Page 40 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Now his eyes traveled up from the scar to his soft, thin cotton T-shirt I was wearing. I’d pulled it on last night before we’d climbed into the truck and now I was drowning in it, the fabric clinging to my naked body underneath. His gaze lingered on the shape of my breasts, and I could see that it was sinking in for him, the memory of what happened last night. His hands touching my bare skin. The broken sound that had escaped my lips.

He let me go and sat all the way up, sending his gaze past me, toward the window. “Last night…”

“Was a mistake.” I said it before he could. At least one of us had to have the guts to admit it, and this way, we shared the burden.

He let out a long breath. “I don’t know what it was.”

That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. He ran both hands through his hair again, taking the sweatshirt from the front seat, and I tried not to watch the muscles move beneath his skin as he pulled it over his head. I didn’t know how I was going to put that part of me back to sleep.

“We should head back,” he said.

I nodded, trying not to show that it hurt when he wouldn’t look at me. I could feel him putting more than just physical distance between us. He was shutting down, the Micah from last night disappearing before my very eyes.

He opened the back of the truck and Smoke jumped out. Micah tugged on his jeans and boots, and by the time I was untangled from the sleeping bag and dressed, Micah had his keys in hand. He got into the driver’s seat without a word and started the truck.

I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. That we’d done something that couldn’t easily be undone. We’d crossed thresholds like that in the past, and we’d be paying the consequences for the rest of our lives. I’d known that leaving Six Rivers would be hard. That’s why I hadn’t told him when I was accepted to Byron. But what I hadn’t known—what I’d underestimated to my core—was how hard it would be to stay away.

Micah had the engine running when I opened the door and let Smoke jump back in. Then I climbed into the front seat, buckling my seatbelt as he put the truck in reverse.

“Thank you for bringing me out here,” I said.

He turned toward me, waiting to take his foot off the brake. “All you had to do was ask.”

That was truer than maybe I even knew. Micah had been offering to help me, trying to get me to open up about what I was doing here, since I arrived. But I’d shut him out. Mostly because I was afraid ofwhat opening the door between us would do. Last night had been a perfect example of that.

“Micah?” I breathed, staring out the windshield.

“What?”

“I don’t think it was an accident,” I whispered.

He went still before he shifted the gear back into park. “What? Johnny?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. I have these flashes, like remnants of what happened, and I just feel like he wasn’t alone out here that day. That he was scared.”

His voice lowered. “That’s why you wanted to come out here?”

I nodded.

Micah let his hand fall from the steering wheel. I could see him considering it, his mind racing with the thought.

“Is there anything you can think of that was going on before he died? Anything that could have gotten him killed?”

Micah went stiff, as if the idea made him tense up all over. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Was he involved with anyone?”

Micah didn’t react, but I thought I could see just the slightest ripple of something beneath his calm expression. “Why are you asking that?” He sounded almost a little defensive.

“I’m just trying to put together what was going on up here.”

“Did someone say something to you?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. It was a strange thing to ask. “No. Should they have?”