Chapter 7
Holly
The six o'clock crowd fills the Anchor in its usual Wednesday order: Carl and Micky arguing about nothing in their booth, Frank at the far end with his pilsner, two dock workers splitting nachos under the new window glass.
Sal had the pane replaced Monday. The neon catches it different now, cleaner, and I keep noticing, the red from the Scales & Ales sign throwing a sharper line across the bar top like a scar that healed tight.
I pull Frank's pint and set it on a dry napkin and move to the next ticket.
Rex hasn't been in since Monday. He told me Bloodstone scouts had a camera on the Anchor.
Told me to stay close to Sal and Griz. Then he walked out, because Rex Flynn's answer to every problem is a highway and a head start.
I nodded and turned back to the taps. What was I supposed to say?
Stay? Don't go? He'd already decided, and I don't beg.
That's the last time I saw him.
I knew the arrangement when I agreed to it.
Him at my door after midnight, boots on my floor, hands that mapped every inch of me in the dark.
Cold sheets at dawn and the deadbolt locked from the outside.
I told my heart to stay out of it and it didn't listen, and now Rex is gone and I'm pulling pints, pretending the ache under my ribs is just hunger because I skipped lunch.
I pour two Rainiers for the dock workers, restock the garnish trays and wipe down Carl's section.
The work keeps my hands steady. The rest of me is not steady.
The rest of me is furious and hurt and humiliated, I hate all of it because I chose this.
I walked into this arrangement with both eyes open but I fell in love anyway.
And the worst part isn't that he left. The worst part is that he thinks he had a reason and I still can't make it hurt less.
Sal moves behind me reaching for the top shelf, her grey-green arm stretching past my head. She doesn't mention Rex. Four hundred years of tending bar and Sal knows when to pour a drink and when to keep her mouth shut.
At seven fifteen I untie my apron and tell Sal I'm taking my break.
The alley behind the Anchor smells like dumpster, wet asphalt and sea salt from the harbor. I lean against the brick between the fire escape and the recycling bins and pull out my phone.
I don't know why I call her. My thumb scrolls past the contact I saved under Patricia instead of Mom the year I dropped out of Wellesley, and then it scrolls back, then I'm pressing the green button before the rational part of my brain catches up with the homesick part.
Four years since I've heard her voice. Four years since the conversation about cousin Adelaide's wedding, appropriate attire and dates without visible tattoos, both of us hanging up and neither of us trying again.
It rings four times. Five. Six. I'm about to hang up when the line connects and I hear her breathe, that quick inhale of a woman who checked the screen and couldn't believe what she read.
"Holly?"
She says it like a question.
"Hey, Mom."
Silence. A car passes on the street. The dumpster lid clatters in the wind. I press my shoulder blades into the brick and stare at the strip of sky above the hardware store and I don't have a single prepared word for this call.
"I'm—" My voice cracks. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and breathe through it.
"There's this guy. And he just left. And I'm so angry at him, Mom, I'm so angry I can't see straight, and I'm angry at myself because I knew.
I knew he'd leave. I knew what he was when I started this and I did it anyway and now he's gone and I—"
I stop. I'm in a dumpster alley on a Wednesday night telling my estranged mother about a man who left and I don't even know why I called except that I did and now it's too late to hang up.
"I did this to you, Mom. I left. And now he did it to me and I don't know what to do with that."
The silence on the other end stretches so long I pull the phone from my ear to check the screen. The call timer counts. She's still there.
"I'll be there tomorrow."
"What?"
"Holly, I have been a terrible mother." She doesn't cry. My mother has never cried in front of me. But her voice drops and that's the closest Patricia Summers gets. "I've been waiting for this call for four years and I am not going to waste it. Give me the address."
"Mom, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't. Give me the address."
I give her the address. She reads it back in that clipped voice that used to chair school boards and organize every hour of my childhood, and for the first time in four years I don't want to hang up on her.
"I'll text you when I land."
"Okay."
"Holly."
"Yeah?"
"It's good to hear your voice. Even when it's angry. I love you, honey."
I hang up, press the phone against my thigh, close my eyes. I stand in the alley until my break runs out.
Jess texts me at eight. Girls' night. My place. Now.
I text back: Working.
Jess: Sal can handle Wednesday. Get in the car. Sarah's waiting for you out front.
Sarah's SUV idles at the curb when I come out, Reeve asleep in the backseat in his car seat. Sarah doesn't ask how I'm doing. She turns up the radio and drives, and I sit in the passenger seat with my forehead against the cold window and watch the harbor lights blur past.
Jess and Finn's place sits on the edge of town, a two-bedroom with a porch Finn built last summer and a nursery he's been painting for six weeks. Jess meets us at the door in sweatpants and one of Finn's flannel shirts, belly pushing the buttons to their limit.
"Wine's on the counter." She waves us in. "I can't drink it so someone better."
"Nina's on the night shift or she'd be here. She told me to tell you Garrett says Rex is an idiot, for whatever that's worth."
Sarah pours me a glass of red, sets Reeve's carrier on the kitchen table. We end up on Jess's couch with our feet up—all of us, the sleeping baby, a bottle of wine I didn't ask for and need more than I'd admit.
"Okay." Jess tucks a pillow behind her lower back and folds her arms over her belly. "Let's hear it."
"Hear what?"
"Holly. Don't be stupid. You look like hell and Rex is gone and you're going to sit here and tell us what happened or I'm going to keep asking until you do, I'm pregnant and mean and I have nowhere to be."
I take a long drink of wine. It's cheap and it's perfect.
"We slept together. In the stockroom, Monday night. Then he told me Bloodstone scouts had a camera on the bar and his solution was to leave. I haven't heard from him since."
Sarah watches me over her glass. "And?"
"And I'm in love with him, obviously." The words come out flat and tired and I hate how true they are. "I've been in love with him for months and I told myself I wasn't because that's easier, and now he's gone and I feel like an idiot."
"You're not an idiot," Sarah says. "You fell in love with an orc. They'll fight a wildfire for you, take a bullet, tear a man apart with their bare hands. But sit down and tell you what they're feeling? That's the hard part."
Jess snorts. "Finn had Colt set up candles in our apartment and dropped to one knee and his hands shook so hard I thought he'd drop the ring. And he's the romantic one."
"I know why he left," I say. "I just don't understand why leaving is always the answer."
Sarah sets her glass on the coffee table.
"Knox left his clan, his kingdom, his father's war.
He walked away from an arranged marriage, crossed the mountains on foot and built everything he has here from nothing.
They all run, Holly. Every single one of them.
The question isn't why he left. The question is whether he comes back, and what he does when he gets here.
he thinks he protecting you by leaving."
"And if he doesn't come back?"
"Then you'll still be here, and you'll still have this town, and you'll be fine. But I don't think that's how this ends."
"He told me to stay close to Sal and Griz. Like that fixes it."
"Yes." Sarah nods. "And when he gets back, you can kill him for it."
"If he gets back."
Jess adjusts the pillow behind her back. "He'll come back. Finn says Rex has never stayed anywhere longer than a year except Nightfall Cove. He's been here six. That's not a man who's leaving for good."
I finish my wine. Jess pours me another glass without asking and we sit on the couch and talk about nothing and everything—Jess's swollen ankles and the nursery colors she can't decide on.
Sarah's theory that Reeve already has Knox's stubbornness, the fact that Finn burned dinner last night for the fourth time this month and Jess is considering banning him from the stove.
Somewhere between the second glass and Jess's rant about Finn's cooking, the knot behind my ribs loosens.
At ten, Sarah drives me home. I let myself into the apartment above the Anchor, stand in the dark kitchen, press my hands flat on the counter and breathe.
Protect her.
He texted Knox to protect me. I don't know what to do with that.
I didn't tell them about the PCOS. Some things just need to stay mine.
Thursday night. Tyler comes into the Anchor at nine.
He looks different tonight and it takes me a second to figure out why—no notebook, no pen behind his ear, no stack of printouts stuffed into his bag.
"I'm heading out tomorrow." He takes the Elijah Craig I pour him. "Article's done. Flight out of Portland at noon."
"Did you get what you came for?"
"The article, yes. The girl behind the bar, no." He says it with a half smile. "I had a good time with you, Holly. I want you to know that. Even when I could tell your mind wasn't always with me."
I don't know what to say to that so I dry the glass in my hand and let him keep talking.
"It's Rex, isn't it?" He looks at me straight on. "I watched you two in the same room once and that told me everything I needed to know. He looks at you like you're the only thing in the room and the door's on fire. I hope he figures it out."
He finishes his bourbon and leaves a fifty under the glass. I start to push it back and he puts his hand over mine for half a second.
"Keep it. Buy yourself a frame for all those photos you take."
He sets a business card on the bar. Tyler Briggs. Pacific Northwest Monthly.
"If you want those photographs published, call me."
"Goodbye for now, Holly."
"Bye, Tyler."
The door closes behind him. I pick up the card, turn it once, and slide it into the register drawer behind the rubber bands and the spare pens.
I wipe down his spot and drop his glass in the sink and stand behind the bar for a long minute, looking at the walls.
The neon signs. The dart board. The framed photo of Sal behind the taps in 1973 that nobody believes is from 1973 because she looks the same.
Bare wall space between all of it—patches of dark wood where nothing hangs and the grain shows through.
Gerald's nursing his usual coffee at the far end, watching Griz walk Gene Tillman to the door. Gene's three sheets to the wind and Griz has a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the cab Sal called ten minutes ago. Gentle. Patient. Like walking a kid across the street.
"That gargoyle's more reliable than half the humans in this town," Gerald mutters into his mug. He doesn't look at me when he says it, but he says it loud enough for me to hear.
"Sal."
She glances up from the register.
"What would you say if I wanted to hang some of my photographs in here? A show. Just prints, framed, on the walls between the signs. The harbor stuff, the Toy Run, the town."
Sal studies me for a long moment. Her face gives nothing away. Then she reaches under the bar and pulls out a hammer and sets it on the wood between us.
"I'd say measure twice."
Upstairs after close, I open my laptop and create a new folder.
NIGHTFALL COVE SHOW. I start dragging files.
The harbor at dawn. The fishermen. Griz in the Anchor's doorway bathed in red neon.
The orc family at Morretti's. Colt and Lily at the Toy Run.
The Humans First pamphlet framed against scuffed bar wood.
A show in my bar, in my town, on my terms.
I set my alarm for four thirty. The harbor light at dawn only lasts about twenty minutes and I need to be on the pier when it hits.