We fell into silence, broken only by the low calls of gulls and strains of chatter from Lorcan’s. I looked at Levi from the corner of my eye, enchanted with the way the dying light played on his face, casting him in an ethereal glow. At the same time, I kept spying his glances at me. Furtive little things, not long enough to linger, but enough for me to catch the turn of his head and the angle of his nose.

Now would be the time to tell him about Elodie and what had just happened. I ached to, but when I parted my lips, the words didn’t come. I didn’t want them to. And even if I did, how could I tell him without also outing her secret? She wasn’t ready for people to know—not then, not now. Even her family was in the dark. If I told Levi, I’d be shining a light on the very thing she wanted kept private. I had no right to do that to her. It wouldn’t matter that I trusted Levi to keep it to himself—even if it was my past, it was someone else’s secret.

“Must be something big,” said Levi.

Arrested, I swung to look at him. “What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking about.” He lightly tapped my forehead. “You’re looking like it’s something big.”

Under his gaze, any thought I had about anything else seemed insignificant and small. “Have you ever had a hard decision to make, but you don’t know how to make it?” I asked, licking a rivulet of ice cream that had snaked its way down my thumb.

He thought for a moment, head endearingly cocked. “Yeah, but you know it already.”

I turned his words over in my mind. “I do?”

His eyes shone like sea glass. He didn’t look away when he answered. “Coming here. I knew I’d have to leave home one day, but it was still one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made. The last year has been full of them. Side effect of growing up, I guess. But if I’d stayed in New York, my whole career would have been mapped out for me. The time in my life when most other teenagers are finding themselves … I’d never be able to figure out what I wanted, or who I am, unless something changed. Unless I made it change.”

“You don’t think people can grow at the place they’re already at?”