Page 59 of The Shadow Sanctum

Palm held in front of his face, he turns to look at me.

I bring the jacket up to my neck and wrap myself in it. “I know you’re not evil, Sawyer. You don’t have to convince me of that… I just want to know what you were thinking. I want to make sense of it. So I can understand you.”

The way you understand me. I don’t speak the words, but I know that he hears them.

He’s quiet for several seconds while he stares at me. I don’t think he’s trying to remember how it all started. He looks like he’s trying to decide something. If he should tell me or not. If he should trust me.

I can’t blame him, but it crushes me anyway.

Swallowing, I move my attention to my coat and snake my hand from under it. The broken shell clips my knuckle as I reach in to retrieve the necklace, and when I pull it out, I don’t even look at Sawyer to gauge his reaction.

I lay the offering on his thigh and slowly retreat, watching his hand to see if he picks it up.

He does. He lifts the shell necklace and quietly studies it while I do the same to him. Without a word, he lays it back on his lap and stares down at the broken shell.

“I know you think I don’t care about you,” I lift my hand to his arm. Pull it back. Lightly grasp his shoulder. “But I do. You know me better than any person who’s ever spoken my name. I have told you things I wouldn’t dream of telling those I owe my life to… You have more than my respect. You have⁠—”

My heart.

Silence swallows the rest of my sentence while my nose itches all the way down my throat. It worsens as I swallow and pangs behind my eyes.

Sawyer doesn’t make me say it. He fingers the leather string of his necklace and relaxes his shoulder beneath my hand.

“I don’t know a way to explain it that’s succinct.”

“I have all the time in the world.”

“It won’t be good enough for you.”

My hand moves down his arm. I squeeze just above his elbow. “It’s already good enough for me. I don’t need to know why you did what you did to know that you’re a good man.”

He turns his head, then lets at least a minute pass. My bones grow cold as I wait, but the hand that holds Sawyer’s arm never shakes.

“If you really want to understand… you have to know that my mother was my best friend. I didn’t really make friends growing up, and when my mom was ill, I usually skipped school. I skipped a lot of school. And my dad…”

He lifts his head but keeps his eyes pointed forward. “My father was a prick. Every time he lost his job, my mom and I would spend the days roaming town, the park, the pier, the beach. We didn’t have any money, but she was creative.” Sawyer closes his eyes and turns his head to punctuate his words, sincerity filling every syllable. “So creative. She filled the day with these imaginative games and ‘challenges’—which usually involved robbing a hot dog stand.”

Sawyer laughs, a smile lingering in its wake. “And when we were at the beach, there was this one make-believe game we liked to play most where we pretended we were trapped on a deserted island. But—” He holds up a finger. “Unbeknownst to us, there were creatures living there already who regarded us with such nobility that they made us their queen and prince… I’m pretty sure she ripped off Where the Wild Things Are, but we had fun and it made the hours pass, so.” He lifts a shoulder as if it’s meaningless, but I can tell it’s everything by the way his smile slowly falls.

“We called it Paradise Island. And while most of the time it was just a game, a few times, my mother believed it was actually real. But…” He lifts a hand. “I didn’t care. I didn’t mind her delusions, for the most part. I was okay to go along with them because they were a part of who she was, and I loved who she was.”

He stares down at his knees, his mouth shut. I turn fully toward him and cross my legs just to make sure he knows he has my full attention.

“But?” I prod. Then regret it a moment later.

He lets out a breath that quakes with emotion. I can't see his eyes, but I know they’re watery just by the way his body tenses. “But I overestimated her ability to take care of herself, and I really hated my dad. When I graduated, I went to a university across the ocean to get away from him and figured I’d just … come back for my mother. I planned to fly her to London as soon as I could get the cash.”

He sets the necklace to the side and rubs his thighs. “But two weeks in, my mom’s blowing up my phone with her fucking imaginary drama, telling me there’s a bomb in my dorm room, and my bunkmate’s trying to kill me… I wanted a fresh start. I was used to her illness. And I didn’t take it seriously enough.”

My hand loosens its grip as I’m taken back to a newspaper article, the one and only bit of information I could find on the woman.

Oh no.

“A few days later, she stops answering my calls. I wait a week before I fly back home and find out she’d drowned.” Sawyer slumps forward. “Her body was still waiting at the fucking morgue for someone to claim her. My dad didn’t even…” A couple seconds pass before he just shakes his head. “Anyway, the police gave me what they assumed was a suicide note. It said, ‘Don’t fret, darling. I’ll be waiting on Paradise Island.’”

I let my hand slip from his arm as my stomach drops, my heart lurching into my throat. The article mentioned his mother’s suicide, along with the note. It never occurred to me that it was written to him.

It’s worse than I thought.