Chapter Eleven
Something was wrong.
Tess felt it the moment she stepped onto the loading dock—a heaviness in the air, a weight that hadn't been there the night before.
Lakeshore sat in his usual spot, back against the wall, but the stillness around him was different.
Darker. Like the shadows had crawled inside him and made themselves at home.
"Hey."
He didn't answer. Didn't look up. Just kept staring east toward a lake he couldn't see, lost somewhere she couldn't follow.
She sat down beside him anyway.
The concrete was cold through her jeans, the April night sharp enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. She should have grabbed a jacket—his jacket, still draped over the back of the couch where she'd left it that morning.
But she'd seen him slip out the side door while the compound settled into sleep, and something had told her not to wait.
"Bad night?" she asked quietly.
A long pause. Then: "Some nights are worse than others."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
She waited. Let the silence stretch between them, patient as the lake itself. Her father had been the same way—closed off when the darkness came, unable to find words for whatever lived inside his head. Pushing never helped. You just had to sit with them until they were ready.
"There was a family," Lakeshore said finally. His voice came out rough, scraped raw. "Father, mother, two kids. Their boat went down off North Point in a November storm. Water temp was thirty-eight degrees."
Tess's chest tightened. She didn't move, didn't speak, just listened.
"We got the call at three a.m. Conditions were shit—twenty-foot swells, wind gusting to forty. The kind of weather that makes rescue damn near impossible." He paused, jaw working. "We went anyway. That's what you do."
"Did you find them?"
"Found the boat first. What was left of it. Debris field stretched half a mile." His hands curled into fists against his thighs. "The mother was holding onto a cooler. Still alive when we pulled her out—barely. Hypothermic, confused, kept asking about her babies."
Tess felt tears prick her eyes. "The kids?"
"We searched for six hours. Water that cold, you've got maybe fifteen minutes before your body shuts down. We found them at dawn." He stopped. Swallowed. "They were holding hands."
The words landed like stones in still water, rippling outward until Tess felt them in her bones.
"I carried them out of the water," he continued, quieter now. "Both of them. Couldn't have been more than six and eight years old. Their mother was screaming on the rescue boat—screaming their names, screaming for God, screaming for anyone who would listen."
"Tyler."
His head turned at the sound of his real name. In the darkness, his eyes were wet.
"I dream about them," he said. "That family. Dozens of others. The ones I couldn't get to in time, the ones who slipped under before I could reach them. They're all still in here." He tapped his temple. "Every single one."
Tess reached for his hand. His fingers were ice-cold, clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white. She worked them open gently, threading her fingers through his until she could feel his pulse racing against her palm.
"That's why you left," she said. "The Coast Guard."
"I left because the faces started outnumbering the living.
Because I couldn't close my eyes without seeing them—all the ones I'd lost, all the ones I couldn't save.
" He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"Eight years of pulling bodies from the water, and the only thing I learned is that the lake takes what it wants and doesn't give a damn about who's left behind. "
"You saved people too."
"Not enough."
"There's never enough. Not for men like you." She squeezed his hand. "You carry them because nobody else will. Because letting go feels like betraying them somehow, even though holding on is killing you."
He looked at her then. Really looked, like he was seeing something he hadn't expected.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I watched my father do the same thing.
" The words came easier than she'd expected, loosened by the darkness and his pain and the strange intimacy of sitting with someone else's ghosts.
"He wasn't Coast Guard—just a fisherman, a shop owner, a man who loved the lake.
But he carried people too. Regulars who died, friends who drowned, everyone who'd trusted him on the water and didn't come home. "
"What happened to him?"
"Stroke. Three years ago." She felt the familiar ache, dulled but never gone.
"He was fine one day, and then he wasn't. The doctors said it was stress, years of carrying too much without ever putting it down.
Now he's in a nursing home forgetting my name, and I'm trying to keep his shop alive because it's the only piece of him that still works. "
Lakeshore's fingers tightened around hers. "Tess."
"I know what it's like," she continued. "To love something that can kill you. To keep going back to it because you don't know how to be anywhere else. The lake took things from both of us, and we keep coming back anyway, because—"
"Because it's the only thing that tells the truth."
"Yeah."
They sat in silence, hands intertwined, the weight of shared grief settling between them like something solid. Tess felt tears sliding down her cheeks, cold in the April air, and didn't bother wiping them away.
He was sinking. She could feel it—the darkness pulling at him, the faces crowding in, the drowning that happened on dry land. She'd watched her father go under the same way, slowly and then all at once, and she'd been helpless to stop it.
She wasn't helpless now.
Tess leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn't gentle. Wasn't tentative or questioning or any of the things a first kiss was supposed to be. She kissed him like she was hauling him out of deep water, like her mouth was the only thing between him and the dark.
He froze for half a heartbeat.
Then his hand came up to cup the back of her head, and he kissed her back like a man who'd been drowning for years and finally found air.
His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer until she was practically in his lap. The cold concrete disappeared, replaced by heat—his body against hers, his mouth demanding and desperate, his hands gripping her like he was afraid she'd slip away.
"Tess." Her name came out ragged against her lips. "We shouldn't—"
"Shut up."
She kissed him again, harder, and felt his control crack like ice in spring. His fingers tangled in her hair, tilting her head back so he could kiss down her throat, and Tess gasped at the scrape of stubble and the heat of his mouth against her pulse.
"Inside," she managed. "It's freezing out here."
He stood without letting her go, pulling her up with him, and they stumbled through the door like they couldn't bear to separate long enough to walk properly. The hallway was dark and empty, the compound asleep around them, and Tess didn't care if anyone saw.
Let them see. Let them know.
His room was closer than hers—her room now, the one he'd given her—but he took her there anyway, pressing her against the door while he fumbled with the handle. She used the moment to pull at his shirt, needing skin, needing to feel the man underneath all that armor.
The door opened. They fell through it.
He had her against the wall before she could breathe, his body a cage she had no interest in escaping. His hands found the hem of her shirt and stopped, shaking.
"You're shaking," she whispered.
"I know."
"Why?"
He pulled back just enough to look at her. In the dim light from the window, his eyes were silver and desperate and more vulnerable than she'd ever seen them.
"Because I've wanted this since the moment you told me your coffee was terrible. Because you're the first thing that's made the noise stop since I came home from the water. Because if I'm wrong about this—about us—"
"You're not wrong."
She kissed him before he could argue.
This time, there was no hesitation. He lifted her like she weighed nothing, carrying her to the bed he'd given up so she could have a window facing east. She pulled him down with her, and for a long moment they just breathed together, foreheads touching, the weight of him pressing her into the mattress.
"Yours," she said. The word came out fierce, certain. "I'm yours, Tyler. Stop fighting it."
Something broke behind his eyes.
He kissed her like she was water and he'd been dying of thirst. His hands traced paths across her skin—reverent and desperate, gentle and greedy, claiming every inch like he needed to memorize her by touch.
She arched into him, pulling at his shirt until it disappeared, running her palms across the scars she found there.
So many scars. From cold water and rough rescues and a life spent saving people who couldn't save themselves.
"These," she breathed, tracing a raised line across his ribs. "Tell me."
"Winter rescue. Rope burn."
She kissed it. Found another, across his shoulder.
"This one?"
"Propeller. Capsized charter." His voice had gone hoarse. "Tess, you don't have to—"
"I want to." She kissed that scar too, and the next one, and the next. "I want all of it. Everything you are, everything you've been. I'm not afraid of your depth."
He made a sound like something breaking, and then his mouth was on hers again, and there was nothing left but heat and need and the desperate press of two people who'd been alone too long.
The man who pulled people from the water finally let someone pull him back to shore.
After, they lay tangled together in the dark.
Tess traced lazy patterns across his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow from thunder to something steadier. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, holding her close like he still couldn't believe she was there.
"The faces," she said quietly. "Do they ever get quieter?"
"Sometimes. When I'm on the water." He paused. "When I'm with you."
She tilted her head to look at him. "Really?"
"You're the only person who's ever looked at me like I'm more than what I couldn't save." His voice was rough with something that might have been wonder. "Like the broken parts aren't the whole story."
"They're not. They're just chapters." She pressed a kiss to his collarbone. "And this is a new one."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then his arms tightened around her, and she felt something ease in him—some tension she hadn't even known he was carrying finally releasing.
"Stay," he said. "Not just tonight. Stay."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I mean it. When this is over—Gregor, your shop, all of it—stay."
Tess pushed up on one elbow to look at him properly. In the gray light of almost-dawn filtering through the east window, he looked younger somehow. Less haunted. Like the ghosts had given him a night off.
"Is that you asking," she said, "or is that you telling?"
His mouth curved. "Both."
"Arrogant."
"You like it."
She did. God help her, she did.
"Ask me again when this is over," she said. "When we're not hiding from smugglers and my shop isn't falling apart. Ask me when it's a choice, not a crisis."
"And if I do?"
She leaned down and kissed him, slow and thorough.
"Then I'll say yes."
He pulled her back down against his chest, and Tess settled into the warmth of him, listening to his heartbeat slow toward sleep. Outside the window, the sky was lightening toward dawn, and somewhere past the city glow, Lake Michigan waited.
But for the first time since she'd arrived at the compound, she didn't miss it.
The man who'd been haunted by the water had finally found something worth staying on shore for.
And Tess—who'd spent her whole life on the lake—discovered that a man who carried ghosts could come alive under the hands of someone who wasn't afraid to dive deep.