He continued. “And now here you are, and I can’t find any of those words.” He closed his eyes. “Here you are, and all I want to do is touch that space . . .” He opened his eyes and gazed at her neck—heat flared with the memory of his touch.

Her fingers landed gently on the hollow between her collarbones. His hand reached to cover hers.

“There. The place your silver cross used to lie, move every time you breathed.”

“I lost it,” Amy whispered.

“Lost what?” He gripped her hand.

“That cross . . . you.”

He moaned, bowed his head in what Amy thought might be prayer, or defeat.

Tenderness welled up. She touched his leg and felt his muscles, taut. “I can’t stand for you to look so . . .”

“Sad?”

“No, I was going to say ‘defeated.’ ”

“That, too,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

“Bound together at the edges, sewn firmly down the center,” Nick whispered close to her ear.

Now it was her turn to moan, a soft sound he’d dreamed of, used for comfort all these years. He was pleased he’d remembered it correctly, the exact pitch, tone and yearning.

She pulled away from him; he was sorry he’d spoken. She touched his chin, the scar he knew was there although he couldn’t feel it.

“You remembered that . . . you remembered it,” she said.

“Yes.” He hadn’t realized he knew the exact words until he said them. “It’s true.”

He saw a change, an instant shift in her eyes as she returned to the present, to who she was now. She turned away from him and plucked a leaf from the moss spilling from a live oak beside them.

“Tell me the story,” she said, and this time she bowed her head in surrender.

Nick closed his eyes and attempted to see the night that had changed everything. He wanted Amy to know it, to feel it, to understand it without any gaps. He wanted her to be there.

“It was late—the middle of the night, almost early morning—humid as hell. It had rained all day and the fog was thick. It was our last night and we were celebrating. We’d survived the rain forest, the poisonous frogs, the local water, the assignments we thought we’d never finish. I was driving. I always was. I seemed to be the only one who knew how to maneuver the beat-up Range Rover they gave us for transportation. There were seven of us . . . remember?”

“Seven students?”

“Yes. And we were piled in one truck.”

“What happened?” Amy whispered.

“A woman. She was crossing the street. It was late . . . and she wasn’t looking.”

He closed his eyes and forced himself to see the one moment he avoided, the crash he saw in horrid dreams with vivid blended colors and screeching sounds.