Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan

scent so intimately familiar washes over me. It’s as though I’ve been set on fire the way it causes my skin to burn. I open my eyes and he is there.
    Grey
.
    He’s wearing pressed khakis and a light pink button-down shirt that emphasizes the width of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips. His hair’s cut short, the bangs sweeping across his forehead already streaked lighter by the summer sun. I’d forgotten how improbably blue his eyes could be, how prominent his cheekbones and the slanted angle of his jaw.
    I’ve imagined this moment so many times that it seems impossible it’s never actually taken place before.
    Ever since the
Persephone
sank, I’ve daydreamed this reunion a dozen different ways. At first I pictured him sopping wet, shirt plastered to his chest, as he swept into the room and didn’t even hesitate before wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in for a kiss as necessary as air.
    Then later, as I began to understand more what it meant that he’d lied about the
Persephone
, I imagined tracking him in the dead of night, slicing a blade across his throat before he could even say a word.
    Over the past four years Grey has been both my daydream and my nightmare, my fantasy and my darkest desire. He’s become my obsession—I’ve read every article with the slightest reference to him, tracked his high school sports teams, stalked him across every social media platform that exists.
    I thought I was prepared for him.
    I was wrong.
    Standing in front of me, he simply occupies more space than I expected. It’s one thing to see a picture of a boy full grown, but it never completely erased the way he’s always been in my head; what his bony shoulders felt like cupped in my palms, the angle my head tilted to meet his lips.
    It takes everything I have to keep my expression calm and neutral when everything inside me is strung tight enough to snap. I want to leap across the distance between us and claw my nails down his cheeks and demand answers. How did he survive? Why did he lie? Did he know it was going to happen?
    What is he hiding and why?
    A warm flush pools along my lower back, spreading out in all directions. I want to run. Hide. Take a moment to regroup, refocus. But I can’t do any of these things and so I stand, feet rooted in place, and wait while his gaze sweeps over me.
    Frances flexes under my skin.
See me!
she screams when Grey’s eyes finally find their way to my own. A slight frown pinches the skin between his eyebrows and my breath comes faster—needing him to believe the disguise, but wishing that he’d remember me well enough to see through it. For a moment, we share the same stunned expression: something disquieted if not a little startled.
    “Libby.” The name escapes his lips on a breath of air, and behind me comes the collective movement of each guest straining forward to hear.
    His voice triggers something inside me, a flood, hot like adrenaline. But there’s a taste there as well, a slow contraction of my stomach. I can’t help it, my eyes fall to his lips.
    A memory from the cruise rises unbidden: the two of us together on deck, the night sky infinite as he kisses me for the first time. His forehead had been pressed against my own for what felt like an eternity. The distance between our lips minuscule, yet infinite. His fingers found their way to my temple, slowly sweeping my hair back behind my ear. Goose bumps trailed in the wake of his touch.
    Please, can I kiss you?
he’d asked, the question whisper smooth. I’d barely begun to nod when his mouth met mine.
    It’s hard to believe there was ever a time when the biggest questions in my life were as simple as this:
Please, can I kiss you?
My back stiffens and I force a well-practiced smile.
    “Grey,” I respond with a dip of my chin.

NINE
    G rey opens his mouth to say something but whatever it is is lost to the sound of his father loudly clearing his throat. Something shifts in Grey’s expression, a