it’s a warning, I don’t know. What I do know is someone’s trying to tell me something. Someone’s trying to make me listen up.”
“Who, exactly?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Well, what, then? You want me to hide forever, just because of some foreboding?”
“Yes!”
“Ginger.” He shakes his head. Strokes my hip. “Ginger.”
I lift my face, so our lips nearly touch as I move them. “You’re going to keep going out there, aren’t you, and I can’t go with you. I’m done. I can’t follow you anymore. I’ve got my sister to rear up. I’ve got to love her and keep her safe.”
“Don’t say I, Ginger. Say we. We will love her and keep her safe.”
“We? There is no we, Anson. Not so long as your heart is out there on that ocean, out there on those highways at night. This fight, it’s in your blood, like Patsy and I could never be.”
“That’s not true. You’re in my blood. You are my blood. Heart and bone and everything else. You have no idea, Ginger, no idea how much I—”
I lay my hand quick over his mouth. “Don’t say it.”
Anson reaches up and picks my fingers away. Holds them inside his palm. “Tell me what you want.”
“You tell me first.”
“I want you. That’s all.”
“Really? What about the rest of it? Family, kids, house in the country? Dog lying on the hearthstone?”
“Is that what you want? No more city life?”
“Doesn’t matter what I want. I want what’s best for Patsy, I guess. She shouldn’t have to lie scared in her bed at night, waiting for me to come home.”
“I shouldn’t have taken you with me.”
“And if you hadn’t, you’d be dead. We neither of us should have gone out on that water.”
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe’s not enough, Anson. Not anymore. You need to decide what the future’s going to look like. You need to decide what you can take or not take, when it comes to me and Patsy.”
“I will take whatever comes with you, Ginger. Whatever comes.”
I lower my face back to the pillow and close my eyes. Listen to some faint, slow drum that I realize is not the ocean but Anson’s heart. Drop one hand to rest against this organ, and the slight movement of its contraction contains more soporific power than all the lavender, all the waves, all the salt breeze in the world.
“Beats for you,” he says softly.
My lips are too tired to move. I move them anyway, because this is important.
“If it stops, I’ll kill you.”
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