Page 68 of The Wild Beneath

He stares out the window for a moment. “Have you ever worried that the thing you most wanted to say could ruin everything?”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I wish I could tell you everything I know,” he says. “But that would only interfere.”

Annie shakes her head. “I need to know.”

“You think you don’t have everything you need, but you do.” Walker looks down to the left and pauses. “If I get too close, I’ll only screw it up.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Walker levels his eyes at her. “I love how soft your skin is. That you like to make everything into doubles, like your sand dollars.” He looks to the ceiling. “I love the way your nose scrunches when you’re upset.”

“Is it bad you love those things?”

Walker shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be thinking about those things,” he says.

Annie leans in close enough to sense the heat from his skin. “What if I feel the same way?”

She wraps her hands around his waist, closing the distance between them.

“God, Annie.” He tilts his head back, a desperate look on his face. “Are you sure about this?”

She wants to inhabit everything he knows, to be absorbed back under the water. Can he do this? Lifting her head, she brings her lips close to his and takes a single breath.

Then she kisses him.

It’s soft at first, until he surrenders. With his arms around her, he melds them together. She’s never felt like this before: Her body does not exist, and instead, an aura of everythingness, the doors flung open to somewhere else. Somewhere faraway.

“Tell me you felt that,” Walker whispers.

Opening her eyes, she reorients herself. She’s back in Ruth’s cabin, her feet on the floor. On the wall directly behind Walker is the framed photograph of Ruth with her arms around Evan and Annie when they were children.

Annie pulls away and moves to the couch.

“You’re thinking about him,” Walker says, sitting down next to her. He doesn’t sound upset, but rather worried.

“We were in love,” she blurts. “But I don’t know what’s happened to him lately.”

“Another reason I shouldn’t get in the way.” He lowers his head and slides toward the other end of the couch.

“No.” Annie reaches for his hand before he gets too far. “Don’t go.”

“I know how important Evan is for you.” Walker sounds like he’s chastising himself. “He’ll figure himself out. I know he will.”

“But he’s not here.”

Walker strokes her hair. In his touch: a vast sea, moonless, black.

She reaches for him again and can’t stop herself. She’s in his lap, pressing her lips against his again. The living room vanishes into an underwater dreamland.

He tastes like salt, like the sea.

Chapter 25

Annie keeps her eyes closed.

She’s dreamed a sequence of fantasies she does not want to leave. Underwater grottos with squid, their ink blots and bundles of arms. Reptilian beasts inching onto the shore under towering cedars, water dripping from their backs.