Chapters (31)
“Down there.” She points to the beach below us, and when my eyes drop down, I see why she brought me here. What we made the climb for, why she subjected me to her mediocre boating skills one more time.
Below us—in the sandy gap between the grass that skirts the bottoms of the dune and the blue water that’s nipping at the shore—is a message. There are no words, but I still know what it says.
OLIVIA
It took me two days, with a lot of help from Ellis, to get the stones out to the beach. We bought them from a local farmer—they’re oddly shaped, dirty, and rough, not pretty enough for landscapers. But after being painted they look beautiful laid out on the beach. On the left is a mass of green rocks shaped like Arizona. And on the right—much bigger—a mitten-shaped arrangement of blue rocks. And in it, a red heart. My heart. There’s a line of black rocks that stretches from one state to the other.
I swallow back my nerves. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Aiden turns to meet my eyes, and it’s not helping my nerves to look into his.
“I’m moving.”
His voice is soft. “I know.”
“I should have told you, and I probably shouldn’t have done any of this with you, knowing I was leaving.”
His eyes look disappointed.
“But I did do this, and now I’m in it. Even if I’m not going to be in the same state as you … I’m in it. Because nine months without you is going to feel like forever, but not being with you at all…? That just doesn’t feel like an option.”
Aiden isn’t saying anything, he’s just looking at me, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. More than anything though, he looks confused. He looks away from me, back to the beach, and his hand slips around mine.
“I knew you had an eye for art,” he says with a smile.
“This isn’t art. It was mostly manual labor.”
“They’re pretty much the same thing,” he says, laughing a little. “Haven’t you learned anything this summer, Olivia?”
“You did read my essay, right?” I joke.
“You didn’t ruin summer though,” he says, looking down at me. “You made it so much better.” He cocks his head to the side. “Maybe not the last week or two, but yeah, summer with you was good.”
As soon as the words are past his lips, his hand is on my waist. Then his lips are on mine. He pulls me close, so close it feels like he might absorb me. But I think maybe he already has. Because no matter what I do, I don’t think I could shake Aiden Emerson, even if I wanted to. Not when the summer ends, maybe not ever.