But for now, please enjoy this sneak peek!
A Clip from Chapter 19
Savannah
Eben’s been especially quiet tonight. I know he’s thinking about me leaving.
I look into his sandy-colored eyes, and he smiles.
I tell myself that we are too good of friends to be in love. But I’m not even sure I believe it. There’s a part of me that feels as if I’d leave it all behind for him—if he asked me to. I’d stay here and live with my uncle. I’d finish high school, and I’d go to college somewhere close. And then, I’d work with my uncle. I think we’d make a pretty good team. But then, I know Eben would never ask me to stay. He’d never ask me to leave everything—my family, my new friends, my new life, Aaron.
All of a sudden, I feel his arm around me. He pulls me into his chest, and the familiar scent of his cologne fills my senses. I close my eyes and try to hold onto it.
“The day you stop looking back is the first day of the rest of your life,” I whisper near his ear. The saying is carved into the railing on a weathered boardwalk in Murrells Inlet. I saw it one day, and I never thought about it again, until now. In fact, I never really found it fitting, until now. And in the end, I think I say it more to comfort myself than to comfort him.
Several seconds beat on into the wind.
“Turns out, looking back is all I have,” he says, in a breathy voice.
His words hit me hard—like a heavy downpour to the chest. I breathe in deeply and breathe out a weighted smile that he can’t see.
I love you, too, Salem.