“I know you can’t forgive me,” I say. “I know I hurt you—I ruined everything. I wish it were different. I wish I were different. But . . .” I choke down on the words I need to say. “But I did love you. That was real; everything between us was real. I love you still.”
I hope to see a glimmer of something in his eyes, recognition that a part of him still loves me too. But he can’t see through what he now knows I am. I am only the girl who drowned his brother—that’s all.
When he doesn’t speak, I glance over to the steering wheel, where a small clock is mounted to the dash. Eleven forty-eight. Only twelve minutes left until midnight, and then it’ll be too late. I can’t stay in this body, not now. I can’t steal another life. But if I plunge into the icy sea, if I don’t allow my soul to escape but instead let this body drown with me inside, I will be the one to die. Not Penny. I will drown just like I did two centuries ago. And hopefully, if Penny’s father was right, she will survive.
“In years past, when we’ve returned to the sea,” I explain, the wind blowing my hair straight out behind me, “we leave the bodies we’ve stolen before the clock reaches midnight. But I think, for this to work, Penny’s body has to drown with me inside it. I will die, but she can be brought back. You will have to save her. I will be gone, but she can live.”
He looks through me, like he doesn’t want to believe what I’m saying.
I turn toward the railing. The sea spraying my face, the dark sky like a funeral. This will be my last breath. My last glimpse of the life I could have had. I close my eyes, knowing I can’t turn back.
But then Bo’s hands grab me, spinning me around to face him. “No,” he says. His eyebrows are tugged together, lips cut flat. There is torment in him. He doesn’t know what to feel, what to do. And this is why I’m taking the decision away from him. I’m ending this once and for all so he doesn’t have to. He speaks anyway, says what he thinks he should: “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
I smile a little, shaking my head. “You know there’s no other way. My sisters will just keep on killing. And I don’t want to go back into the sea for another two hundred years. I can’t. It’s not a life. And I’m tired.”
He slides his hands up to my cheeks and into my soaking-wet hair. And even though there is love in his eyes, a pain that I recognize, there is also hate. Deep, undeniable, entrenched hate. I took his brother from him. And there’s no going back from that.
But even with loathing in his dark green eyes—which still remind me of the place where the sea meets the sky after a storm—he pulls me to him, pressing his warm lips to mine as the rain continues to fall between us. He kisses me like he won’t let me go, even though I know he will. Desperate and angry. Loving me and hating me. And his fingers pull against my hair, drawing me even closer. My fingernails dig into his chest, trying to hold tight to this moment. This feeling. I could take him with me, like both Olivia and Aurora suggested. I could drown him now, and he would be trapped in the sea with me for eternity. But I don’t want him like that—confined to a watery prison. It isn’t real. And he doesn’t deserve it.
His lips lift only an inch away from mine, and I draw in a tight breath of air.
“Thank you for giving me these days with you,” I say. Tears push forward, and I don’t try to stop them.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against his chest, breathing him in, wanting to remember his scent forever. But right now he just smells like the sea. A boy drifted in on the tide. Like a dream, like a memory I hope I’ll never forget.
I drop my hands from his chest, turning to look out at the ocean. Wild and turbulent. The bottomless black Pacific beckoning me into its cold interior. It’s nearly midnight, and lightning spiders against the clouds in the distance, drawing closer. “When I jump in,” I say to Bo over the crashing waves and wind, “after I’ve drowned, you need to pull her body back out.”
He doesn’t nod. No response. He can’t comprehend what’s happening. But he knows he has to let me go.
I meet his forest-green eyes for the last time, seeing myself reflected back in them. “Don’t tell her what happened to her father,” I say. “Don’t tell her about me. I think it’s better if she doesn’t know.”
Thunder snaps down from the sky. He nods.
I will leave the good memories inside Penny’s mind, and I will take the bad ones with me. She will remember images of Bo, of his warmth beside her in the cottage, of his hands on her skin, his lips on hers. She will remember days when her heart felt about to burst with love for him. She won’t recall going to the cemetery to say good-bye to Owen; she won’t remember speaking to Marguerite in front of the old perfumery. She won’t remember talking to Gigi Kline as if she were her sister. She will only recall that she provided sanctuary for Gigi from the boys who had been hunting her. She will live the life I wish I could have. She will miss her father, but sometimes missing is better than knowing. I will give her the gift of good memories. The gift of Bo—the last boy I loved.
The boy I love still.
I step over the wire railing. The deck is slippery, and I almost lose my footing. My heart begins to pound, fear and doubt seizing me. My fingers grip so tightly to the railing that they begin to throb.
I don’t take my gaze off him. “I told you that love is like falling, like drowning. This will be the same. I just have to let go.” My lips quiver. “Don’t forget me.”
“Never,” he answers. And his face is the last thing I see before I jump over the side and hit the water. And everything turns black.
*
The world is instantly made silent. The storm churns and crashes above the waterline, but down here, everything is calm and quiet.
I swim hard. I pull myself into the deep, closer to the bottom of the sea. The cold turns my hands and feet numb almost immediately—the cold that will slow my heart and preserve Penny’s body. The darkness is absolute, blotting out the surface of the ocean so that I can’t tell which way is up. But I don’t want to change my mind—I don’t want any chance of swimming back up and sucking in a breath of air.
I plummet like a coin sinking down to the pirate wreckage in the harbor. I think about the penny I tossed into the water the night with Bo and Rose and Heath. We each made wishes. Some tangible. Some likely not. My wish was to be human again. To live a normal life. But it didn’t come true. I fall deeper, darker, colder. But maybe this, what I’m doing right now, is the most human I’ve ever been. To die. To sacrifice yourself so others don’t have to. To make a choice.
And I fell in love. What’s more human than that?
The cold seizes my extremities so that I can no longer move my fingers and toes, arms and legs. And the dark makes shapes that I know aren’t really there. Death plays tricks on me.
I think I see my reflection in the water, which is impossible. But there are two images: Penny’s face and mine, masked deep beneath her skin, the real reflection of me—Hazel Swan. Dark hair, wide green eyes, lost. Alone. But not really alone. I’ve known love—deep, foolish love. And that has made it all worth it.