Chapter 5 Willa #2
Across the dying wakefulness of the group, Rad was settled near the cave wall beside Tyler.
They weren’t speaking. Rad’s hand rested on Tyler’s shoulder in a quiet, steady contact that required nothing of either of them, and Tyler’s eyes were already closing.
Rad looked up, found her watching, and gave her a very small, tired smile.
Margo was sitting with her back against the wall near the fire, a sleeping bag pulled over her legs, her head tipped slightly toward Rad’s shoulder, as if she were somewhere between awake and asleep, not fighting the drift.
The cave settled into the sound of slow breathing, fire, and storm.
Willa crossed to where Ace sat on the flat rock near the entrance, close enough to the tarpaulin to monitor it, far enough from the sleepers to talk quietly without disturbing anyone. She sat down beside him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The fire had burned down to a steady, amber-gold pulse. In its light, Ace’s face was all warmth and shadow, the familiar lines of him softened by exhaustion and relief.
“Are you doing all right?” Ace asked.
“Better than I was,” Willa said. “You?”
“Yeah.” He looked at the tarpaulin for a moment, listening. “The wind’s dropping.”
“It is,” Willa agreed. “Slowly.”
Another silence. Not uncomfortable.
“Ace,” Willa said.
“Mm.” He turned and looked at her.
“Thank you.” Willa kept her eyes on the fire. “For going in. I know you didn’t think about it. But I need to say it anyway.”
Ace was quiet for a beat. “When that wave hit the dock,” he said, “and you were gone.” He stopped, looking at his hands for a second. “That wasn’t a good feeling, Willa.”
“No,” Willa said. “I imagine it wasn’t.” She tried to make light of it. “I know how I was feeling at that moment.”
Ace glanced at her sideways. “I just want you to know that going in after you wasn’t something I had to think about. There was nothing to think about.”
She looked at him then.
He looked back.
“I know,” Willa said quietly. “You’ve always just jumped in feet first whenever the kids or I needed you.” She patted his firm, muscular shoulder. “I’m sorry I put you in that position today.”
“Don’t apologize for trying to get everyone rescued,” Ace said, and there was the dry, light edge she knew so well, the one that appeared when he wanted to soften something without dismissing it. “That would be a very strange thing to apologize for.”
A breath of a laugh escaped her. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Ace said. “And I’m telling you it’s all right.” He held her gaze. “You came back up. That’s all I needed.”
The firelight moved between them.
Willa thought about the morning. About the concert he was going to with Sienna. About the cold, clipped way she’d spoken to him at the table over something that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her own unwillingness to look directly at what she felt.
“Ace,” she said.
“Yeah?” He turned and glanced at her.
“Earlier. At breakfast. I was unkind to you.” Willa said it plainly, because he deserved that. “About the concert and Sienna. I had no right to do that.”
He looked at her for a moment without speaking.
“You weren’t unkind,” Ace said at last with a shrug. “You were expressing your opinion, and I know you don’t like or trust Sienna.” He gave her a tight smile. “It’s all good.”
“No, it’s not,” Willa disagreed. “I’m sorry. You have every right to go wherever you want and with whomever.” She sighed. “While I wish it were anyone but Sienna, because I think you deserve better than her, it’s really none of my business.”
Something shifted in his expression. The same quality she’d seen in him on the dock when she’d told him to take the group and go, that look of receiving information and letting it land rather than deflecting it.
“For the record, Sienna is just someone I hang out with sometimes, nothing more,” Ace explained. “And just so you know, I would rather have gone to the concert with you.”
The words were simple. He hadn’t dressed them up or surrounded them with anything. He had just said them, in that quiet, particular way Ace said things when he meant them entirely.
Willa looked at him.
Ace looked back.
The fire pulsed between them, and the storm moved against the limestone, and the cave breathed slowly around the sleeping kids. There was a pull in the air between them that she’d been managing and deflecting and refusing to name for longer than she was prepared to admit.
Ace’s face was very close.
Willa’s heart was beating too hard for someone sitting still.
She leaned forward a fraction of an inch.
So did he.
“Mom.” Grace’s voice cut through the cave, sharp with the particular fear of waking in an unfamiliar place in the dark. Willa was on her feet before the word had fully finished.
“I’m here,” Willa said, crossing the cave in four steps, her voice dropping immediately into the tone that had settled Grace since she was small. “I’m right here, sweetheart.”
Grace sat up in her sleeping bag, her eyes wide and disoriented. “I didn’t know where you were.”
“Right here,” Willa said again, and crouched beside her. “I was just over there. You can always see where I am from anywhere in this cave.”
“I know.” Grace let out a shaky breath. “I know, I just woke up, and for a second I forgot where we were, and I didn’t—” She stopped. “Don’t go far. Please.”
“I won’t,” Willa said.
She looked back once toward where Ace still sat on the flat rock near the entrance. He was watching her, his expression easy and unhurried, and he gave her the smallest nod.
She turned back to Grace.
“Lie back down,” Willa said gently.
“Will you stay with me?” Grace asked, and there was nothing seventeen about the question. There was only a girl who’d been frightened and had held herself together all day and now wanted the comfort of her mother.
“Of course,” Willa said.
She eased herself into the sleeping bag beside her daughter, which required a degree of contortion, given that it was designed for one person.
Thankfully, both Willa and Grace were small women.
Her daughter pressed against her side and wrapped both arms around her, something Grace hadn’t done since she was a child.
Willa held her close, pressed her lips against the top of her head, and breathed her in.
“You smell like the ocean,” Grace murmured.
“We all do,” Willa said.
Grace’s grip tightened briefly, then relaxed.
“Go to sleep,” Willa said softly. “I’ve got you.”
The fire held its steady amber pulse. The storm murmured at the edges of the limestone. Andy breathed deeply to her left. Somewhere across the cave, Rad’s voice said something low and quiet to Margo. She answered, and then there was silence again.
Willa looked up at the ceiling of the cave.
She thought about the conversation she’d just had with Ace,
Willa thought about how close they’d both been as they’d been drawn together.
Suddenly thoughts of Shaun flooded her mind.
The way they always thought about Shaun in the quiet moments, not with the acute, chest-splitting grief of the early years but with something softer and more permanent.
It was how you carried someone you had truly loved, as a presence rather than an absence.
She let it sit with her in the firelight, in the warmth of her daughter’s arms, in the sound of the storm easing by degrees against the stone.
Her eyes closed.
The cave held them all, warm and dim and solid, and the fire breathed steadily on, and outside, somewhere above the clouds, the stars were still there, waiting for the storm to pass. Willa drifted to sleep with a warm, smiling face and a strong hand leading her into dreamland—Ace!