4. Corvan
Chapter four
Corvan
W hy is it so goddamn hard to be normal?
I’m not used to having to hide who—what—I am from anyone anymore. I’ve been alone too long. It’s easy to forget that I’m not supposed to be a shifter. That I’m not supposed to be able to sprout fucking wings and fly away from nearly a five hundred feet of open air.
But Eliza makes it easy to forget that I am not allowed to be me . Not completely, anyway. She makes it easy to forget the reasons I have boundaries, walls. The reason why I was trying to avoid her.
My secrets would sound so beautiful being whispered in her ear. Repeated on her gentle lips.
It’s what would come after those secrets that I’m trying to avoid. The fear, the mistrust, the running away. I’ve dealt with it before, when Jade decided my secret was worth a hundred thousand dollars and our love was worth nothing.
It almost ruined me. My business. My everything . It’s the reason I took a step back from everything, hoping that if people could forget that I was the founder, the CEO, my business wouldn’t sink like my reputation did. And it worked. For years now, I’ve been keeping my distance from people in hopes that they’ll forget I even existed.
And it seems to have worked. Eliza doesn’t know who I am, and neither does anyone else I’ve run into on the boat. No one that I’ve come in contact with, anyway, which I can’t say is very many if I’m being honest.
Hell, getting back out there, seeing if I can gently work my way back into the world and not risk everything once again, is the reason I’m here. This is my test pool. A controlled environment with a limited number of people.
And it’s given me hope. A dangerous thing to have, no doubt, but something that has been growing inside of me since I helped Eliza off the deck after her fall, and she looked into my eyes and had no clue who I was.
I might be safe. I might be a nobody now, and I might have a chance to rebuild my reputation and make them forget every harsh word Jade had printed about me.
Several hours after the hike—where I watched Eliza try to nonchalantly walk off a cliff—it’s time for dinner. She's agreed to meet me outside of my room, still unwilling to tell me where hers is. Though I think that might be more about principle at this point than it is about her not trusting me with it.
She’s stubborn. Doesn’t give in easily.
I hate how much I like that.
I’m freshly showered after the humid heat of the hike and have changed into a nice pair of black pants and a plain white tee that's way more expensive than it should be. My hair is still damp when the knock I’ve been waiting for, even as I tried to get myself to chill the fuck out and have a little patience, sounds at the door.
I pull it open two heartbeats later. Not really playing it cool, I know, but I don’t give two shits about that. She’s only supposed to be in my life for a week. It shouldn’t matter if she thinks I’m a clingy bastard or not.
And yet.
I take a moment to process everything that is Eliza in this moment. Sunkissed long legs beneath a floral sundress. Simple woven sandals. A polite, almost nervous, smile and her hair pulled back in a messy bun that somehow manages to look perfectly done. Isn’t the purpose of them to look like shit? If so, why does it look so damn good on her, with tendrils of soft brown hair framing her face?
Her skin is still glowing with the warmth of time spent in the sun, and by looking at her, I wouldn’t ever have imagined that she had a near-death experience just a handful of hours ago. Or that she laughed about it a few moments later.
“Hello,” Eliza says softly, giving me the most gentle of smiles. I wonder if she’s expecting me to reject her again. And I don’t really blame her for thinking that, either. I saw her last night, then made an attempt to ignore her the next time I saw her. Then I saw her again.
She expects another shoe to drop. I need to show her that I’m serious about this… cruise-ship friendship.
Not at all a confusing topic.
“Hello, Eliza,” I reply, fighting the urge to trail my eyes over her body. To imagine it undressed. Beneath my hands. On top of my bed. Under my body.
Fucking stop . I bite down on my tongue as I smile at her, physically punishing myself for thinking about her like that. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. This is a week-long thing. Fucking it up and making it more complicated with sex wouldn’t be a great idea. Or even a good one. Or even a mediocre one.
Point is, that would be the worst thing I could possibly do to myself. I already like her too—
The thought strikes me too quickly to completely ignore. But ignoring it wouldn’t change the facts—I do like her, don’t I? She’s funny and stubborn and sometimes even hot-tempered. And kind, and beautiful, and smart. And so far out of my league that it’s almost laughable. But it’s been so long since I’ve liked anyone—in any capacity—that I just want to sink into the feeling. I want to absorb it, drown in it.
And hell, maybe I will. Who is it going to hurt but me?
We’re seated with two couples at a round wooden table, our plates stacked with food and glasses filled with wine.
Eliza’s body is a warm, secure weight beside mine. Which is something I desperately fucking need and heavily rely on when the guy across from me, who introduced himself as Ryker, tilts his head at me and asks, “Am I crazy, or do you look familiar?”
His fiance, Sylvie, narrows her eyes at me, studying, before shrugging and saying. “You do look a little familiar.”
I’m more rigid than I’ve ever been in my life, but trying not to show it.
And I know that Eliza notices. I know because she clasps a gentle hand over mine under the table, soothes it with her thumb once, and says, “It’s probably just because he looks like the kind of person who would be a celebrity.”
A giggle from Sylvie. “The ones that are so good-looking they become models.”
Ryker gapes at her, but there’s a grin hiding under his wide-mouthed expression. “ I’m the one who’s going to marry you, Syl. And you’ve never once said I looked like a model.”
“Oh, come on,” Sylvie says, a wide grin on her face. “You’re hot. You know that.”
He winks. “Yeah, alright. I do.”
Eliza laughs and gazes up at me. I don’t try to hide the gratitude that is probably shining in my eyes. She single-handedly diffused the topic. Turned it into something else. Because she saw how uncomfortable I was.
Hope fills me again, but it’s different this time.
I’m hoping like hell she doesn’t ask me about this later.
The other couple, Elena and Alex, spend most of the dinner murmuring to each other. They contribute to the conversation when questions are asked, where they briefly turn their heads toward us, answer thoroughly and ask another question, listen, and then duck back toward each other to keep whispering and giggling and talking.
At one point, Sylvie asks them, “Where did you two meet?”
Elena answers, “Well, we met a while ago, in our hometown. And then we lost touch for a little longer. But I always carried a torch for him, you know?”
Alex nods his agreement. “Same here,” he says. “She was always the one who got away.” A pause. “Until she wasn’t. ”
Elena smiles fondly at him. “We… reunited, I guess you could say, here.”
At this, Sylvie’s jaw drops and she slaps a hand over Ryker’s. “You’re shitting me. Like, on the boat?”
Elena nods. “Seriously,” she says. “We’ve been getting to know each other as the people we are now.”
“Forgive me if I make things overbearingly awkward,” Sylvie says, one hand braced under her chin, “But that’s quite possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“And you guys?” Elena asks. “Where’d you meet?””
“At a bed-and-breakfast, actually,” Sylvie says, smiling over at Ryker. “We got stuck in the same room together. Got to know each other pretty well, pretty fast, I’d say.”
“You just got locked in together? And didn’t want to kill each other at the end of it all?”
Sylvie leans back in her seat and shrugs, smiling broadly now. “Let’s just say it was a… magical experience. We didn’t have much time for hating. But love is a lot easier to foster.”
That smile softens with fondness when she looks at Ryker. Then she looks back at Elena and Alex. “You two seem to share a similar… lifestyle to Ryker’s. He’s too shy to ask himself, but has been dying with curiosity: what—” her eyes flicked to mine, a knowing look in them, and then Eliza’s, seeming to weigh her words as she studied her before turning her gaze back to the pale blonde girl, “ —is your spirit animal?”
Alex chokes out a laugh. Elena manages a blush.
Alex says, “Elena and I identify with bears.”
I realize, then, exactly what they’re saying here without saying it. They’re shifters . And it sounds like Ryker is, too. That explains the energy I’ve been feeling at the table since we’ve sat down. I haven’t been around many strange shifters lately though, so I must be out of practice sensing them. I wouldn’t guess Sylvie to be one, given how she worded it, but she does seem like she’s something not-quite-human. It’s more a feeling than it is anything else. More about the way she holds herself.
“Interesting,” Ryker murmurs.
Eliza laughs lightly and says, “You both identify with bears? I mean him I get.” She gestures to the giant of a man sitting beside the smaller, lean Elena. “But you?”
“It’s my spirit,” she says simply, a barely suppressed smile on her lips.
“What about you, Corey?” Sylvie cuts in, probably to keep Eliza from pressing. Eliza, who appears to be the only damned human at this table.
“What do you mean?” I say stiffly.
“Oh, you can trust us. We won’t say anything. To anyone ,” she emphasizes, eyes flicking to Eliza once more.
Eliza, who looks up at me, mildly confused. “I feel like I’m missing something here.”
“You’re not,” I lie. “Just… what’s your spirit animal?” I deflect.
She laughs and thinks. “Hm. I’d probably be a bird, if I could. I’d give anything to be able to fly.”
“Good pick.” Ryker nods enthusiastically. “Having wings would be fucking awesome. I wish I had wings.”
“Right? I’d be the best damn bird in the world,” Eliza says, grinning. “There was this one time, when I was heading to work—it was my first day, actually—and I hadn’t had time to pack a lunch, so I drove to the nearest gas station and bought one of their prepackaged sandwiches. I left it open, sitting in my passenger seat while I took a drink, and this damned bird—a raven, I think—swept in and took it. The whole sandwich. I’d had, like, maybe a bite of it.” She snorts, then mutters, “Little thief.”
After a moment, she adds, “Anyway, I wouldn’t be that kind of assholey bird, though.”
Sylvie and Ryker laugh. “Funny shit, though,” Ryker says.
Yeah. How fucking hilarious.