembered. He was rubbing sunscreen into his shoulders and down his arms.

She shook her head. “Can I have some?”

“Sure,” he answered. “But would you mind doing my back?”

Emily hesitated, then picked up the bottle of sunscreen from the floor of the boat and squeezed it into her hands. It’d been sitting in the sun, so it was warm to the touch. She walked over to sit behind Rob and started rubbing the lotion into the sun-kissed skin of his back. His muscles rippled underneath her fingers, so different from Ezra’s lean frame. She heard his breath catch, but she ignored it. She ignored her own racing heart.

“All done,” she said, when she rubbed in the last bit of lotion.

“Want me to do you?” he asked.

She hesitated again, but she didn’t want to be sunburned for the performance.

“Thanks,” she said, turning around so her back was facing him, glad for a reason not to look at him.