Chapter 6: Good Morning, Lindholm

Brennan's POV

I woke before the light, the way I do on the boat.

The room was gray and cold at the edges.

The window was open an inch on a smell of wet leaves and sulfur.

Kirsten lay on her side facing me with one hand under her cheek.

Her hair was across her mouth.

Her left eyebrow had the pale scar through it that I had seen at the rehearsal dinner and told myself not to ask about.

I looked at her for a long time.

On the ninth of March, Shea had put my ring in the cupholder of my truck, between a coffee cup and a fuel receipt.

I had sat there in the ferry lot for an hour with the engine off.

She had cried, and I had not known what to do with my hands.

She had asked me to say nothing until after Kirsten's summer.

I said yes because it was easier than saying no.

I had been Todd's friend since we were nine, and he had asked me to stand up with him in April.

I thought I could stand up and keep my mouth shut and nobody would be hurt.

Now I lay in a strange bed on an island I had never heard of, and I was in love with the bride.

That was not a thing I could say.

I had known it for about thirty hours, and I kept it to myself.

Shea had told me once, on the phone in May, what Kirsten said about me.

She said Kirsten called me the quiet one, the ferry man who would never leave the bay.

I had not forgotten it.

I had never been out of the country, and here I was.

Kirsten stirred.

Her eyes opened, gray and sleepy, and found me.

"You're awake," she said.

"A little."

"You were looking at me," she said.

"Yes."

"For how long?" she said.

"A while."

She smiled with half her mouth, slowly, and pushed the sheet down.

"Come here, then."

I came.

I put my arm around her and drew her in against my chest, and her back fit along the front of me.

She was warm and soft and bare, and I was hard before I had finished pulling her close.

"Good morning," she said, pushing back against me.

"Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'll lose it," I said into her hair. "I've wanted this since four o'clock."

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