“Home?” My heart suddenly faltered. We weren’t home? Home was with us, wasn’t it?
“Germany,” he said. “Where I was born.”
I blinked against the wind that picked up, but my mind was trying to sort the information. “You were born in Europe?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I never... I thought... I mean for some reason I thought you were from here.”
“Because I don’t have an accent?”
I nodded a little. “I suppose that’s it.”
“I grew up around military bases. My father insisted I was taught English.” His lips lowered until they met with the back of my head. “Sang,” he said against my hair.
“North?”
He breathed in against my hair, lowering his face until his mouth met my ear. “Do you like me?”
I couldn’t help my smile. “Yes,” I said. “Do you like me?”
North’s hand on my stomach tightened. His lips moved against my ear, but no sound came out. When moments passed and he didn’t answer, my heart wanted to stop. What was wrong? Why didn’t he say yes like he usually did?
“Yeah,” he finally said, with a heavy sigh that blew my hair against my neck. “Yes, Sang Baby, I like you. Probably a lot more than I should.”
My heart that was pounding so hard a moment ago stopped suddenly, along with my breath. The wind and the waves seemed to still. I wanted him to tell me what he meant and didn't want to miss a word.
But North drew quiet again. I sensed that he was struggling. I shifted slowly so I wouldn’t spook him. He let go of me, withdrawing his hands. I turned, getting on my knees in the sand so I could face him.
He leaned back on his hands. At first his eyes remained on the ground between us. He slid his eyes up after a moment, finally meeting my gaze.
There was something wrong. I could feel it from him. “What?” I asked.
His lips twisted. He shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “I can’t.”
I let out a slow, frustrated sigh. The whole I can’t and I shouldn’t thing was too confusing, so limiting. “I thought we told each other important things. Can’t what?”
He looked up at me again, and it was as if I’d yelled at him like I’d done before. He looked hurt, defeated. What was wrong with him? Was it the Academy? Maybe there was some Academy rule that prevented the guys from doing certain things. Saying what they wanted. Doing what they wanted.
And it struck me in that moment. The guys got close, but there was an invisible line somewhere. Kota had hinted at it somehow. Like when he kissed me on the brow but not anywhere else. There were times the others got close, like Nathan, but never took it further. I’d been watching other couples kissing, holding hands. Karen even suggested sex, and everyone at school probably thought Silas and I had done that. Could a school like the Academy take over a life so much that North couldn’t tell me something that he looked desperate to tell me? Could they control who he kissed? Who they touched?
My thoughts propelled me up. I rose from the sand, finding the zipper to the jacket and unzipping it, sliding it from my shoulders.
I’d had enough sitting, enough looking and wondering and not getting an answer. I couldn’t stand to see the pain in his eyes. If he wasn’t going to tell me, or couldn’t, I’d force the moment to change so he wouldn’t feel pressured to. I’d distract him. I’d protect him from himself.
“What are you doing?” North asked, gazing up at me. Those dark eyes glinting in the moonlight.
I passed him the jacket. “I’m going to go touch it,” I said. I kicked off my shoes and dropped my phone on top of them. I didn’t want to risk dropping it in the darkness.
His eyebrows lifted in confusion. He clutched the jacket, taking it from me and putting it in his lap. “Touch what?”
“The ocean,” I said. I turned from him, starting off across the sand. I walked quickly, wanting to run away from North’s dark eyes and the secrets that I might never find out. Knowing there was a secret he couldn’t tell me was worse than not knowing any such thing existed.
Because if it was a secret, it meant it was Academy. It was the only thing they couldn't talk openly about with me.
And my heart stung, wondering if the Academy found something wrong with me, or if it was a general rule not to get too close to a girl. They’d been told not to get close to anyone at Ashley Waters. Did that include me? It seemed impossible that the Academy would make such a rule. Why would a school care? I’d come so far with them. They’d told me they wanted me to join this family, this group. At the same time, I wasn’t allowed in. I wasn’t allowed to get that close. Maybe that was why everyone around us was so confused, including me.
The only answer I had was that the Academy told them to stay at a distance from me.
I was forbidden territory.
I focused on the swirl of waves in front of me. I wanted to dip my toe in. I wanted to touch something, when I wasn't sure I could touch the guys and what it all meant.
The first time North called my name, there was a warning tone, like he wanted me to stop. I’d heard it before, usually when the other guys and I were doing something silly together and he wanted us to quit.
I dashed forward. I didn’t want him to be so protective of me that I couldn’t do something as simple as touch the water without him giving me a lecture that the water was too cold or something else. I’d never seen the ocean before. I’d never felt the water. Not that I expected it to be different than water from the sink or a pool, but it was different to me. I didn’t want to miss the chance the first time I was here.
When my bare feet reached the damp sand as the wave washed back out, North called again for me, his tone much more urgent. It caught me so off guard that I turned, the bottoms of my feet chilled against the soaked sand.
North was running after me. I didn’t know why. I stepped backward, looking from side to side, wondering if perhaps there was something I was at risk of stepping on and didn’t see. A crab? A jellyfish?
A wave crept up over my ankles and rose quickly to encompass my calves, almost up to my knees. The water surged. I lost my balance at the press and tug of the wave, falling.
The chill in the water didn’t scare me as much as the pulling. The water, unrelenting,
yanked me away from the shore. I had fallen on my back and felt the sand against my hips. I tried to sink myself to stabilize so I could catch my footing and stand, but the water made the ground slippery, and the sand released too easily to act as a foothold.
Just when I was being pulled under another swell of water, an arm threaded around my waist and I was pulled up. I sputtered. I’d been so desperate just to find some traction that breathing hadn’t been part of the equation yet.
North yanked me up out of the water. I clutched to his black T-shirt. He pulled me around until I was chest to chest with him. He caught my thighs, lifting until they were wrapped up around him. He hugged me close as he slogged forward through the water toward the sand.
The wind knocked around us, catching through my clothes as if I’d been wearing nothing at all. The only warmth I found was in North.
“Goddamn it, Sang,” North said as he marched.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped out. What just happened? It was so sudden. “I just wanted to stick my foot in it. I didn’t mean to—”
“You can’t, Baby,” he said. “Not here.” He dropped into the sand on his knees, holding me to him, pressing my body into his. His hands found my back and he rubbed harshly, as if trying to pull me in closer. “I was trying to warn you.”
“I didn’t know...”
North grunted. “I know,” he said. His head dipped down, until his lips dropped into my hair. “Anywhere else you probably could, but the water's too dangerous here. Ever since the hurricane, the tides claimed this part. You can’t go out into the water here. Riptides.”
“What’s a riptide?”
I felt his mouth open once and then close. He pulled back. A hand slipped up cupping just under my jaw against my neck until he had me looking at him. “Sometimes I forget.”
“Forget what?”
“You’re so smart, Sang Baby,” he said. His thumb traced along the edge of my jaw. I felt the urge to tilt my head back slightly, as if encouraging him to do it again. “You’re so smart, but there’s just so much you haven’t experienced, that you don’t know about.”