Ian laughed derisively. "Touche"."
"Go to her, Ian. See her. There's a purity in her soul such as I've never seen before. She could change you."
Ian winced at the softly spoken words. For no reason that he could name, they caused a rush of emotion. Fear, maybe. Perhaps a little stab of hope. He pushed suddenly to his feet and turned away, striding from the room.
"Run along, little Ian, and hide your head in the sand. Or in your precious journal."
He ignored Johann's comments and kept walking, past the lawn, through the trees, toward the sea. He needed to think, to get away from this loathsome house full of damaged souls.
Selena was on the beach. She was wearing an old lawn shirt of his and those baggy pants, hitched at the waist with a fist-thick leather belt. Her long hair whipped out behind her, fluttered in the breeze. The pungent, clammy smell of low tide seeped up from the sand and rocks.
In front of her stood an easel. A pale cream-colored gown was pinned to the easel, and she was painting a huge yellow flower on the bodice.
She hadn't seen him, and he almost turned around, but something stopped him, something deep and ele-
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mental. He owed her something, words, a touch. An apology.
Quietly he came up beside her. "Hello, Selena."
She jumped at the sound of his voice and dropped the paintbrush, spinning around. "Ian," she mouthed.
Nervously he shifted his weight. The words he ought to say, needed to say, wedged in his throat, as thick and unwieldy as sand. "I ... I'm sorry, Selena."
Her face broke into a dazzlingly bright smile. "You are?"
"I never meant to hurt you."
"Of course you did not." A low, throaty laugh slipped from her mouth, vibrated on the cool, crisp air. "And of course I forget you."
Her laughter was infectious. He couldn't help smiling. She made it so easy to be wrong. "You mean you forgive me."
She laughed again. Easily. So easily. "You are right I do not forget you, Ian."
Before he could respond, she threaded her fingers through his. "Come with me," she said.
She pulled him away from the beach, drew him into the cold, primeval darkness of the forest. Laughing, she raced over the fallen logs, across the lichen-covered ground to a small, round clearing in the center of a canyon of spruce and balsam trees. Spears of sunlight stabbed through the trees in wavery, dusty streams.
Smiling, out of breath, her cheeks a high, pure pink, she let go of his hand and spun around. "This is my place," she said proudly. "Look." She let go of his hand and dropped to her knees, burrowing through a cavity in a rotted stump. One by one, she pulled out her treasures-a perfectly rounded white stone, a pink hermit crab shell, a dried strand of yellowish green kelp, a sand dollar, a broken bit of blue glass.
Ian stood back and watched her. Strange, unfamiliar feelings and sensations spilled through his body, making him feel almost light-headed. There was an other-
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worldly quality to this moment, this woman. She was not ... normal; and yet, perhaps she was what normal should be, what it was once.
She plopped to a sit and drew her riches into her lap, motioning him over.
She was like no other person he'd ever known, an impossible mixture of ethereal beauty and earthy strength. And when she looked up at him, he saw in her eyes an eager innocence that couldn't exist in this tired, unjust world.
"Ian?" A small frown tugged at her thick, arched eyebrows, reminded him that he'd remained silent too long. "I ... saved these ... for you."
He couldn't take his eyes off of her. She sat there, her treasures in her lap, gazing up at him as if he hung the moon with his bare hands. For one blindly painful moment, he wished he were worthy of that look.
The sum of his life, his soul, passed before his eyes in that instant and he felt a crushing sense of shame. From the moment he'd met her, he'd thought only of himself, his needs, his desires, and when he thought she couldn't fulfill them, he'd abandoned her. Left her to rot quietly behind the closed doors of her room.
And still she looked at him as if he were the god he so wanted to be.