Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

seasons, not one.
    Day was strengthening, and her time was up. Turning, she scanned the island until she saw the tip of the lighthouse. Some things lasted, she thought with a smile. She’d learned a great deal in a few short weeks. She was her own woman at last. She could make her own way. As ateacher, she told herself that knowledge was precious. But it made her ache with loneliness. She left the empty sea behind her.
    Though she wanted to, Kate deliberately kept herself from looking at the house as she walked back to her car. She didn’t need to see it again to remember it. If things had been different… Kate reached for the door handle of her car. Her fingers were still inches from it when she was spun around.
    “What the hell’re you doing?”
    Facing Ky, she felt her resolve crumble, then rebuild. He was barely awake, and barely dressed. His eyes were heavy with sleep, his hair disheveled from it. All he wore was a pair of ragged cut-offs. She folded her hands in front of her and hoped her voice would be strong and clear.
    “I had hoped to be gone before you woke.”
    “Gone?” His eyes locked on hers. “Where?”
    “I’m going back to Connecticut.”
    “Oh?” He swore he wouldn’t lose his temper. Not this time. This time, it might be fatal for both of them. “Why?”
    Her nerves skipped. The question had been quiet enough, but she knew that cold, flat expression in his eyes. The wrong move, and he’d leap. “You said it yourself yesterday, Ky, when we came up from the last dive. I’ve done what I came for.”
    He opened his hand. Five coins shone in the morning sun. “What about this?”
    “I left them for you.” She swallowed, no longer certain how long she could speak without showing she was breaking in two. “The treasure isn’t important to me. It’s yours.”
    “Damn generous of you.” Turning over his hand, he dropped the coins into the sand. “That’s how much the gold means to me, professor.”
    She stared at the gold on the ground in front of her. “I don’t understand you.”
    “ You wanted the treasure,” he tossed at her. “It never mattered to me.”
    “But you said,” she began, then shook her head.
    “When I first came to you, you took the job because of the treasure.”
    “I took the job because of you. You wanted the gold, Kate.”
    “It wasn’t the money.” Dragging a hand through her hair, she turned away. “It was never the money.”
    “Maybe not. It was your father.”
    She nodded because it was true, but it no longer hurt.
    “I finished what he started, and I gave myself something.
    I don’t want any more coins, Ky.”
    “Why are you running away from me again?”
    Slowly, she turned back. “We’re four years older than we were before, but we’re the same people.”
    “So?”
    “Ky, when I went away before, it was partially because of my father, because I felt I owed him my loyalty. Butif I’d thought you’d wanted me. Me ,” she repeated, placing her palm over her heart, “not what you wanted me to be. If I’d thought that, and if I’d thought you and I could make a future together, I wouldn’t have gone. I wouldn’t be leaving now.”
    “What the hell gives you the right to decide what I want, what I feel?” He whirled away from her, too furious to remain close. “Maybe I made mistakes, maybe I just assumed too much four years ago. Damn it, I paid for it, Kate, every day from the time you left until you came back. I’ve done everything I could to be careful this time around, not to push, not to assume. Then I wake up and find you leaving without a word.”
    “There aren’t any words, Ky. I’ve always given you too many of them, and you’ve never given me enough.”
    “You’re better with words than I am.”
    “All right, then I’ll use them. I love you.” She waited until he turned back to her. The restlessness was on him again. He was holding it off with sheer will. “I’ve always loved you, but I think I know my own limitations. Maybe I know yours too.”
    “No, you think too much about limitations, Kate, and not enough about possibilities. I let you walk away from me before. It’s not going to be so easy this time.”
    “I have to be my own person, Ky. I won’t live the rest of my life as I’ve lived it up to now.”
    “Who the hell wants you to?” he exploded. “Who the hell wants you to be anything but what you are? It’s abouttime you stopped equating love with responsibility and started looking at