Now I really want to know. “What? What are they?”
“They’re what’s released into the air when water molecules collide with something solid.” He gestures at the cave around us. “Like these rocks, or the beach when a wave breaks. They don’t come just from the ocean, though. They can come from anywhere—a waterfall, rain . . .” He pauses and smiles a little self-consciously. “Anyway. They’re good for you to breathe in. Healing, according to my dad and grandpa, at least.”
He falls quiet, and I follow his eyes to the sunlit mist floating above us. We inhale deeply at the same time, and I don’t know if it’s the beauty of this place, or his words, or the negative ions, but I can feel something I haven’t felt for a long time running through me. It’s the pull of another person, of Colton, tidal in its subtlety but there beneath everything else.
“Thank you,” I say suddenly. “Thank you for bringing me to this place.”
A slow smile spreads over his face, and he shrugs. “I figured if all I had with you was a day, I better make it a good one.”
I drop my eyes to my hands on the paddle in my lap. “You have.” I look back at Colton. “It’s the best day I’ve had in a long time, actually.”
He nods, that smile still there. “Me too—you have no idea. But don’t sell us short, it’s not over yet.”
We sit for who knows how long, breathing in the air and talking, and watching the light and the water as the cave fills and empties, until the tide starts to rise and we have no choice but to ride it out.
The surreal, euphoric feeling of the cave stays with us even after the current carries us back out into the sudden brightness of the day. It lingers in the salt air around us as we paddle in to shore and spread our towels over the pebbly beach. And it tucks itself in between us as he tells me about all the other places he plans to visit this summer, places he hasn’t seen for a long time; and the earnestness in his voice makes me want to go right along with him.
I don’t ask why it’s been so long since he’s gone to these places he seems to love so much. I already know the answer. Instead, I let myself go with him in my mind to each place he describes: a cave at the edge of an impossibly high cliff, where we can sit and hang our feet over the ledge and feel the thunder of the surf pound in our chests. A beach where the water is so clear we can paddle out and see twenty feet straight down to the colonies of purple sand dollars covering the bottom. His favorite cove, where we can watch as a waterfall plunges over a cliff onto the sand, fresh water mixing with the salt of the waves that rush up the shore. He uses that word we so easily, like it’s a given I’m already included in his plans beyond just this day. And a part of me wants to believe it’s possible.
As I lie there in the sun, its warmth sinking into the length of my body in my bikini, the truth creeps in slowly, carrying with it a wave of guilt so strong, it stings my eyes. I open them and look over at Colton lying on his back, eyes closed and face to the sky, as he describes another magical place from memory, and suddenly it doesn’t feel possible anymore.
He’s still wearing his rash guard, which, under any other circumstances, might be meaningless. But I know what’s beneath it. I know because I’ve seen it in a picture Shelby posted of Colton, bare chested, after his surgery. I almost couldn’t stand to look; though at the same time it was impossible not to study the bright-red scar that ran right down the center of him. The scar from where they opened his chest to take out his sick heart and put in a strong one to save his life. The scar that I didn’t realize until this moment Trent must’ve had too when they buried him.
I bite back tears and the terrible, awful sense that I’ve betrayed him in a thousand different ways by being here with Colton, and by feeling the way I did in the water: strong, and free, and . . . happy. It seems wrong, for so many reasons, that I felt happy for those moments. Happy with someone else, who is so much more than just someone else.
“So what do you think?” Colton asks, and he opens his eyes and turns his head and looks right at me, concern wiping the smile from his face. “Um. You okay?” He sits up, puts out a hand like maybe he’s going to rest it on my shoulder, then takes it back, eyebrows creased with worry. “Did I— What’s wrong?”
I sit up quickly, wiping the tears from beneath my bottom lashes. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I don’t know what happened, I just . . .” I can’t come up with a remotely plausible explanation, so I don’t try. “It’s nothing.”
Colton looks at me for a long moment, his eyes running over my face, searching for what it is I’m not telling him, and I’m sure he can see it all. But then he reaches up to my cheek without a word, and this time he doesn’t take his hand away. With a feather-soft stroke, he brushes away a tear, and the feel of his touch makes me wish he’d keep his hand there. I look away, out at the sparkling ocean, because I don’t know what to do with the crazy swirl of emotions he’s just stirred up in me.
“We should swim,” Colton says. He grabs my hand, intentional in the action this time, and pulls me gently to my feet.
“What—”
“Salt water,” he says, leading me to the water’s edge. “Cures pretty much everything.”
I sniff and wipe at my eyes with my free hand as my feet follow his. “What do you mean?”
Colton turns and looks right at me with those eyes of his. “It’s a saying my dad used to always tell me and my sister—one of those things you grow up hearing all the time, so it doesn’t really mean much. Until later, when it does.”
“You believe that?” I ask, thinking that salt water surely didn’t cure his heart.
He looks at me like it’s a silly question. “Yep. It’s good for the soul.”