Chapter Fourteen
Lakeshore woke to fingertips tracing his scars.
Light streamed through the east window, warm and golden, catching the dust motes that drifted through the air. Tess was propped on one elbow beside him, her attention focused on the map of damage that crossed his skin.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning." She didn't stop tracing. "I've been counting."
"Counting what?"
"Your scars." Her finger followed the raised line across his ribs. "This one's the rope burn. Winter rescue."
"You remembered."
"I remember everything you tell me." She moved to his shoulder, the jagged mark there. "Propeller. Capsized charter."
He lay still under her hands, letting her explore. It should have felt exposed, vulnerable in ways he didn't allow. But there was something about the way she touched him—curious without pity, interested without flinching—that made the old wounds feel less like failures and more like evidence.
Evidence that he'd survived. That he was still here.
"What about this one?" She found a scar on his forearm, thin and long, faded almost white with age.
"Ice rescue. Lake Calumet, February." He watched her trace its length. "Went through a weak patch while pulling a kid out of the water. Caught my arm on the edge going down."
"Did you get the kid out?"
"Yeah."
"Then it was worth it."
Such a simple equation. Pain exchanged for a life saved, and she didn't hesitate to call it a fair trade. Most people looked at his scars and saw damage, evidence of a career that had chewed him up and spit him out. Tess looked at them and saw stories.
"Here." She found the worst one—a starburst of scar tissue across his left side, just below his ribs. "I've been wondering about this one."
Lakeshore was quiet for a moment. This scar came with memories he didn't take out often, the kind that had teeth and knew how to bite.
"Boat explosion," he said finally. "Charter vessel, engine fire. The fuel tank went up while we were evacuating passengers."
Tess's hand stilled. "You were caught in it?"
"Shrapnel. Piece of the hull came through my gear." He remembered the sound—that massive whomp of ignition, the heat that had stolen his breath—and pushed it back down where it belonged. "Three days in the hospital. They wanted to give me a medical discharge."
"But you didn't take it."
"Not then. Went back to work as soon as they cleared me." He paused. "That was three years before I finally left."
She resumed her tracing, lighter now, gentler. "What made you leave? Really?"
The question hung in the morning air. Lakeshore had told her pieces before—the faces, the ones he couldn't save, the weight that had accumulated until he couldn't carry it anymore. But he'd never told anyone the whole truth.
"There was a day," he said slowly. "Nothing special about it. Clear weather, calm water, routine patrol. And I was standing on the deck of the cutter, looking out at the lake, and I realized I was counting."
"Counting what?"
"Faces. The ones I'd lost versus the ones I was looking at.
" He felt the old darkness stir, but it was distant now, muted by the warmth of her body against his.
"There were more dead than living. And I thought—if I stay here, if I keep doing this, eventually there won't be anyone alive left in my head. Just ghosts."
Tess was quiet. Her hand had stopped moving, resting flat against his chest like she was measuring his heartbeat.
"So you left."
"So I left. Walked away from eight years, a career, everything I thought I was supposed to be." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "My commanding officer thought I was having a breakdown. Maybe I was."
"What did you do after?"
"Drank. A lot. Rode until I couldn't feel anything. Tried to figure out who I was if I wasn't pulling people out of the water." He turned his head to look at her. "Then I met Alpha. He saw something in me—I still don't know what. Offered me a place with the Wolves."
"A pack."
"Yeah. People who didn't expect me to save them. Who just wanted me to fight beside them." He reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I stopped drowning. Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"The faces never went away. They just... got quieter. Some days are better than others. Some nights I can almost sleep through without seeing them." He held her gaze. "Since you've been here, the quiet's lasted longer."
Tess blinked, and he saw moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes.
"Don't," he said. "Don't cry for me."
"I'm not crying for you." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, fierce about it. "I'm crying because I understand. Because I know what it's like to carry people you can't save."
"Your father."
"My father." She settled back against him, her head finding the hollow of his shoulder like it belonged there. "I go see him every week. Sometimes twice. And every time I walk in, there's this moment—this horrible, hopeful moment—where I think maybe today he'll know me."
"Does he?"
"Sometimes. Less and less, now." Her voice went rough.
"He was the smartest man I ever knew. Could read the weather on the lake like other people read newspapers.
Knew every fish, every current, every mood the water had.
And now he sits in that chair and looks at me like I'm a stranger, and I have to introduce myself to my own father. "
Lakeshore pulled her closer, pressing his lips to her hair.
"The shop," he said. "That's why you fight so hard for it."
"It's the last piece of him that still works. The boats, the tackle, the customers who remember him the way he was." She let out a shaky breath. "If I lose the shop, I lose the only connection I have left to the man he used to be."
"You won't lose it."
"You can't promise that."
"I can promise I'll do everything in my power to make sure it doesn't happen." He tilted her chin up, making her look at him. "Your shop, your boats, your father's legacy—it's mine now too. I protect what's mine."
"You keep saying that. Claiming things."
"Because it's true."
She studied him, those lake-water eyes searching for something. Whatever she found made her expression soften.
"I used to think that was possessive. Controlling, maybe."
"And now?"
"Now I think it's just how you love." She pressed a kiss to his jaw.
"You claim because you're terrified of losing.
Because everyone you've ever tried to save has either died or become a ghost that haunts you.
So you hold on tight to anything that matters, and you call it yours because that makes it real. "
The words hit him somewhere deep. Somewhere he'd kept locked and guarded for so long he'd forgotten it existed.
"When did you get so smart?"
"Always have been. You just weren't paying attention."
He laughed—actually laughed, the sound strange in his own ears—and rolled them until she was beneath him, her hair spread across the pillow and her smile bright in the morning light.
"I'm paying attention now."
"Are you?"
"Every second." He kissed her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. "I'm not going anywhere, Tess. Whatever happens with Gregor, whatever comes next—I'm here. With you."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I can read water." She reached up, traced the line of his jaw with her fingertips. "And you're not drifting anymore."
The words settled into him like an anchor finding bottom.
For years, he'd felt unmoored—cut loose from the life he'd known, floating through the one he'd built without ever really touching down.
The faces kept him company, and the lake kept him sane, and the brotherhood gave him purpose, but none of it had ever made him feel still.
Tess did.
"Stay," he said. It wasn't a question this time. Wasn't a request made in the dark, driven by desperation and fear. This was daylight. This was certainty. "Stay with me. Not just until Gregor's handled. After. Always."
"That's a big word. Always."
"I mean it."
"I know you do." She pulled him down and kissed him, slow and thorough, a promise sealed with breath and heat. "Ask me again tonight. When we're not naked and you haven't just bared your soul. Ask me when you're sure."
"I'm sure now."
"Then you'll still be sure tonight."
He wanted to argue. Wanted to push until she gave him the answer he needed, the confirmation that this wasn't temporary, that she wasn't going to slip away like water through his fingers.
But she was right. She deserved more than a question asked in the aftermath of vulnerability. She deserved a proper claiming, in front of his brothers, with the weight of the club behind it.
"Tonight," he agreed.
"Tonight."
They stayed in bed until the sun climbed high enough to make the room uncomfortably warm, talking about small things—her favorite spots on the lake, his worst rescue stories, the places they might go when this was over.
It felt like building something, plank by plank, the foundation of a life they might actually share.
When they finally got up, the compound was already alive with movement. Brothers in the garage, prospects running errands, the rhythm of a club that didn't stop moving just because two of its people had spent the morning falling deeper into something neither of them had expected.
Lakeshore watched Tess disappear into the kitchen, hunting for coffee, and felt something ease in his chest that had been tight for longer than he could remember.
The faces were still there. Would always be there.
But for the first time in years, they weren't the loudest thing in his head.