Took Me Yesterday (book 2 of The Tomo Trilogy)

Stay With Me

Noah waved his hand, like he wanted to wave my thoughts away, but then he was pointing out places on the sea.

"He'd show me all the ships coming and going," he said, letting his wrist go limp. "It took me five minutes to realize what he wanted me to see." The corner of Noah's lip bent down. "Some of the ships were made out of foreign materials."

My heart skipped. "That means—"

"Phelps either has secret stashes from the past, or there are other countries out there helping us," he said. "Functioning ones. Richer ones. Freer than we are."

My mind raced with impossible possibilities.

"We're simple isolationists," Noah said, balling up his fist again. "But my father thought we could change that, that with the right resources and backing, we could branch out and expand into the world again. Find freedom in others." He let out a bitter chuckle. "He used to say, 'We didn't name you after me, we named you after a man who survived the world by building a boat and sailing when no one could swim.'" He paused, his eyebrows furrowing. "I didn't even know what he was talking about. Not then. But now..." He shook his head. "He bought me a camera and told me I could go out there and capture the world." Noah pointed his forehead at the lighthouse. "I stood up and took that photo."

I stared at the crumbling lighthouse, unlit and rusty and broken. Nothing like it was in the photograph. In the picture, it looked used, clean, and white.

"To celebrate," Noah continued, his tone shaking, "He gave me my first cut."

Tomo.

"I wasn't sure about it," he rambled, "but when he took it, his face lit up like a hundred stars, bright enough to light up the entire ocean, like that beacon, leading all the sailors home."

I grabbed his hand. He laced our fingers.

"How old were you?" I asked.

He clicked his tongue in thought. "Twelve." The word came out with a half-laugh. "And I still believe—" he stopped. "I'd like to be a sailor," he said, a sad smile returning to his face. "Or a singer. Or both." His voice lightened. "Just me and that ocean and a song." He faced me. "Is that so wrong? After all of this, that I still want something like that?"

His watery eyes brought tears to my own. "No."

His eyes searched mine, quickly and pleading, but then his stare landed on our hands, and he let go. "You don't even know the worst part, Sophie."

For once, I believed him.

I watched in silence as Noah took a strand of my curls and pressed it between his fingers. "He forgot to mention one part of that story he named me after."

"I don't know that story," I admitted, a much harder feat for me than I was willing to admit. I thought I'd read everything, even the difficult-to-get stories.

"You wouldn't know the story," he said, swirling the curl around his forefinger like a ring. "It's a banned book. One in our library in Albany."

My heart raced at the idea of a library. A real, honest-to-goodness library. One in my home region. One I wanted to see more than anything.

"I found it right after I left you," he said.

My hair dropped away from his finger, and he dug his hands into the sand. "We took the train to Louis City where my father's convoy was waiting. They muscled us off, took the merchandise, didn't answer our questions, and then blew it sky high." He shuddered. "At first I didn't even think it was our dad's men, but then we drove to Albany, nonstop. Rinley was scared, but she always loved the library, so I took her there. When she finally fell asleep, I found it open on his desk." His skin lost color. "God told Noah to build the boat, and his family survived the flood."