She should feel manipulated. She didn't. Instead, she could feel only a strange sense of relief at finally having someone to admit it to. The truth about how she felt.
He was that someone. He had been that someone for a very long time. "Yes."
"Yes to?"
"Yes to all of it." She thrust a hand into her hair, taken briefly by surprise, as always, that most of it was gone. "Trying to get back to any kind of normal life after what happened to my family hadn't been working out so well. I was floundering, even way back then, long before the attack on me, long before Friday, when I admitted it to you that I was treading water, staying alive, though not really living."
"And then you no longer had to even try to keep treading. You could just sink, hide away, stop trying to be part of the world that had moved past you."
"Exactly," she whispered.
Until he made her by doing things like staring at her with heat in his eyes from the doorway to her bedroom one hot summer night. Showing up and treating her like a woman rather than a fragile doll. Challenging her, arguing with her. Holding her in his arms and wanting her. Dragging her out here and forcing her to admit the truth.
Over the past few days, she'd begun to acknowledge the changes within herself. She actually thought about leaving here. Being free. Being alive again.
Because of him.
He was making her come to life whether she liked it or not. And now that it had started to happen, she sensed he was not going to give up until she became the woman he expected her to be.
Wyatt had taken Lily out to dinner specifically so she could escape her worries for a little while. So why he'd felt the need to segue into the role of amateur shrink and try to analyze her, he didn't know. Having started, though, he couldn't deny he wanted to know more. He wanted her to admit more. Perhaps exposing more of herself, letting the dark, unhappy thoughts out into the open, would keep her from dwelling on them so incessantly in her daytime hours and her nighttime ones.
But it wasn't to be. He had no sooner opened his mouth to ask her to continue talking about her feelings about her sister, her past, than a large man appeared by their table, and intruded in a loud voice. "Hey, you're him, right? You're the kid from that house up Dead Man's Beach? The murder house?"
Wyatt froze, his spine snapping hard against the back of his chair. Across from him, Lily's eyes had widened in shock, her mouth falling open on a tiny gasp.
Damn it. The span of years might have been long, but memories in small New England towns ran longer. He'd avoided going to Keating, driving out of the way to come up here to an even smaller town farther from the old beach house. Putting distance between himself and anyone who might recognize him had been an instinctive move.
He hadn't gone far enough.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he finally replied.
"I remember that story," the stranger said, as if Wyatt hadn't even spoken. "I was a teenager and read every one of the newspaper articles. Damn, you look just like your dad. That black hair and those blue eyes-you don't forget a combination like that. Good-looking fella, ayuh. And your mother, what a beauty."
Wyatt didn't even look up to acknowledge the man, whose slur outed him as drunk. The alcohol had obviously stripped the stranger of his inhibitions. Not to mention his common sense, considering he continued to shoot off his mouth, despite the deepening scowl Wyatt couldn't keep off his face.
"The whole town talked about nothing else that whole summer. Tragic."
"You're mistaken," he managed to say, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
"No, no, I remember like it was yesterday!"
Wyatt's entire body remained rigid, tense, and ready to spring into action, even though his mind cautioned against doing anything impulsive, anything he might regret. Laying out a stupid drunk who shot off his mouth regarding things he had no business asking about was definitely something he would regret.
"Let's go," he said to Lily, immediately rising, pushing his chair back hard against the wall. He tossed several bills on the table, then turned to fully face the stranger, a red-nosed guy with weathered, lobsterman's skin and milky eyes. "Excuse me, I think you've mistaken me for someone else. We were just leaving."
The stranger didn't budge. Still oblivious, blind to Wyatt's mood, he also missed the tension that had fallen over the entire restaurant. "Come on, at least admit it's you.
They found you in the lighthouse, right? Or was it in the house? Either way you were covered with blood. I mean, you are the kid who survived after that insane-"
Wyatt didn't think: he merely reacted, losing himself to some primal drive that his own intellect hadn't been able to completely subdue. He grabbed the man's beefy upper arm, clenched his fingers tightly around it, and spun him toward the wall, twisting the arm around until the shoulder had to be screaming. Leaning close, their backs to every other person in the place, who probably watched wide-eyed, he snarled, "Don't say another word. Not one word. Do you understand?''
The drunk grunted. Wyatt tugged farther.
"I repeat. Do you understand?"
With a wince, the man nodded quickly, at last recognizing the explosive situation he'd been about to kindle. "Sorry," he whispered. "Hey, I'm sorry. Obviously I mistook you for someone else."
As instantly as it had arisen, Wyatt's anger dissipated. His fingers jerked open and he let the man go, already regretting that lapse, that loss of control.
If Lily hadn't been here, an audience to the truth about the dark past Wyatt had tried so hard to put behind him, would he have been so quick to try to shut up a loud drunk? Maybe. But maybe not.
Of course, if Lily hadn't been here, nothing on heaven or earth would have induced him to come to within a hundred miles of this place. Ever.
"Wyatt?" she said, her voice subdued. She watched from a few feet away, no fear on her face, no flashback of a man's voice raised in anger, thank God. Just concern. "Are you ready to go?"
He nodded once. As the waitress hurried over, finally noticing the situation, he waved toward the cash on the table. "Thank you very much; we'll be leaving now," he said. "I trust that will take care of everything."
The young waitress stared goggle-eyed at the pile of bills. "Sure. You bet. Come back any old time."
Not very likely. Especially not now, when he knew that within hours, all the tiny towns up and down a sixty-mile stretch of coast would be whispering about his presence. The return of the boy who'd survived such an infamous crime.
Not glancing left or right, he put his fingers on the small of Lily's back and led her to the exit, impervious to the stares, almost hearing the whispers.
Was it really him? How old was he, five or six? Did they ever find out how much he saw? Whether he went to the lighthouse on his own, or was brought there? All that blood! I remember the pictures in the paper-they looked like such a nice couple.
It was almost as if he had a sixth sense and could hear the buzz of conversation, the words swirling around and around in his mind, present and past mixing up. The questions were all the same now as they had been then, exploding in the silence, crowding out the quiet hum of the engine and the deep, even sound of Lily's breaths in the seat beside him.
Tension filled the car throughout the drive back to the house. Whatever conversation he and Lily might have had before, now they shared only the uncomfortable memory of Wyatt losing his famed cool.
She asked no questions. Didn't pry, didn't try to tease him out of his dark mood or tell him that fair was fair- she'd done some talking, and now he should.
For all of that, he was most grateful.
But that still didn't stop him from dropping her off, escorting her to the door, then turning around, getting back in his car, and driving all the way back to Washington that very night