Chapter 19
ADELAIDE
Shark!
The word comes out of me as a half scream, half wail as I shove myself out of the water.
The mask gets yanked off my face by a hand I’m pretty sure is mine, and I feel myself doing every single thing the documentaries say not to do.
Splashing. Panicking. Thrashing like a wounded fish, which is the vibe I’m currently projecting into the ocean.
Absolute marketing for predators.
And I know better, as I surf, but I’ve never had one bump into me like that, and now I’m shaking.
“Adelaide, are you okay?” North is beside me, very close, already upright on the sandbank, the water at his thighs.
“There’s a shark here, and it just bumped into me,” I announce, because I need him to fully understand the situation. “An actual shark, North. Not a turtle. It was gray and had teeth, and it was right close to my face—”
“I spotted it earlier,” he says, perfectly calm. His voice is the opposite of mine. “Whitetip reef shark. Small one. He was just passing through.”
“I doubt it. He bumped into me hard. They do that when they test things they are going to bite into.”
He’s smiling. “He’s probably already gone.”
“Nope, he’s here for a meal. They test out first. I’ve watched documentaries—”
“He wasn’t going to eat anyone.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you, but seriously, this one is hungry.” I’m rubbing my side where it knocked into me.
“Because we’re not in his food group.” He reaches out and catches my elbow. “Come on, we can head back to the boat.”
The boat isn’t close. The boat is a swim away, across a stretch where I know for a fact that the water gets deeper than knee-height and therefore becomes Shark Country, and I shake my head fast.
“What if he’s there, waiting in the deep blue section by the boat?” I ask, frantically glancing around for any dark shapes in the water.
“Okay, then.” He crouches down with his back to me. “Jump on,” he says.
“I’m not—”
“You are going to splash the whole way back, and I’d like to keep the rest of the reef ecosystem alive, so yes, on my back. Now.”
“I—” I look at the water around us. The possibility of fins. “Okay, fine, but this is embarrassing.”
“I promise to mock you extensively later.”
“Thank you,” I say sarcastically.
I climb awkwardly onto his back, arms around his neck, legs hooking around his waist, where his hands catch the backs of my knees to hold me there.
He stands up with no strain at all, which is insulting, and I tighten my grip around his neck because my current relationship with gravity feels uncertain.
“You are the softest Alpha I have ever met in my life,” I say against his ear.
“Says the woman who screamed at a shark that was thirty feet away.”
“It was really close.”
He chuckles and starts walking toward the edge of the sandbank.
Where it ends, the water gets deeper, bluer, and he just keeps walking, the water reaching his ribs and then his chest. Then he’s swimming, steady strokes, with me plastered to his back like the world’s tensest barnacle.
My head is out of the water, and I’m doing my best to scan all four directions at once.
“Are you laughing?” I ask, feeling him shaking under me.
“No.”
“Your shoulders are laughing.”
“Keep scanning for sharks,” he insists. “That part is very helpful.”
“And when I spot one before it attacks, you’ll be thankful.”
“That, I can accept.”
His hair is wet against my cheek. The back of his neck is warm from the sun, and the whole situation is, beneath the terror, the most absurdly lovely piggyback ride I have ever received.
I tell my heart to calm down for reasons unrelated to the shark.
His body is huge against mine, and I love being attached to him.
We reach the boat, and I scramble up the ladder so fast I nearly catch my knee on the side. Then I’m on the deck, dripping, grabbing my towel, and wrapping it around myself like armor. North comes up behind me with the easy movements of someone who has done this thousands of times.
“There he is,” I say, pointing at the water off the stern. “He was following us.”
A small gray shape is cutting through the blue below, a thin line of white along the fins catching the light. Just moving past the boat.
“He was heading in this direction anyway.”
I bark out a fake laugh. “North, that shark smelled food.”
“He’s approximately the length of your leg, and he is swimming past our boat because he likes this stretch of reef.”
The shark, as if on cue, curves and moves back toward the coral without any apparent interest in us whatsoever. I stand there gripping my towel and watching until it disappears into the dark blue.
Then I start laughing at how crazy I’d been behaving over a freaking small shark. I need to stop watching those B-grade shark movies.
“That’s hero work there, by the way,” I say. “You didn’t even hesitate to carry me to safety. And I felt like a sea otter.”
“A sea otter?” he gasps.
“They carry their babies on their chests. I know it wasn’t anatomically accurate. I was in distress, so I used the first ocean mammal that came to mind—”
“You’ve promoted me from Alpha to sea otter.”
“You’ve earned it.” I grin at him.
He shakes his head, smiling now, and turns toward the small barbecue mounted on the side of the boat.
“This sea otter,” he says, “is going to make you lunch before you come up with more metaphors. I have some fresh mahi-mahi fish.”
“Oh, delicious. Yes, please. What can I do to help?”
“Just relax.”
So I crash down onto the cushioned bench running along the other side of the boat and pull my knees up. “You’re dangerous. You can’t just be a competent, ocean-rescuing man who also plans a full lunch.”
He glances over. “Why not?”
“Because people like me have limits, and you’re testing every single one of mine.”
He laughs, standing there in nothing but his shorts, water still sliding down his back in slow trails.
Heat curls low and deep through me from just staring at him.
It would be easier if he were less capable or absurdly male.
Instead, he looks like every dangerous thought I’ve had about him since meeting him.
And worse than that is the feeling underneath it. Wanting not just him but everything he offers. The terrifying little ache of imagining what it would be like if he were mine for real, not for a day, not for a moment, but long enough to stop bracing for the end of it.
He works at the grill as I dry off slowly in the sun, the boat rocking gently under us.
He pulls a glass container of marinated fish from the cooler.
Then a lime, which he halves. A small plastic tub of salad is next, which he must have made this morning while I was sleeping. Flatbread wrapped in foil.
The other two boats that had been on the far side of the sandbank are gone now, engines fading somewhere past the horizon. It’s only us out here, rocking on the boat, the low, rhythmic hiss of fish meeting the hot grill, and the occasional cry of a bird somewhere very far up.
“Why are you so scared of sharks?” he asks, turning the fish. “Was there an incident? Surfing?”
I pick at a loose thread on my towel. “No. I just… I watched too many documentaries growing up, and I guess—” I stop.
“I always kind of assume any good thing I have is going to be taken away at some point. So when I was under there watching the fish and feeling happy, part of me was waiting for the bad thing. When the shark showed up, my body said, There it is, of course, knew it was coming.”
He turns the fish without looking at me directly. I appreciate that. He’s giving me room to say the thing without making it a staring contest.
“That’s a hard way to move through the world,” he says after a moment.
“At least you don’t get disappointed if you’re already expecting it.”
“It’s still hard.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, too fast. “I know.”
He puts together a wrap for me and hands it over on a small plate with a paper napkin, then sits beside me on the cushioned bench with his meal.
“We’re going to change that,” he says simply.
I glance up at him. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes.” He holds my attention. “Every time you’re scared, I’m going to be there.
When something good happens and you start waiting for the shark, I’m going to be there too.
Same with Ace and Luca. We’ll keep showing up until your body learns that the good thing doesn’t always come with a price.
” He picks up his own wrap. “You belong with us. I need you to start letting yourself believe that.”
Everything in my chest squeezes so tight that it’s suddenly hard to swallow the bite I’ve taken. I make myself chew slowly as I stare out at the water so he can’t see my face.
“North,” I say, when I finally can. “A scent match doesn’t just make family. Biology doesn’t automatically fix anything. Sometimes the people who are biological family members don’t even get that part right.”
“As I told you before. My parents didn’t love me, and I accepted that a long time ago.
What I feel around you isn’t that. This is the first thing I’ve ever trusted to be real without second-guessing my feelings.
And I’m going to show you, however long it takes, that this is the real thing.
” He takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. “You don’t have to be alone again.
You have a pack now, whether you’re ready to use that word or not. ”
I sit very still. The water stretches out in front of us.
The fish wrap is warm in my hand, and I’m slightly shaking.
Please, I think at the universe, at the sky, at whatever is listening.
Please don’t take this away from me. Please do not let me find out that this is the kind of good thing you collect back.
“I would love that,” I whisper. “Genuinely.”
He bumps his knee against mine, and it’s such a small thing, so unceremonial, that I have to blink fast at the horizon for a second.