Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
The day before the plunge dawned grey and bitter, and Ryker had been on the south shore since before sunrise rigging safety lines.
The water was still calm. He'd checked it many times, standing at the edge with his senses wide open, listening for any sign of the hum of siren magic beneath the surf. So far he’d picked up nothing.
The deal Willow had made was working. The creature was holding up her end.
The water in the cove lay flat and cold and ordinary.
Just a typical winter ocean that would make a tourist gasp and a wolf shrug.
He was hauling vendor tent frames from the flatbed when she appeared on the beach path next to him, clipboard in hand, his jacket zipped to her chin. She'd rolled the sleeves twice and they still hung past her wrists. His wolf noticed it too, but stayed silent.
"The hot chocolate vendor's in the wrong spot again.
" She was talking to him like he was anyone.
Like nothing between them was different from any other festival co-chair sorting logistics on a tight timeline.
"I've moved him four times and he keeps drifting back to the same corner because the wind break is better. "
"So let him have the corner."
"He can't have the corner. The corner is where the medical tent goes."
"Move the medical tent."
"You want me to move the medical tent so Gary can sell cocoa in his preferred wind shadow?"
"You’re right. Gary's cocoa is terrible. Move them both and give that prime spot to someone better."
Her mouth did something it hadn't done in his direction in a long time. It curved. Not a full smile, not even close, but the ghost of one, a reflex she hadn't managed to kill before it reached her face. She caught it, pressed her lips flat, and looked down at her clipboard.
He let the moment exist without chasing it, and just went back to hauling tent frames.
They worked the next two hours in close proximity.
She'd been at the registration table and he'd been twenty feet away checking the safety rope anchors.
She'd moved to the food vendor row and he'd ended up at the equipment station in the adjacent tent.
Neither of them was doing it on purpose.
Or maybe both of them were. He couldn't tell and he didn't care.
"Your barrier spacing is off." She was behind him, close enough that he caught lavender and honey under the salt wind. "The gap between stations three and four is six feet wider than the rest."
He looked behind him. She was right. "Control issues," he said without turning around.
"Nope. It’s called attention to detail."
He scoffed. "Same thing, different branding."
She laughed. Short, surprised, like it escaped before she could catch it.
The sound hit him somewhere behind his sternum and he had to keep his hands busy with the barrier stakes so they wouldn't reach for her and pull her to him. Because honestly, that’s all he could think about.
That, and kissing her. Those thoughts were running through his head constantly and it was becoming a problem.
When he glanced back, she was already walking away. But her shoulders had lost the rigid set they'd carried for too long. And she was still wearing his jacket.
A smile crossed his face.
He finished the safety perimeter by noon, double-checked the crowd flow markers, and left the beach setup to the volunteers. The final push before tomorrow was in full swing, but he had something to do first.
The walk to the witches' cabin took fifteen minutes. He'd made it a hundred times on security patrols, knew every rut in the path, every place where the sea grass thinned and the scrub pines gave way to open cliff. When he got there he didn’t even get the chance to knock on the door.
Sage opened it. She stood there giving him a sharp eye, and that look probably would have taken down any other man. But he was on a mission.
"You have a lot of nerve showing up here."
"I know." He didn't try to come inside, just kept his hands at his sides where she could see them. "I came to apologize to all of you."
Movement stirred behind Sage as the other three appeared. Neve first, then Esme, then Hazel, the four of them arranging themselves in the doorway like a wall. They weren't going to make this easy.
"The pack meeting where I presented evidence against Willow.
" He held Sage's gaze. "I almost took your home because I was too much of a coward to face my own damage.
I painted targets on your backs with the pack, and I made all of you afraid.
" The words he had to say tasted bitter, but he said them anyway.
"You followed Willow here because she promised you'd be safe.
I tried to take that away, and I'm sorry. Not just to Willow. To all of you."
Sage didn't blink. Her arms stayed crossed, her expression flat, and he could see her weighing the apology against the weeks of fear and suspicion and the very real possibility that she and these women could have been thrown off the island because of him.
"Words are cheap." Her voice was steady but her jaw was tight. "You almost got us exiled and we had nowhere else to go."
"I know. And I can't undo what I did. I can only tell you it won't happen again, and then spend however long it takes proving that's true."
No one spoke from the doorway. He stood in the weight of their silence and let it press down on him.
Neve spoke up first. Quiet, almost reluctant, like she wasn't sure she wanted to give him this. "You helped me at the festival. I did appreciate that."
"That doesn't make up for what I did."
"No. It doesn't." But something shifted in her face, the wariness cracking enough to let something else through. She glanced at Sage, then back at him. "She's in her room."
Esme hadn't spoken. She was watching him the way a woman watched a man she hadn't decided to trust yet, still and assessing and giving nothing away. Hazel just shook her head and stepped aside.
Sage held the door for another beat, making him feel the weight of it. Then she moved. Not far, but just enough.
He thanked them and made his way to the back of the cabin.
It was warm inside. They had the wood stove going with the smell of something sweet baking and dried herbs and something floral that was probably Esme's.
There were coats hung on a rack, boots lined up on a mat underneath, and a stack of library books on the kitchen table.
It looked lived-in. It looked like a home these women had built out of nothing, and he'd almost taken it away from them.
Seeing them like this humbled him.
Willow's door was open a crack. He knocked on the frame.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed with her grandmother's recipe book open in her lap, a pen tucked behind her ear, notes scrawled on her forearm in blue ink.
She looked up when he knocked and he watched her decide whether to tell him to leave.
The calculation played out behind her brown eyes, quick and thorough, and whatever conclusion she reached, she didn't voice it. She just waited.
"Can I come in?"
She nodded. He strode forward and sat on the floor with his back against the wall, legs stretched in front of him, positioning himself below her on purpose so she had the high ground.
The room was small enough that the scent of her filled every corner of it, reminding him of their one night together.
His wolf pressed against his ribs so hard his hands curled into fists against his thighs. He kept them there.
His jacket was draped over the back of her desk chair. He took it as a good sign she hadn't discarded it or shoved it in a corner. She'd hung it up like it belonged there.
"The public apology was for the pack." He looked at the floor between his boots. Then up at her. "This one's for you."
She closed the recipe book but kept it in her lap, fingers resting on the worn cover.
The lamplight caught the pen marks on her forearm and the faint shadows under her eyes.
But it was the spot where her sweater had slipped off one shoulder, baring the line of her collarbone, that snagged his attention.
He looked away before his body could do something his mouth would have to apologize for.
"That night here in your cabin was the first time I felt anything real in years.
" His voice came out shredded. "And I don't mean the bond or the wolf.
I mean me. Just me, the man, lying there with you, and I could feel pieces of myself waking up that I thought were dead, and afterwards in the light of day it scared me so much I couldn't breathe.
" He took a breath. "So I clung to the one thing I knew would hurt you, and I used it.
Because the alternative was admitting I'd fallen for someone and I might get destroyed again. "
"And the meeting?" She said it flat, a prompt rather than a question.
"I watched your face when you realized what I was doing. I saw the moment it hit you." He stopped. The next sentence wouldn’t come, the words tangling somewhere between his chest and his throat. She waited. Patient and unforgiving, the way the ocean was patient with rocks.
"I kept going," he said. "I saw your face and I kept going. I told myself it was for the pack but it wasn't. It was for me. I was terrified of you, Willow. Of what you made me feel. So I stood up in front of everyone and I—"
He ran out of air. He hit a wall, the words stopping dead, and he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathed. His wolf was howling inside him, thin and wretched, like his throat had closed to a pinhole.
"I tried to make you the enemy," he managed. "Because that was easier than admitting I was in love with you."
The room went still.