“What the fuck are you doing here?”

I can feel the pier itself swaying beneath my feet, my breath tight in my throat as I stare into the eyes of the last man on earth I ever expected to see again. Not outside my own head that is.

“I live here.” His voice is deeper than it was; older, more mature.

It has the same effect on me now that it did eight years before though. The same shivering tingle up my spine, the same tightness in my throat.

I quickly bury those thoughts deep as I frown at him. “No, you don’t.”

He grins, a flash of that gorgeous, roguish and cocky smile that hasn’t changed one bit from the boy I knew all those years before. The stubble on his jaw is a bit darker, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, but it’s like time and age have conspired to make him even hotter - even more attractive than he was even back then.

It’s unfair that he looks so good this many years later.

It’s unfair that he looks this good after what he pulled.

After he left.

He eyes me. “Well, do you?”

“Do I what,” I hiss, still blinking, still trying to process the ghost from my past standing in the flesh in front of me.

“Live here.”

“No,” I grumble.

“Well how do you know if I do, then?”

He’s goading me. Eight years after walking out of my life with my heart in his hand, he’s still teasing and needling me like we’re still kids - like nothing’s happened at all.

Like he didn’t destroy me when he walked away and never looked back.

This isn’t happening. I shake my head, sucking in a deep breath of air as I try and steady myself. This is the double vodka I had on the ferry, not reality. I’m not actually standing in front of Silas Hart on the piers of Shelter Harbor.

This is a hallucination brought on by being home. It’s an apparition, and I’m eighteen again, and standing on the pier with those same piercing blue eyes looking right into my heart, knowing everything I’m thinking and letting me fall right into them, however wrong.

But that was eight years ago.

That was before he broke my heart.

“I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”

I narrow my eyes at him, focusing on his words. “You knew I was coming home?”

He shrugs, bringing a hand up and raking his fingers through his mop of hair. “Well, yeah.”

He says it offhandedly, as if of course he’d know I was going to be here. As if he’d know anything at all about me eight years after walking away.

“How,” I spit out.

Silas grins. “Think I’m supposed to know when my wife is going to be in town-”

“Do not say that!” I snap, the heat rising in my cheeks as I jab a finger at him.

“Why? It’s true.”

I can feel my hands clench into fists. “It is not-”

“Oh I distinctly remember a priest and something about ‘having and holding’, and then there was this bit with the rings-”

“Shut up, just stop talking,” I hiss, my eyes darting around as if someone might overhear.

“You gave up that title when you left me.”

“I didn’t-” his eyes tighten before he scowls right back. “Didn’t take you too long to forget you had a husband, by the way.”

“Because I didn’t,” I snap back. “I had a criminal.”

“You knew exactly what I was when you said yes, sweetheart.”

I roll my eyes. “Nice, Silas.” I scowl at him, still standing there grinning at me, as if that fucking charm of his is going to fix this.

“I should have sued you for abandonment years ago.”

He barks out a laugh. “Never too late, darlin.”

I tighten my mouth, my gaze narrowed at him. “And by the way, were you just hitting on me?”

He snorts. “I was, before I realized who it was.”

“Oh fuck you,” I spit.

“I didn’t recognize you, okay?” He shrugs again, raking his fingers across that distractingly attractive shadow on his cheek. “You got hot.”

My eyes go wide as I feel the indignation boil up inside. “Excuse me?!”

Silas laughs. “No-no, hang on, that came out wrong. I mean you got hotter.”

“Keep digging, douchebag.”

His eyes flare for a second as they hold my gaze, his lips tight.

“You changed your hair.”

Yeah and my direction in life, and everything else about me since you walked away from us.

But I don’t answer him. Instead, we stand in silence right there on the pier of our hometown, right where we used to stand staring at each other under totally different circumstances. Under totally different stars.

My mind reels, trying to take in this man from my past - the man from my past. And I don’t know whether I want to beg him to kiss me the way he used to where my damn toes would curl, or if I want to shove him right off the end of the pier.

Or worse.

“You didn’t answer the question,” I finally say quietly.

“Which one is that.”

I suppress the growl in my throat. “What are you doing here, Silas.”

He shrugs. “It’s not every day Jacob Hammond gets a park named after him.”

I stare at him. “You came back for my dad?”

“Rowan invited me.”

I make a mental note to bury my older brother. Alive. In a very deep hole.

God he’s more attractive than he ever was. The boy I once loved became a man over the last eight years. He’s bigger all over - thicker chest, broader shoulders, more muscle on his arms. The smattering of teenage tattoos from when we were young have grown to full sleeves, and the smooth chin I used to kiss is now scuffed with a five o’clock shadow that was never there when we were young.

When I was eighteen and madly in love.

When we got married.

When he left.

“I thought you were in Ireland.”

I say it quietly. I don’t actually know that he was, just rumors and conversations overheard. I never wanted to know for sure where he’d gone off to, because it made it easier to stomach that he’d left. He wasn’t somewhere else –somewhere tangible - instead of next to me, he’d just disappeared.

Silas takes a deep breath, his eyes locked on mine. “I was.” His eyes search my face, though I don’t know what he could possibly be looking for. “Dublin.”

“For eight fucking years?” My voice is shrill, and I hate that it is.

“There-” he stops himself and shakes his head. “Yes.”

I’ve gone over a reunion with Silas Hart in my head nine thousand times in my head over the years. Every conceivable scenario, every variable outcome, every possible conversation. At first, they were silly, stupid fantasies - he’d tell me how he’d been kidnapped, or thrown into a secret jail for years, and how the thought of me alone had kept him alive.

God I was an idiot back then.

But they soon turned more real - more grounded in the reality that the man I’d loved and given my heart to had willingly walked away and stolen it with him. And then my dream-conversations changed to me being this confident, self-sustained woman who casually laughs at the silly boy from her past who shows back up looking for forgiveness.

And yet here I am, letting every insecurity come pouring out like the same silly little princess who married the thief and thought there’d be a happily ever after somehow.

“Ivy-”

“Do they have fucking email in Ireland, Silas? Phones?”

He sighs as he drops his gaze to the boardwalk beneath our feet, the ocean sloshing gently beneath it.

“Well, this is going well,” he finally says, looking up with that grin on his face and that token glimmer in his eye.

“Don’t,” I say testily.

“Don’t what.”

“Don’t try and be funny, or cute-”

“Oh?” He grins at me. “So you do at least still think I’m cu-”

“Silas.” My eyes flash, his name almost choking in my throat. “Stop, please.” I shake my head. “I’m not that girl anymore.”

The grin drops from his face as his sea-blue eyes narrow in on mine. “And what girl is that, Ivy.”

“The girl you used to know,” I say, summoning every ounce of firmness from deep inside and keeping my voice even.

“I’m not anything like that girl anymore.”

He shakes his head, a pained look creeping into his eyes. “Ivy-”

“That girl died when you left her.”

I whirl before he can answer, walking away down the pier as the echoing sound of the wheels of my suitcase follow in my shadow.