Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) Read Free

back. Let me almost sleep without nightmares. Almost.  
    I swam the two and a half miles in record time. I could barely drag myself onto the dock by the time I got there, but my mind was still racing a million miles a second. This time, thank god, it was with thoughts of the girl. The cellist. I kept seeing the sadness in her expression, the loneliness. The pain and the fear.  
    What was it, I wondered, that could bring that kind of searing pain to such a sweet and perfect beauty? I needed to know. But I might never find out if I couldn’t get myself to talk to her.
    Or to talk at all.
    It had been eleven months since I’d spoken a single word. But for her , I might find the courage to simply say hello.

the sculpture  

    I didn’t see her on the beach again for a few days. It’d be a lie to say I wasn’t looking for her on the beach, but that itself was a cop-out, since I knew where she lived. But I couldn’t tell her that. If I just showed up at her door, I’d seem like a stalker. Especially since I’d probably just end up standing there, flapping my mouth open and closed like a fish out of water, unable to speak. So I swam from island to shore in the morning and looked for her on the beach, and I swam from shore to island at night and looked for her on the beach. I never went by her house, refusing to let myself go around the block again. There was no point. No matter how much part of me might have liked the way she looked, there was no way I could handle actual interaction with her.  
    I’d never been particularly talkative. I’d always been far more comfortable with a tool in my hand and wood on the table than interacting with people. Britt had found a way through my shyness, but it had taken her months to do so. And even then, when she’d gotten me to ask her out and we’d started dating, I’d never been the kind to just blurt out whatever was in my head. She used to joke that most days she could count the number of words I spoke on the fingers of both hands, and that wasn’t far from the truth.  
    I’d spent a long hot day spent in the workshop, roughing out the basic shape of the bar. Kirk and Max wanted something big and badass and handmade, and that’s what I would deliver. I’d hauled several huge lengths of oak into the shop, what amounted to thirty feet of solid oak. The idea I had was three separate sections making a U-shaped bar, each of the three sections hand-carved from a solid piece of oak. Each side would look different, but it would all tie together somehow. I didn’t have any particular designs in mind, but that was just how I worked. I started with an idea and let the wood tell me what it needed to be. I was days away from any kind of actual design work yet, though. For now, I had to get the giant logs into some kind of shape that I could work with.  
    By the end of the day I was exhausted, covered in sawdust, dripping sweat, and looking forward to a slow and leisurely swim home. I parked my truck, stripped down to the swim shorts I wore under my jeans, stuffed my things in the bag. I was lost in thoughts of the bar, of what I’d have to do the next day, so I wasn’t paying attention to the beach.  
    I nearly tripped over her. She was lying on her back, hands folded on her stomach, huge black sunglasses covering face, wearing a purple one-piece swimsuit. She had a book lying face-down next to her head on the beach blanket and a bottle of water on the other side. I froze as soon as I saw her, my bare foot scuffing, kicking sand onto her blanket and against her thigh.
    She tipped up her sunglasses, and her jade gaze pinned me in place. I should apologize. I formed the words in my head, spoke them aloud in my mind. I’m sorry . But nothing came out. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t make any sounds emerge. Stupidly, I just stared down at her, blinking, stunned by the vibrant shade of the green of her eyes. She seemed to be waiting, lying there staring up at me, sunglasses on her