"Taking a life is a very difficult, ugly thing to do. Even if it's your own," he murmured, so softly, so calmly, she at first thought she had misheard him.

Lily's heart splintered with the pain that suddenly stabbed into it. That was one hell of a low blow.

She drew in a deep, even breath, not trusting herself to reply. Which was good. Because she almost immediately thought about his words and realized why he'd said them.

Wyatt would never cause her pain intentionally-she knew that with every cell in her body. He wasn't throwing her sister's suicide in her face. He was simply forcing her to baldly acknowledge what she had only admitted in the utmost silence of the night, in her own head.

He knew. Somehow, he knew the secret feelings she'd tried so hard to repress. The bitterness. The anger. The fury.

"Suicide is a contemptible act," she finally replied.

"Yes, it is."

"Hateful and cruel. Almost unforgivable."

Not that she hadn't forgiven her sister. She had. That didn't mean she hadn't cursed her twin almost as much as she'd cried over her in those first few months, when she'd wondered why Laura had left her alone in this world. Entirely alone to grieve all of them.

"I know," he admitted, something in his voice clueing her in that he meant it. He knew.

As if he also knew they'd both gone far afield from their original conversation, he managed to move them back on the normal path with a noncommittal shrug and a sip of his drink. "Okay, tough girl. We have the gun-hating wimp. Who else?"

Though glad he'd changed the subject, she couldn't help frowning at the description. It was a little too accurate. "I didn't date only wimps."

"You don't seem like the football-jock type."

"Hardly," she said with a forced shudder.

No, she'd been the brainiac type. The kind who'd always had a thing for men who were smart enough to know they didn't need to rely on brawn.

Maybe that was why she'd always been a little infatuated by this one. The thought made her think twice before continuing. The conversation was a little too getting-to-know-each-other-on-a-first-date-ish for comfort.

"You know, if I'm going to answer these kinds of questions, you're going to have to as well."

"I'm not the one who's scared to return to her real life."

Her jaw dropped. "Scared? Excuse me?"

"Not that you don't have reason to be scared, obviously; you went through a lot and you could still be in danger." He shook his head slowly. "But it's more than that, isn't it? This whole situation, as ugly as it's been, has been a perfect excuse for you to hide away, protecting yourself physically, but also protecting your emotions." His voice almost hypnotic, he went on. "Safe from grief, from heartache. From risks and expectations."

She swallowed hard, responses spinning in her mind, so many she couldn't settle on just one. He was wrong. He was right. He was rude. He was sympathetic. He was intrusive. He was intuitive. He was keeping her off balance, unsure what he'd say next, what he'd ask next, relentlessly battering at her defenses to get her to admit everything he wanted her to acknowledge.

She should feel manipulated. She didn't. Instead, she could feel only a strange sense of relief at finally having someone to admit it to. The truth about how she felt.

He was that someone. He had been that someone for a very long time. "Yes."

"Yes to?"

"Yes to all of it." She thrust a hand into her hair, taken briefly by surprise, as always, that most of it was gone. "Trying to get back to any kind of normal life after what happened to my family hadn't been working out so well. I was floundering, even way back then, long before the attack on me, long before Friday, when I admitted it to you that I was treading water, staying alive, though not really living."

"And then you no longer had to even try to keep treading. You could just sink, hide away, stop trying to be part of the world that had moved past you."

"Exactly," she whispered.

Until he made her by doing things like staring at her with heat in his eyes from the doorway to her bedroom one hot summer night. Showing up and treating her like a woman rather than a fragile doll. Challenging her, arguing with her. Holding her in his arms and wanting her. Dragging her out here and forcing her to admit the truth.

Over the past few days, she'd begun to acknowledge the changes within herself. She actually thought about leaving here. Being free. Being alive again.

Because of him.

He was making her come to life whether she liked it or not. And now that it had started to happen, she sensed he was not going to give up until she became the woman he expected her to be.

Wyatt had taken Lily out to dinner specifically so she could escape her worries for a little while. So why he'd felt the need to segue into the role of amateur shrink and try to analyze her, he didn't know. Having started, though, he couldn't deny he wanted to know more. He wanted her to admit more. Perhaps exposing more of herself, letting the dark, unhappy thoughts out into the open, would keep her from dwelling on them so incessantly in her daytime hours and her nighttime ones.

But it wasn't to be. He had no sooner opened his mouth to ask her to continue talking about her feelings about her sister, her past, than a large man appeared by their table, and intruded in a loud voice. "Hey, you're him, right? You're the kid from that house up Dead Man's Beach? The murder house?"

Wyatt froze, his spine snapping hard against the back of his chair. Across from him, Lily's eyes had widened in shock, her mouth falling open on a tiny gasp.

Damn it. The span of years might have been long, but memories in small New England towns ran longer. He'd avoided going to Keating, driving out of the way to come up here to an even smaller town farther from the old beach house. Putting distance between himself and anyone who might recognize him had been an instinctive move.

He hadn't gone far enough.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he finally replied.

"I remember that story," the stranger said, as if Wyatt hadn't even spoken. "I was a teenager and read every one of the newspaper articles. Damn, you look just like your dad. That black hair and those blue eyes-you don't forget a combination like that. Good-looking fella, ayuh. And your mother, what a beauty."

Wyatt didn't even look up to acknowledge the man, whose slur outed him as drunk. The alcohol had obviously stripped the stranger of his inhibitions. Not to mention his common sense, considering he continued to shoot off his mouth, despite the deepening scowl Wyatt couldn't keep off his face.

"The whole town talked about nothing else that whole summer. Tragic."

"You're mistaken," he managed to say, forcing the words through clenched teeth.

"No, no, I remember like it was yesterday!"

Wyatt's entire body remained rigid, tense, and ready to spring into action, even though his mind cautioned against doing anything impulsive, anything he might regret. Laying out a stupid drunk who shot off his mouth regarding things he had no business asking about was definitely something he would regret.

"Let's go," he said to Lily, immediately rising, pushing his chair back hard against the wall. He tossed several bills on the table, then turned to fully face the stranger, a red-nosed guy with weathered, lobsterman's skin and milky eyes. "Excuse me, I think you've mistaken me for someone else. We were just leaving."

The stranger didn't budge. Still oblivious, blind to Wyatt's mood, he also missed the tension that had fallen over the entire restaurant. "Come on, at least admit it's you.

They found you in the lighthouse, right? Or was it in the house? Either way you were covered with blood. I mean, you are the kid who survived after that insane-"