Locked Out of Gran's Secret Room, I Wore What Was Inside novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Seven and Thirty-One
I held out my hand so the light could have it.
"A boy gave it to me," I said. "Eight years ago, in the dark. I never saw his face."
Tiago did not move.
The torch shook against my palm, and the brass flashed gold and went dull.
Then he reached up with his free hand and pulled the cord over his head.
The disc on it swung from his fingers.
He laid it in my hand, beside mine.
Two flat discs, the same size, each with a hole punched for a cord.
The beam found the stamped numbers.
His said 31.
Mine said 7.
"That's my number," I said. "I was thirty-one."
"I was seven," he said.
His voice cracked on it.
"I was a deckhand on my uncle's launch. I wore a seven on a string."
His throat moved.
"A girl took my wrist at the garden gate and said, quiet."
"You followed me," I said.
"I'd have followed you into the sea."
I stared at the two numbers in my palm.
For eight years I had pictured a stranger with no face, and he had been stacking crates on my dock.
He had been handing me out of the Lucia on my own lawn, and I had talked to him about the weather.
"You wore it," I said. "Every day."
"You kept mine in a pouch."
"With Gran's key."
"Octavia," he said.
It was the third time he had said my name, and the first time I heard all of it.
Something hot and furious came up in my chest, and I let it come.
"No ghosts," I said.
"Octavia."
"You made the rule on the foredeck. You looked me in the face and said no ghosts, and you were the ghost."
"So were you," he said.
That stopped me.
"I woke up in a room that smelled of lavender, with your tag in my hand," he said.
"And?" I said.
"I looked for you for eight years."
"I left you asleep," I said.
"I know," he said. "I've had a long time to be angry about it."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Locked Out of Gran's Secret Room, I Wore What Was Inside are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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