“Yeah, I’ve got her,” she promised, crossing from the kitchen to the living room.

I sucked in a deep breath and hit play on the tape recorder. May as well go through all the pain at once.

“Okay, Morgan. Can you take me back to the moment you experienced Will’s death?” Dr. Circe’s voice came through the speaker.

I braced my hands on the counter, steadying myself for the impact of everything that was going to follow on that damned tape.

“I’m in the grocery store, picking out a jar of jam, and my phone rings. It’s Sam.”

…

We left the windows down as we drove up the coast toward Waves and Rodanthe Beach. The miles between Hatteras and Waves were filled with unpopulated beaches, the strip of island so narrow at times it felt like I could touch the Atlantic with one hand and the sound with the other.

Jackson’s Land Cruiser reminded me of his house—pristine in the front seats, where he was in charge, and perfectly cluttered in the backseat, where Finley reigned.

Banners’ Riot blared though the speakers, and with Fin singing at the top of her lungs from behind us and Jackson grinning when she got the words wrong, my heart lightened. This was the best reward I could have given myself after listening to the tape. Sure, maybe it had been a week since I’d been this close to Jackson, but I refused to bring that fact into the reward equation. But every time I looked his way, my pulse jumped at the memory of having his mouth inches from mine.

We reached Waves and fell in with a small line of traffic headed for the beach access.

Finley blew hard, moving some of her curls out of her face. “It’s all tangly.”

Jackson met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Then you should have let me pull it up before we left.”

“I didn’t want you to then,” she stated like it was the simplest truth in the world.

“Do you want me to now?”

We pulled into a parking lot that was already three-quarters full and parked.

“Yes, please.”

“Then it’s a good thing I brought a brush and a hair tie, huh?”

She nodded with a little twist of her puckered lips.

We got out of the car, and I sprayed on sunscreen, then hauled my beach bag over my shoulder. The temp had spiked again, bringing us an eighty-degree day.

“Fin, do you need some sunscreen?” I asked, coming around the back of the car.

“Yes, please,” she answered.

My breath caught stupidly at the sight of Jackson working a spray into her hair and then brushing the curls into a high ponytail. It was something so domestic, not in the least bit sexy, but that primal piece of DNA we couldn’t seem to wipe out with thousands of years of evolution sat up and took notice.