Everlasting by Elizabeth Chandler Read Free Book Online Page B

reached for her, but as he brought her close, he felt himself being pulled under.
    “Ivy!”
    “Tristan? Tristan, where are you?”
    “Ivy!”
    His own heaviness drew him down into the darkness. The surface of the water, rising over his head, became his sky. Submerged tree limbs entangled him. He fought to get back to her.
    “Ivy!”
    “Tristan? Are you here?”
    He jolted awake. Sharp-scented pine branches surrounded the place where he was lying. Lifting his head, looking toward a clearing, he saw a thin moon hanging high in the sky. Tristan rose to his feet and saw someone wading in Ruth Pond. As she moved, the silver light made bright circles in the water.
    “Ivy,” he called softly.
    She turned around, searching for him among the trees, then hurried in the direction of his voice. When he emerged from the pines, he saw her stop and look uncertain. He laughed, remembering his beard and shorn hair.
    Then she laughed and rushed to him. “Oh God! It’s really you.”
    He held her tight, burying his face in her hair. To see her, to touch her, to hear her—were those the longings of a fallen angel? He didn’t care; he needed these things.
    She clung to him. “How I have missed you!”
    “Every minute,” he said. “Every day.”
    “I thought you had left.”
    “I couldn’t bear to.”
    Then she turned in his arms, glancing over her shoulder. “We have to be careful. Someone might see us.”
    “No one’s around,” he told her. All that mattered was being with her. Being with her made him reckless.
    “But out in the open like this—”
    Reluctantly he released her, then led her to the pine brush where he had been sleeping. Kneeling down, he tried to make a soft place for her to sit. When he glanced up, she was smiling.
    “Thanks for fluffing the pine needles,” she teased, “but I plan to use you for a pillow.”
    Tristan stood up and kissed her, not touching her with his hands, holding her only with a long and pure kiss, until she melted against him. When they sat, he propped himself against a tree trunk and pulled her to him. She laid her cheek against his chest.
    For a long time they didn’t speak. He was happy just tohear her breathing, just to feel a strand of her hair tumble over his wrist.
    “If we could stop time,” he said, “or wind it back . . .”
    She raised her head. “We don’t need to, Tristan. The miracle is that we’ve been given another chance to be together.”
    It was the second time today the word miracle had been used. Were Andy and Ivy right, or was Lacey? Was being in Luke’s body a miracle or punishment?
    “I’ve been trying to figure something out,” Ivy said, and told him about Donovan’s visit and the recovery of the cell phone. “What happened to the one Kip lent you?”
    “I gave it back. I left it in the shed with his other things.”
    “So the phone found at the highway rest stop must have belonged to the real Luke. Donovan talked as if it were proof that you had left the Cape. But Luke would have stopped using it before he died, four weeks ago or more. You’d think they’d check on whether calls had been made from it in the last several days.”
    “Someone might have used it. It could even have been taken and recently used by the person who killed Luke.”
    Ivy sat all the way up. “I wish we knew what happened the night you were found on the beach. If I could get my hands on the police report—”
    “You don’t think they’d be a little suspicious when you asked for it? Ivy, I think the best strategy for you is to pretend you want nothing to do with me.”
    “Then maybe the medical report. If I could talk to Andy—”
    “I already did.”
    Tristan recounted his conversation from earlier that day, and Ivy listened intently.
    “A drug that doesn’t leave a chemical trace,” she repeated slowly. “Then the attack was premeditated.”
    “Yes.”
    “Tristan, please be careful!”
    “I will, I am,” he said soothingly.
    “If the murderer has