I abandoned my grass-hidden rock and ran. Before I reached her, he howled and went to the ground like a sack of hammers, and she yelped and staggered back.

When she saw me, she started and gasped. “Dammit, Boyce—you scared me to death! What are you—”

“Are you okay?” I demanded, grabbing her shoulders and turning her to me. I checked her face in the moonlight. Other than the fact that her eyes were so unnaturally wide that the white parts showed all the way around the brown and she was trembling, she looked all right.

She nodded, no idea how she’d scared the shit outta me. Yates hadn’t moved a muscle, and her voice went soft. “Is he… is he breathing?”

I knelt, feeling for a pulse and refrained from saying I hope not, because then she’d probably insist that one of us do mouth-to-mouth, and neither fucking option for that was acceptable.

“His head hit my knee on the way down,” she said.

Fingers at his throat (ignoring the urge to wrap my hands around it and squeeze), I found his pulse and struggled not to laugh. “I take it another part of him hit your knee just before that?” I stood. “He’s fine, by the way. Or at least he’s breathing.”

She breathed a relieved sigh. “Boyce, why—and how—are you here?”

Confession is good for the soul, they say, but it’s not so great for scoring points in a semi-stalking sort of situation. I couldn’t stare into her eyes and lie, though.

“I heard y’all talking about the party in bio.”

She frowned, more sober than I’d thought she was. “Then you must have heard it was a private party to celebrate Melody’s birthday. You weren’t invited.”

Ouch.

She took two steps away from me before going straight back down in the sand on her ass, gasping and holding her knee. “Dang that hurts. Adam’s head must be hard as a rock.”

I knelt next to her, fingers inspecting her bare kneecap, all too aware of her soft skin and short shorts and how she smelled like a handful of flowers. “You’ve got a pretty good lump going here.”

Her fingers slid between mine, testing the rapidly swelling spot. “Great. I should get some ice on it…” She frowned at Yates, who’d begun to snore, and then to the water’s edge. “Clark just left me here? How the hell was I supposed to get home?”

“Surprise, Pearl, Richards is an asswipe. He took off with Dover and a few other people. Probably giving Yates time to make his move.”

She glared—luckily at Yates. “Make his move?” Her gaze shifted back to me. “So how are you here?”

I shrugged. “I have a boat.”

Studying the shoreline for the second time, she asked, “Is it an invisible boat?”

“Ha-ha.” I pointed, chuckling. “It’s down the beach a ways.” I stood, swinging her up into my arms. “C’mon, bruiser, let’s get you home.”

Between the low drone of the bayside waves and the sensations crashing over me—her soft hair grazing my arm and my cheek, the feel of her body pressed against mine, the perfect weight of her—I almost didn’t hear her question.

“Do you remember… when I died?”

I almost tripped on nothing. I crushed her tighter, unable to look at her. I could feel her eyes on me. “Yeah.” The word escaped me, jagged, rough, and that day rushed back like a nightmare.

Her voice was low and full of wonder instead of the terror I’d experienced. “All I remember is jellyfish scattering and a flash of panic—just a few seconds, really. Then a sort of peaceful feeling, and the smell of Mama’s churros, and darkness. Darkness, and then nothing.”

I stopped by my boat but didn’t put her down, staring into her face. Her dark eyes shimmered, reflecting the stars.

“And then there you were… staring down at me like you are now, but with the sun behind you instead of the moon,” she whispered. “You had tears in your eyes. Why?”

Jesus fucking Christ, this girl. “I thought you were dead.” My eyes burned, and I braced myself against the memory of the last time I’d held her like this—when she was heavy and lifeless, her head drooping over my arm.

“So did I. When I opened my eyes, I thought you were an angel—but those tears… And you were holding my hand.”

I smirked. “Accusing me of being a player back in the day, Pearl?”

“I used to dream that you’d kissed me then, in front of all those people.” Her gaze flicked to my mouth. “But you didn’t.”

Goddamn. I swallowed. “Well. I could kiss you now, to make up for missing my cue when I was seven.”

Her lips twisted, just barely, and I waited for her to laugh, but she didn’t. “Okay,” she said, and everything inside me went still.

I lowered my mouth to hers, hovering a breath away. Our eyes locked and she didn’t back down, didn’t close her eyes like she was just yielding ground. She held my gaze like the lit end of a firecracker. I’d been kissing girls for years, had popped my cherry with an older townie girl on the beach the previous summer, right before I turned sixteen. But none of that prepared me for kissing Pearl. I was starting from scratch.

Pearl

When I mentioned the sandbar as a possible burial spot for his father’s ashes, Boyce started to reply, hesitated, and then stared at his boots. I wasn’t sure if I’d said something wrong or if he was remembering the same thing I was.