Page 55 of The Wild Beneath

He encloses the screw in his palm. “Mom always said, look after the things we love.”

“What about me?” she says. It sounds squeaky and selfish and childish even, but she still doesn’t understand. A tear falls down her cheek.

He reaches up to brush it away. “I keep thinking... everyone in town is depending on Hale Timber. Maybe I can change things.”

“What things?” She focuses on the taut tendons of his fingers, veins spreading like branches.

“What we do to the trees... how this town can survive.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how yet. But I can’t abandon all of this.”

She sits down heavily beside him. “What if there’s weather—­”

“If there’s weather I’ll tuck into a bay and wait it out.” He takes her hands. His are cool and dry. “I want there to be something on the other side of this for us. I can’t have us squattingin cabins that have no running water and no power. Living off the crabs Henry catches.”

“It’s not going to be this way forever.”

“And we’ll, what, live in a relocation camp?” Evan says. “My dad might not survive if the company goes under.”

“We’ll figure things out. Like we always have—­”

“Annie.” He slips his hand around the back of her neck. His brown eyes pour into hers and flashes of the Evan she’s always known come to the surface: from when they were little, sharing the aft berth onAmphitrite, when they sat on the bow, arms spread like eagles, soaring between sky and sea, their cheeks windburnt. Back then, he never let her wander the deck without a life jacket.

“You haven’t been here, Evan,” she says.

“Let me say this—­”

“I needed you here,” she interrupts. “Ineedyou here.”

“I love you, Annie.”

Her breath escapes to somewhere she cannot reach.

“You know I’ve always loved you,” he continues.

Annie is startled to feel Walker’s quiet thrumming suddenly arrive in her abdomen, increasing in volume as Evan speaks.

“And I know you love me, too.”

Of course she does. But then blood starts to pound in her ears. A sudden vision of underwater, a thousand bubbles racing toward the surface.

“Annie?” Evan’s voice is coming from far away, but she isn’t here with him. She’s deep in the sea.

“Say something, Annie.”

She shakes her head, and she’s back here. Evan’s face is so close it feels claustrophobic.

“I need a minute,” she says, standing up.

He releases her and moves back on the bench. “It’s always been us. Me and you. Don’t you feel it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Haven’t you always?”

“Always,” she whispers.

“But?”

“I’m so angry at you. I’ve lost everything, Evan! Don’t you see that? Or you haven’t seen it because you haven’t seen me?”