Chapter 13 #3
But tonight, with that single word filling the air, she could almost feel the quilt’s weight again, the stitched stars warming under her fingers, calling her home.
Bailee felt it building in her chest, pressure and release, like breath fighting to escape. The word rose inside her, carried by the pulse of Bear’s chant and Than’s hauntingly beautiful voice.
She didn’t mean to open her mouth, but the sound came anyway, low, raw, the old language breaking free like it had been waiting like a held breath for years.
The tones were high and low, a bit discordant at first, filled with regret, with pain, with failure, then they evened out, deepened in respect and connection.
Her cadence called to the wind and the trees, to the air and the storm, to the seen and unseen, to the land beneath her feet.
Her voice reached like a hand out-flung, not in desperation, but choice, for her grandmother, for her people, for everything she'd shunned. Her chest filled with her call, and as her grandmother gently reminded, she called to her, to her roots, to home. As if answering, her grandmother’s voice rose inside her, forgiving and certain.
Come home, my girl. We hear your call. Come back to where you belong.
Her voice joined theirs, weaving through Than’s melody and Bear’s rhythm until the room felt alive with it, the old and the new, the land and the people, every heartbeat part of the same song.
The air shimmered with it. Fly blinked, his mouth parting. Shamrock wiped at his eyes without a word.
Bailee…she didn’t fight it. For the first time since she was a girl, she let the voice of her ancestors move through her, unfiltered and free.
One breath, one heartbeat,
the circle never breaks.
In the stillness between thunder and dawn,
we remember who we are.
Balance walks beside us,
not peace but belonging.
What we take, we give.
What we break, we mend.
This is Wolakota.
Not peace, but belonging.
Not silence, but balance.
We walk the same road,
side by side.
His voice was clear, young, full of something older than he was. When he finished, no one moved. The last chord hummed in the air, blending with the sound of the sea beyond the windows.
Bailee blinked hard, her throat tight. The word Wolakota echoed inside her chest: balance, harmony, the place where you belong.
Maybe she’d been searching for it her whole life, and it had been waiting here, in the laughter of these men, in Bear’s quiet strength, in the song of a boy who carried the same blood she did.
For the first time in a long time, she felt homesick, not for a place, but for the rhythm of people who knew her language before she had to translate it.
There was no fear in it, and that made her chest seize, and even as the song ended, she covered her eyes, her body yearning, her heart feeling a connection like no other, like everything was alive around her.
Tears, hot and uncontrollable, massed and pushed against her lids.
A soft sob escaped, and before she could even reach for Bear.
He was there, pulling her against him, holding her in a tight embrace, and everything just melded together into home, breath, heart in his arms.
The boys quietly left the room, and she let her tears fall, soaking into his striking dark skin, as if her tears were rain and his soil, and something grew between them, intertwining like branches, lifeblood, soul.
He murmured in Lakota, the sound low and steady against her hair, words that didn’t need translating. She felt them more than heard them, a promise, a vow, sanctuary. She didn’t know how much she needed it until just this moment.
Hating to leave Bailee, even for a moment, Bear drove Fly back to his car at the beach. The kid was good enough to take Shamrock with him, and dropping Than off at Sleeping Wind saved Bear the round trip.
Fly leaned against the open door, still grinning, still a little dazed. “That was an experience I’ll never forget. Makes me homesick for Texas and the ranch. I just want to go home and hug my grandparents until my spirit settles.”
Shamrock nodded, scuffing the sand. “Aye, made me miss my sister like hell and even my brothers. Thanks for that, by the way. Siblings are usually relegated to annoying, and now I’m all weepy like an idgit.”
Than barked out a laugh. “We’ll try to keep it to ourselves. Pinky swear?”
Shamrock shoved him, but his grin was pure warmth. “Too late. I’ll have to punch someone just to recover.”
Fly straightened, hands tightening. “Don’t look at me. I’ve been ready to punch your lights out for those chips, anyway.”
“And three kinds of dip,” Shamrock grinned, eyes dancing.
“Goddammit, Kavanagh,” Fly shot back, half-laughing.
Shamrock chuckled, then jabbed a finger at Than. “Man, if this SEAL thing doesn’t work out, you could make a living with that voice.”
Than ducked his head, embarrassed and proud at once. “Maybe, Sham. But as long as I’m breathing, this is what I’m doing.”
Shamrock pushed off the fender and grinned. “So, aye, we’re all crazy bastards. Cheers.”
Bear shook hands all around, the kind of easy, wordless farewell that lived between men who’d been through something deeper than a meal together.
Bear headed back toward Bailee’s street, headlights carving through the dark.
He kept seeing her face during the song, the way the word Wolakota had gone through her like breath. Whatever had stirred her out there had stirred him, too. The song had lit something in him, a need for voice, for his to matter inside that same harmony.
He wanted to hear her speak it again, to know what she’d felt. He wanted her, the woman who’d slipped so deep under his skin that the craving for her felt like thirst, and only she could quench it.
When he opened the door, the house was dim, shadows pooling along the hallway.
He followed the quiet to the bedroom.
She stood by the window in something light and lacy, her skin a dark contrast against the pale fabric, smooth and touchable in the faint glow. He crossed the room, and she accepted the weight of him against her back without a word.
“Tell me what happened out there in the living room,” he murmured.
She leaned back into him. “I was called home,” she whispered. “I answered.”
The words poured out of her then, low and even. “I come from a long line of medicine women, centuries back. It was supposed to be my calling, but I never heard the ancestors.”
His arms tightened around her, and he said nothing, waiting.
“The longer the silence, the harder it got,” she continued, voice unsteady. “The disappointment grew in my grandmother, in my people, in myself. I was a Lakota promise, a savage daughter, but I was never called. So I left. I left everything and everyone, and I’ve never been back.”
“This was your fear? Telling me this?” he asked, his voice low, careful.
She nodded, then turned in his arms, so their faces were inches apart.
“Yes. I was scared you’d judge me.” Her hand found his chest, fingers small and sure.
“But, Dakota, I was so wrong about you. So wrong. I’m falling for you, and that used to terrify me more than anything.
This…this requires honesty, trust. I’m still a mess.
I’m still trying to find my way. Going home terrifies me, even as it thrums in my bones.
” Her breath hitched. “Just hold me for a while. I need you.”
He released a hard breath, his chest tight with something sharp and tender.
Her words echoed her voice, Ayla’s, soft, uncertain, so many years ago.
She’d said nearly the same thing before she was taken.
That she wanted more than the reservation could give her, that she was scared to leave, that she needed him to hold her, to promise not to judge.
“Judgment comes easy, Bailee,” he said quietly. “Compassion doesn’t. Not everyone who judges us offers mercy with it. But I’m not here to judge you. Holding you? I can’t think of another thing I would rather do.”
She smiled, a small, stunned thing, and buried her face against his shoulder.
He held her like he could stitch the breaks together, not because he could fix everything, but because he would stand in the breach with her.
He lifted her carefully, set her on the bed, then stripped down and crawled in beside her, their bodies warm and familiar in the dim room.
She curled against him, and he felt the steady press of her head against his chest. He let the silence say what words couldn’t.
His thumbs traced the line of her wrist brace, then the slope of her shoulder.
His heart tightened for what had been taken from others he loved—Ayla’s missing laugh, the hollow that never quite filled—and it turned fierce at the thought of losing Bailee.
Bailee’s breathing evened against his chest, and he toyed with her hair as his body relaxed into the rhythm of her breathing.
His heart ached for her and for Ayla, for the sister the world had stolen, for the woman who might still be out there somewhere, alive, suffering, waiting.
A torment that never faded. He wished he could see her again, talk to her, and have the chance to hold her against all that she had endured. But the world had swallowed her.
He was going to make sure that didn't happen to Bailee.