Page 154 of White Lights
They spent the night together.
And it changed them.
A whole love story between sunset and sunrise.
And then Dez disappeared. She went to Acheron, but he wouldn’t have known that. She never got to tell him.
The whole story’s there, clear as day, on Asher’s gorgeous, tortured face.
Twin tears roll down her cheeks.
“Hey,” he says, his voice suddenly tender. “Don’t. Don’t cry, Dez.”
She can’t believe she’s here, with him. She can’t believe she ever hurt him. And now, looking around her, at the beach, toward the sky, she can’t believe what they’re up against, very soon.
If only she’d picked up his call in the jet with Rafe that first day. She could have …
But she couldn’t have warned him she’d be disappearing, because she didn’t yet know it herself.
“I used to practice what I’d say if I ever ran into you,” Asher says. He takes a step closer now, tilting his head as if he’s trying to understand what’s happening. His gaze sends warmth through her that she feels under her skin. It reminds Dez of the first time they met.
She should never have let Asher go.
“Don’t say anything,” she says as she opens the passenger door of his Jeep. “Just drive.”
“ARE YOU ON THE RUNfrom something?” Asher glances in his rearview mirror as he pulls out of the parking lot and takes a left toward Ventura.
Dez chooses her words carefully. Soon she’ll tell him everything, but she’s got to take it slow, or she’ll scare him off before she can save him.
“I don’t know how to surf,” she says lightly. “You were going surfing, right?”
“That was my plan.”
“But then I ran into you …”
“And rewrote the plan,” Asher finishes her sentence. “Like you always do when you run into me.”
“It’s our thing.” She smiles at him.
It takes Asher a moment, but he eventually smiles back.
“So we’re just … driving?” he asks.
“We’re just driving.”
Dez is electrically attuned to her surroundings as they wind up Highway 1 with the roof of Asher’s Jeep removed. After months ofdarkness at Acheron, the Technicolored daylight assaults her. The Pacific rages on her left, and on her right, the sun sends dappled light through the trees. Everything’s too stunning, as if nature’s trying to dazzle Dez into forgetting the danger she and Asher are in.
Which could be lurking anywhere.
After a moment of quiet, Asher rubs his jaw. “Where did you go, Dez?”
“I know I owe you an explanation—”
“When we spent the night together, I thought …this is it. And then you disappeared.”
“I know.” She closes her eyes, crushed.
“I called you—”
