Page 80 of Shatter

The first syllable open and wide and the rest of it soft, the way my grandmother said it when I was very small and she still lived in the blue house in Ballard with the fishing floats hanging on the porch.

Nobody has said my name this way since she died.

My throat closes up completely.

Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes and run sideways across my nose into the pillow.

I don't try to stop them.

"Anni." He says it again, like he's testing the weight of it in his mouth, and his thumb moves in one slow line across my hip through the blanket. "Annika."

I press my face into his chest and breathe.

His breath comes ragged above my head, and he doesn't say anything else.

He holds me while I cry, and he doesn't ask me to stop.

When the shaking finally eases, I lift my head.

I can barely see him in the dark.

The pale shine of his eyes, the line of his jaw.

"Your turn." My voice is wrecked. "What's yours?"

He doesn't answer.

"Your real one." I find his hand on my hip and lace my fingers through his. "The one before Hakon, before whatever's on your license. The one somebody used to say the way you said mine."

Under my cheek, his heart stumbles.

His body goes still.

Not relaxed.

Still like an animal in tall grass when something moves nearby, and I know the stillness from the inside.

His fingers tighten around mine until my knuckles ache.

I don't let go.

I lie there in the dark with the rain ticking against the window, and I wait.

CHAPTER TEN

Hakon

Her fingers are laced through mine, and she won't let go.

The fan ticks around overhead, and rain taps the window.

She's waiting, her cheek on my chest, and every second she waits, my body locks down tighter, one muscle at a time, like a door being bolted from the inside.

Twenty years, I've had an answer ready for this.

Philly, Delaware County.

Breckett Hale, born in Chester, raised by his great-uncle after his folks died in a car wreck.