Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Deacon
The rain lashed against the car windows as the driver pulled up to Petey’s boat shed.
“Are you sure you want me to leave you here, sir?” the driver asked, looking at me skeptically through the rearview mirror. “I can take you to a hotel or something for the night if?—”
“We can stay in the boathouse. It’s fine,” Dove assured. I gaped from the rusted tin shed back to her confused expression. “What? He has a cot and some sleeping bags. The twins and I used to sleep over here all the time as teens. And then we’ll be ready to catch the boat in the morning.”
And here I was thinking the monkey house was bad . . .
I shook my head. A sudden springtime thunderstorm had blown in on the drive up from New York. Dove and I hadn’t managed to get out of my bed for another eight blissful hours, and so by the time we’d made it to the shoreline, it had already been nightfall, and with the storm, there would be no passage across to Prickle Island until the morning.
Still, Dove had insisted that we get there at first light to help out at the zoo. There was that dogged loyalty to her family again. It was one of the many, many things I loved about her. She and I both knew the importance of family, and for a brief second I wondered what kind of one the two of us could make together. My squeeze of her hand was my only acknowledgment.
When Dove went to open the door, I tugged her back into the car. “Are you sure about this?” I shouted to be heard over the galing winds. “You want to stay in a boathouse during a hurricane ?”
“It’s a mild thunderstorm,” she countered as a loud roll of thunder made the whole SUV tremble. “If you want to go stay in a fancy hotel, you can, but I’m going to stay here so I can get back to the island at dawn.”
Defeated, I scrubbed a hand down my face, knowing every second with her was going to be an adventure.
“Alright,” I relented. “I guess we’re staying here tonight.”
She smiled at me as lightning flashed overhead. The driver went to get out, and Dove called, “We’ve got it, Mike. You don’t want to drive back all wet.” She gave him a pat on the shoulder before opening her door again to the torrent of rain. “Have a safe drive home.”
“Thank you, Ms. Lachlan,” Mike replied.
When had Dove learned his name? The car service switched drivers all the time, and at some point I’d just stopped asking. It was one of those jarring moments for me, as if I suddenly realized what my life had become. So many people wanted a piece of me that I’d started treating everyone like they did. I didn’t want to be that way anymore. Like a sharp jolt of awareness, it took Dove being in my life to finally wake me up.
“Thanks, Mike,” I said as I raced to the trunk of the car to grab our bags.
Dove was already attempting to carry both, and I swiftly scooped them out of her grip as we dashed to the front door, huddled together under the tiny overhang to avoid the rain.
“Please tell me you have a key,” I pleaded as Mike pulled away, leaving us plunged into darkness. I pulled out my phone and used the flashlight to illuminate the door.
Dove lifted on her toes, fingers feeling across the lip of the door. She adorably stuck her tongue out in concentration as she felt her way along the ledge. “Got it,” she declared, holding out the key in victory.
“Very safe.”
“Who’s going to break into a dilapidated old boathouse?” she asked incredulously. “What are they going to steal, Petey’s rusty tools and expired tins of food?”
“You’re really not selling me on this place.”
“Apologies, it’s not the Ritz,” she jeered, opening the door.
We stumbled inside, and she found a few candles in a drawer, lighting them until the shadows disappeared, revealing the boat shed. It was something straight out of Hoarders . There were boxes of tools and knickknacks stacked to one side, a cot, a balled-up inflatable mattress, and some blankets to the other. Old built-in cabinets were pulling on rusty nails, hanging from the wall. And a beat-up armchair sat in the corner next to the smallest TV I’d ever seen.
As I surveyed the space, I murmured, “You know, this reminds me a lot of my first apartment in New York. Except cleaner and probably with fewer pests.”
Dove chuckled. “See? Just like home.” She wrung out her dripping wet hair. “We should probably get changed into some warmer clothes.”
I bridged the distance, pulling her into a slow, lingering kiss. “I have a better way to heat each other up.”
She laughed. “First we need to eat,” she rebuffed, holding aloft the plastic bag of Chinese food that we’d made Mike pull over to acquire. Steam swirled from the containers in the chilly room. “No one wants to eat cold fried rice.”
“Agreed. And I doubt there’s a microwave in here.”
“Nope,” she replied as I rubbed my hands together. “There are a couple fleece jackets hanging on the hook over there.” She pointed to the coatrack in the corner stuffed with all sorts of rain jackets and winter coats.
We sat in Petey’s giant fleece jackets and ate takeout on the creaking floor, surrounded by the light of a dozen candle nubs. The sound of waves lashing against the shore roared outside, the occasional sea spray misting the fogged windows. It was like Dove and I were in another world.
After a satisfying meal, we blew up the air mattress and sat watching the storm through the windows. Peeks of moonlight were starting to appear as the rain died down.
“Sunrise will be beautiful,” Dove mused. “Nothing like a sunrise after a storm.”
I hummed, leaning my shoulder into her as I put my hands in my fleece pockets. There was something crinkly in there, like an old receipt. I ignored it as we kept watching the last flashes of lighting in the sky, but then suddenly, a horrifying realization dawned on me: it wasn’t crinkling under my fingers . . . it was moving .
“Gah!” I exclaimed as I pulled my hand out of my pocket to reveal a wolf spider clinging to my palm.
“What?” Dove screamed as I flung the spider across the room, and we both leapt up onto the cot.
“Ughhhh, it was hairy! Why was it so hairy?!” I shouted as Dove doubled over laughing and clutching her stomach.
“Oh my god, don’t do that,” she managed through fits of laughter. “I thought there was an axe murderer outside or something. It was just a spider.”
“I’d rather an axe murderer. That spider and I were holding hands for like ten minutes before I realized,” I whined, wiping my hands down my shirt, my skin crawling. I unzipped the fleece and flung it across the room as the giant spider disappeared in the cracks in the floorboard.
“It wasn’t trying to hurt you,” she soothed. “It was hiding from the storm.”
I glared at her. “You are entirely too calm about this.”
“We’re in a boat shed,” she said with a jovial shrug. “Of course there’s spiders. Why do you think Crane always wanted to come out here?” She bit her lips together, her shoulders still shaking with restrained laughter. “What would all your adoring fans think about zombie hunter and sword-wielding superhero Deacon Harrow squealing at the sight of a spider?”
“If you told them, I’d deny it,” I warned as I shook my hands out. “I feel like they’re crawling all over me.”
“They’re not.”
My hand shot to the back of my neck as something touched it, and I barked out a cry as I grabbed a fistful of shirt and whipped it off, making Dove laugh even harder.
“There’s nothing on you,” she said, smoothing a warm hand down my bare back. “It was probably just the tag.”
“We’re not all spider people, okay?” I finally laughed along with her as she soothed her arms across my skin.
“I know,” she comforted, kissing my shoulder.
“I should be the one heroically rescuing you from spiders.” I dropped a kiss to her hair.
“You can rescue me from all the other things,” she suggested. “You rescued me from Ivy Blanc. I’d take a spider over her any day.” She kissed across my skin as I laughed. “We’ll take turns on who has to be the brave one. Right now, it’s mine.”
I smiled, turning and pulling her flush against me as her hands continued to rove up and down my sides. “You make me want to be all the best parts of myself,” I murmured.
Her gaze softened, deeper emotions blooming to replace the lighthearted ones. “You make me want to be all the best parts of myself too,” she whispered, dropping her cheek to my chest.
We stood there slowly rocking, the storm our only soundtrack. And I knew this was one of those moments that anyone else would think of as small and inconsequential, but for me, it would forever be on loop in the highlight reel of my life. In that second, I knew for certain the thing I’d wondered when I’d first knocked teeth with her—maybe I’d just found the love of my life. Maybe soulmates were the ones who made us want to be the very best version of ourselves. Even twelve-year-old me had known—this was what love felt like.
When Dove finally released me with a yawn, I slid my hands down her sides. “You should sleep,” I offered. “I will hold vigil against the army of hairy spiders.”
She laughed. “Why don’t you just come to bed too?”
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep tonight knowing those things are creeping around the place,” I admitted.
“Hmm. Maybe I have better ways we can pass the time,” Dove suggested, and suddenly I forgot all about the spiders as she lifted on her tiptoes and kissed me. Any place where Dove Lachlan’s lips were on mine was paradise.