I swung my face the opposite direction and found a thick strip of scarred land that ran between the lighthouse and our own homes. “What’s that from?” I pointed with my free hand so I wouldn’t have to let go of his.

He followed my gaze, still stroking that swirling pattern on my skin. “That’s the path from when they moved the lighthouse.”

“They what? No way. This lighthouse?” My jaw dropped. This thing was huge, and they moved it?

“This lighthouse,” he confirmed, a corner of his mouth lifting in clear amusement at my disbelief. “A little over twenty years ago, they moved it from there”—he gestured a little north, where the path ended at the beach—“to here. It was the only thing they could do to save it.”

“Save it? From what? Men who mislead unsuspecting women expecting a little sightseeing and get a StairMaster instead?” I raised my eyebrows, and he laughed. Flirting. Oh my stars, I was flirting, and it felt…great. My heart stuttered a beat in the best possible way, and I outright smiled, reveling in both the emotion and my ability to feel it.

Jackson’s eyes flared, darting between my lips and my eyes, before he shook his head slightly and blinked. “The ocean,” he replied in a voice that sounded like it had been scraped over sandpaper. “They had to save it from the ocean.”

“Because the shoreline changes so much.”

“Exactly.”

Those eyes. Even in the moonlight, when I couldn’t see every shade of blue that made them so irresistible, they turned my knees to Jell-O. Or maybe that was just Jackson in general, if I was still on that honest-with-myself kick.

I looked back to the path. “How far did they move it?”

“Man, I’m glad I studied for this date.” He laughed. “Twenty-nine hundred feet.”

I didn’t cringe at the word “date.” “How on earth do you move something this big?”

“Just like you take on any huge project—one tiny step at a time. It took them twenty-three days and a hell of a lot of engineering.”

“Did they take it apart and rebuild it?” I leaned over a little, taking in the distance to the ground and hoping it was the dizzying height that had my heart strumming faster. God, what was wrong with me? I’d been around Jackson plenty of times and never had such a schoolgirl reaction.

You’ve never been completely alone with him before. There had always been Finley, or Sam, or an entire barbecue’s worth of people around us.

“No, they left it intact.”

“Impossible.”

He laughed. “Why?”

“Look at this thing! It’s huge!” I gawked up at him.