Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
I swung my face the opposite direction and found a thick strip of scarred land that ran between the lighthouse and our own homes. “What’s that from?” I pointed with my free hand so I wouldn’t have to let go of his.
He followed my gaze, still stroking that swirling pattern on my skin. “That’s the path from when they moved the lighthouse.”
“They what? No way. This lighthouse?” My jaw dropped. This thing was huge, and they moved it?
“This lighthouse,” he confirmed, a corner of his mouth lifting in clear amusement at my disbelief. “A little over twenty years ago, they moved it from there”—he gestured a little north, where the path ended at the beach—“to here. It was the only thing they could do to save it.”
“Save it? From what? Men who mislead unsuspecting women expecting a little sightseeing and get a StairMaster instead?” I raised my eyebrows, and he laughed. Flirting. Oh my stars, I was flirting, and it felt…great. My heart stuttered a beat in the best possible way, and I outright smiled, reveling in both the emotion and my ability to feel it.
Jackson’s eyes flared, darting between my lips and my eyes, before he shook his head slightly and blinked. “The ocean,” he replied in a voice that sounded like it had been scraped over sandpaper. “They had to save it from the ocean.”
“Because the shoreline changes so much.”
“Exactly.”
Those eyes. Even in the moonlight, when I couldn’t see every shade of blue that made them so irresistible, they turned my knees to Jell-O. Or maybe that was just Jackson in general, if I was still on that honest-with-myself kick.
I looked back to the path. “How far did they move it?”
“Man, I’m glad I studied for this date.” He laughed. “Twenty-nine hundred feet.”
I didn’t cringe at the word “date.” “How on earth do you move something this big?”
“Just like you take on any huge project—one tiny step at a time. It took them twenty-three days and a hell of a lot of engineering.”
“Did they take it apart and rebuild it?” I leaned over a little, taking in the distance to the ground and hoping it was the dizzying height that had my heart strumming faster. God, what was wrong with me? I’d been around Jackson plenty of times and never had such a schoolgirl reaction.
You’ve never been completely alone with him before. There had always been Finley, or Sam, or an entire barbecue’s worth of people around us.
“No, they left it intact.”
“Impossible.”
He laughed. “Why?”
“Look at this thing! It’s huge!” I gawked up at him.
“Don’t forget old. Almost a hundred and fifty years,” he added, turning his body toward mine. “Told you I studied.” Like we were a pair of magnets, I moved to face him, our hands falling from the railing but staying twined. With his free hand, he stroked the back of his fingers down my cheek slowly. “But she’s also too important, too unique, and too beautiful to stand by and do nothing while she drowns. While she might look delicate, she’s actually incredibly strong and capable of taking a storm or two.”
I stilled, knowing that he’d stopped talking about the lighthouse.
“Jackson,” I begged, but I wasn’t sure what for.
“Morgan.” His fingers slid to the back of my neck while his thumb repeated the stroke across my cheek.
God, that felt good. A rush of longing filled my entire body, stirring parts of me I was sure had long since died—the parts that remembered need, want, and desire. The parts that remembered how it felt to be the object of someone else’s desire, too. And those neglected pieces of me hungered as they roused, demanding to be acknowledged and appeased.
I fought to find a shred of my common sense amid the onslaught of pure, selfish craving that had me staring at his mouth.
“You don’t want this,” I told him softly, my Jackson-less hand clutching the railing as if it would keep me grounded.
“I don’t want what?” he questioned, lowering his head until our foreheads touched. “Because you can’t tell me that I don’t want you.”
Oh God. Joy, disbelief, yearning—emotions flew at me so fast I could barely process them, but one stood out the loudest. Fear. Was it fear for him or fear of him? Yes.
“You don’t. You can’t. I am a mess, and not just a little mess. I’m the kind that has a pile of wreckage for a heart, anxiety attacks I can’t control, and a therapist I see every week in the hopes that I can eventually talk to my best friend again or just open the door of a truck I never wanted.” My eyes squeezed shut. “Trust me, you don’t want this. You don’t want me.”
“Morgan—”
“No.” I retreated from his arms, and my skin ached at the loss of contact. Was I so desperate for human touch? Just Jackson’s. “I’m not being coy or playing games, which is ironic since I used to be really good at all that. I’m genuinely telling you to run for your life.”