Chapter Six
Wyatt
The crossing back to Adak takes just over an hour.
Sylvie spends most of it at the bow with the old man’s grandson, Amakvik, asking him questions I can’t hear over the engine.
I watch her from the stern without trying to hide it anymore.
The wind pulls her hair across her face, and she laughs at something the kid says, tucking it back with one hand, and the knot in my chest that’s been there since I woke up beside her this morning pulls tighter.
She’s not mine to watch. But I keep watching anyway.
When we dock, I load our gear into the truck while she says her goodbyes.
Sabaak is waiting at Acca’s—I texted ahead—and by the time I’ve got everything stowed, Sylvie is beside me, hands already cold without her gloves.
I open the passenger door without thinking, close it behind her, and stand there for a second with my hand on the roof.
Get it together.
I pick up Sabaak on the way through town.
He nearly knocks Sylvie flat when he sees her, and the sound of her laughing with her arms around his neck while he tries to lick her face does something to me I’m not prepared for.
Acca watches from the doorway with that look she gets—the one that says she knows exactly what she’s looking at—and I don’t give her the chance to say a word about it.
“Research would go smoother if you stayed at the cottage,” I say, pulling out of Acca’s lot. “Save you the drive out every morning.”
It’s not a lie. It’s also not the whole truth.
Sylvie glances at me sideways. There’s a small smile she’s trying not to show. “That makes sense,” she says. “Logistically.”
“Right.”
“Logistically.”
I don’t answer. She’s already won that exchange, and she knows it.
***
She moves in that afternoon. One bag. She travels light—I’ll give her that. By the time she’s unpacked, Sabaak has relocated his favorite spot on the rug to be closer to wherever she happens to be sitting, and I understand the impulse.
The first night, I make dinner. She sits at the kitchen counter watching me cook—not offering, not asking, just watching with her chin in her hand and those blue eyes tracking every move I make—and the silence between us is so charged I’m half convinced the solar panels are picking it up.
“You don’t have to stare,” I say, not turning around.
“I’m not staring,” she says. “I’m observing. It’s what I do.”
“Sea lions.”
“Among other things.”
I put a plate in front of her. She looks up at me, and the distance between us is nothing—a foot, maybe less—and I watch the color rise in her cheeks. She doesn’t look away. Neither do I.
I put a plate in front of her. She looks up at me, and the distance between us is nothing—a foot, maybe less—and I watch the color rise in her cheeks. She doesn’t look away. Neither do I.
I kiss her before the food gets cold. She makes a small sound against my mouth, and I pull her off the stool and walk her back against the counter, my hands sliding under her shirt to find warm skin.
She whimpers when I palm her breasts, her nipples already peaked under my thumbs, and I swallow every sound she makes as I strip her where she stands.
I take her against the counter, slow and thorough, watching her face the whole time—the way her lips part and her eyes go glassy and her head falls back with a sob when she comes. I follow her over with my face buried in her throat, her name on my tongue.
The food goes cold. Neither of us cares.
***
The days find a rhythm. We’re up before the light shifts—which in June on Adak means early—and out on the island by mid-morning, hitting rookeries near and far.
Some we reach on foot, some by 4-wheeler, and some by boat when the distance is too far.
She works with a focus that’s something to watch: camera up, notebook out, moving quietly through the grass at the cliff’s edge with more patience than I’d have credited her when she first showed up at my door.
She’s not helpless out here. She knows what she’s doing.
I sketch while she works. I’ve never had a subject worth coming back to before.
By the third day of this—the sixth day since she arrived on the island—I’ve filled half a pad. I don’t show her. I’m not ready to explain what that means.
The nights are ours. She fits into the cottage like she was always supposed to be here.
She makes coffee in the morning before I’m fully awake and leaves it black because she knows that’s how I take it.
She hums when she thinks I can’t hear. She argues with me about the right way to layer for wind—she’s wrong, for the record, and she’s also never cold when she’s pressed against my side—and she falls asleep fast, heavy and warm, like the island is the one place in the world her body finally trusts.
I lie awake longer than I used to.
The third night she’s here, she’s working late at the kitchen table, a lamp burning low over her notes. I come up behind her, brush her hair aside, and put my mouth to the back of her neck. She goes still. Then she closes the notebook.
“Wyatt.”
“Come to bed.”
She turns in the chair and looks at me with those eyes, and there it is again—that thing I can’t name and am not going to try.
I take her hand, and she comes without another word.
The night that follows leaves me lying in the dark afterward with her asleep across my chest, staring at the ceiling, certain of exactly one thing:
She is going to wreck me completely, and I am going to let her.
***
On day six, we take the truck.
The rookery on the far eastern edge of the island isn’t accessible by 4-wheeler—too much rough ground between here and there.
Sabaak rides in the back, nose in the wind.
Sylvie has her camera bag on her lap. She’s going through her notes, cross-referencing something between two pages, and I catch myself stealing glances the whole drive.
The sea lions are worth the trip. There’s a colony of thirty-odd animals on the rocks below the eastern bluff—big bulls, cows with pups, the whole scene—and Sylvie goes still the moment she sees them, the way she always does at first. Like she has to absorb the fact of them before she can start working.
I’ve come to like that moment. The way she forgets I’m there entirely.
I sketch while she documents. Sabaak settles in the grass behind us, unbothered.
We’re two hours out when the light starts to go. Sylvie is still shooting, working through the last of the good angles, and I let her keep going. She doesn’t have many days left. When she finally lowers the camera and looks at the sky, I’m already packing up.
“We should move,” I say.
“I know.” She doesn’t argue. She caps her lens, tucks the camera away, and we head back through the grass toward the truck. Sabaak trots ahead, circling back every so often, the way he does when he wants us to move faster.
I see it before she does.
Both tires on the driver’s side—front and rear—are flat.
Not blow-out flat. Deliberately, completely flat.
I crouch at the front one and run my hand along the sidewall, finding the cut: clean, deliberate, no nails or road debris.
Under the truck’s running board, half-tucked into the gravel, is a hunting knife.
Not hidden. Left. So I’d find it. So I’d know this wasn’t an accident.
My jaw tightens. I stand slowly and keep my voice even. “Don’t touch the knife.”
Sylvie crouches where I was. She looks at the gash in the tire, then at the knife, and when she stands, her face is carefully blank in the way that means she’s working hard not to show the alarm underneath it. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“No.”
“Both tires. So you couldn’t use the spare.”
“No.”
She looks out at the empty road. The eastern edge of the island is the farthest point from town—four miles of rough track between us and the nearest building, and it’s getting dark. No signal out here is strong enough to radio in reliably. We’re not in danger, but we’re not getting home tonight.
“We’re sleeping in the truck,” I say.
She absorbs this. Nods once. “Okay.” Then, “Wyatt. I need to tell you something. About Brett Monteith.”
I look at her.
“He approached me. At the inn. The evening before I came to your cottage—the first time.” She holds my gaze steady. “He told me the Alaskan wilderness was dangerous. That anything could happen.” A pause. “It wasn’t a warning. It was a threat.”
The cold that moves through me has nothing to do with the temperature. “You’re only telling me this now.”
“I thought—” She stops, then starts again. “I thought I could handle it. And I didn’t want to be the woman who shows up in someone’s life and immediately makes it complicated.”
I look at the knife still lying in the gravel. Then at her. “You should have told me.”
“I know.” She doesn’t flinch from it. “I’m telling you now.”
I crouch and use a rag from the truck bed to bag the knife without touching it directly—evidence, if it comes to that—then stand and radio Acca on the truck’s CB to let her know we’re stuck out east and won’t be back until morning.
The connection is poor, but it is enough.
Acca’s response is three words and a knowing silence. I don’t have the patience for tonight.
By the time I’m done, Sylvie has found the emergency blankets from the kit behind the seat and spread them out across the back bench.
Sabaak has already claimed half of it. She’s sitting in the middle, back against the door, knees drawn up, looking at me through the windshield with those blue eyes, calm and steady, and I feel the tension in my shoulders ease by a fraction.
I climb in.
The cab is small. She shifts to make room and ends up against my side, and neither of us moves away. Outside, the light has faded to the long pewter dusk of an Alaskan summer evening. Sabaak shifts, sighs. The island is quiet except for the wind.
“So, what do we do about Monteith?” she asks.