Chapter 17
SHINE LIKE A DIAMOND (CLEO)
Is this still real life?
I’m not sure I’m awake.
I stop and question if the egg unleashed some weird spell that’s trapped me in this fantasy.
It’s been an entire week.
A whole freaking week of being someone else’s happy ending. Holden making me breakfast in the morning, helping me call museum curators on three different continents.
Spending evenings where I help Kit with her homework and her poetry. It takes me back to being her age, hacking out crappy emo haikus and free form sonnets.
Believe me, mine were actually crappy, but hers are good.
She has a wonderful little mind, and she gets that art is just another way you distill the world until someone else can see how it makes sense through your eyes.
Right now, she’s experimenting with different forms, but I think she’ll settle for something modern and poignant.
Poetry that’s not inhibited by rules.
Not rhythm or meter or rhyme, just words on a page with a raw heart behind them. The best kind I relate to when I’ve always been more of a visual artist.
And in her poems, I see glimpses of the woman her mom could’ve been if she’d had a different life, a different soul.
Charli.
I don’t want to think about her, because then I think about Holden being sad. Begging her to give them a chance. Leaving them alone and miserable until she dragged herself back here to die.
Who even does that? What kind of defective person?
Holden reassures me that’s not how he sees me, but sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see my dad.
I’d like to think he’d never sink that low since he did raise me. Sort of.
Still, it’s too close to home.
How many times did Dad abandon me for briefer stretches?
Like it or not, I’m his daughter, and now I’m grown. Sometimes I wonder what that means.
Just like sometimes I look at the blue veins under my skin and wonder how far blood runs.
But mostly, I’m happy.
I’m incandescent.
Because my biggest problem during nights with Holden Verity is stuffing a gag in my mouth so I don’t wake the neighborhood.
From the first night we fucked, we both knew we didn’t want it to end. No wham-bam-awesome-ma’am or dine-and-dick.
Waking up beside him feels like New York. Except this time when I roll over to lie against him in the grey morning light or a golden splash of sun, there’s no hesitation.
No regret.
He pulls me against him like I’m right where I belong. Like I’ve found a home I didn’t even know I was looking for, and that’s heady.
When we wake up in the morning—or sometimes in the middle of the night—we slot together like pure instinct. I have to bite his hand to keep myself from making too much noise when he makes me explode.
It’s almost weird, in a way, having this illicit relationship when I’m already living with him. Kit’s becoming like the little sister I never had.
And Holden—
God, Holden.
“Something on your mind?” he asks me one night after he’s pulled out of me, slow and dreamy, still holding my head in his hands and muffling my moans with his mouth.
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re always thinking, Clee. Only time that pretty head shuts off is when I keep you preoccupied.”
I laugh and kiss his shoulder.
It’s so easy, this affection, like we’ve been doing it half our lives. Being with him feels so natural, I can hardly remember a time when I hated him. How is it possible?
“No, that’s you,” I tease back. “You’re the one with the dominant broody gene.”
He scowls, but I see the corner of his lips turn up.
He loves to pretend he’s the grumpiest bear alive, but I know better. After this closeness, I see right through him, and even that big chest seems paper thin.
No more tinman. There’s a beating heart in there after all, strong and kind and real.
“You really want to know?” I duck my head as he nods. “I was just thinking how much I like this,” I admit. “Having to be quiet, figuring things out so Kit doesn’t notice.”
His hand curls around my elbow, idly stroking my skin.
“You like that?” His voice drops lower.
“You don’t?”
“Never said that.”
I lean in and kiss his neck, inhaling that subtle woodsy scent he wears like a second shadow. It’s so male it makes my stomach twitch with butterflies.
“There are a lot of things about this I like,” I mutter. “Too many to count, probably.”
“Show me.” His hand catches my hip. His eyes lock with mine as he guides me on top, straddling him.
We go slowly at first, like we’re the only two people in the world who matter, and it feels divine.
Our own little magic place.
But even when we blow apart and settle again in each other’s arms, the Hera Egg looms in the back of my mind like a spider you glimpse once but can’t find again.
It’s tucked away in a reinforced safe buried in Holden’s closet, the safest place in the house. But I can’t help thinking about the men who broke in and exiled us from Gramps’ house.
Did they just give up that easily?
Can everything simply be this good after something so awful?
I don’t believe in lucky streaks. Blame it on how I grew up.
Nothing good in life ever comes free.
My cousin Ethan went back to check on the house with Holden last week.
There’s no sign of any new disturbances.
They beefed up the system with police patrols and an additional security guy on-site making the rounds.
They know Holden keeps a watch over the cameras as well, just in case, and it’s been over a week with nothing else.
So maybe it is over.
Or maybe we just can’t see the next storm coming over the mountains.
Even so, the next day at the beach, I can’t help bringing it up.
“Have you heard anything from the police yet?” I ask as Kit bounds along the rocky shore, looking for seashells.
Beside me, stretched out on a blanket, Holden tenses. Just slightly, but I’ve spent the past week learning his tells.
He’s worried.
He keeps so much bottled up, like his emotions will destroy us if he lets them out, which means I only have the little things to watch for.
His unnatural stillness. That twitch at the corner of his mouth. The way his jaw tightens for a single heartbeat.
“No,” he says after a second. “Nothing. The incident wasn’t serious enough to bring in a forensics team to analyze the blood splatter.”
“What? Why the hell not?”
“No one got hurt, Clee, minus my fall. Nothing was stolen. Yes, the break-in was a crime, but they only have my word that the perps were even armed.” He shrugs. “The FBI has more serious crimes to focus on.”
“Huh.” I let the sand sift through my fingers, warmed by the sun. We’re moving into that time of year where summer feels like it’s a breath away, pleasantly warm without being too hot.
I tip my head back, closing my eyes.
“I hope you put sunscreen on,” Holden tells me.
“Don’t worry, Grandma. I have.”
He prods me in the side, and I smile.
“I’m pulling on every loose thread. Don’t worry,” he says after another second, like he thinks I need the reassurance. “I made a cast of the boot print and I’m working on finding a match. Even the manufacturer or point of origin could be a clue. If it leads back to Fairfax—”
“Hey, no. It’s fine. No way do I think he’d put anyone up to this.” I nudge my shoulder against his arm, studying his dark-brown eyes. “Holden, I mean it. He’s a professional. I don’t need you getting all snarly and paranoid.”
“I’ll live, Clee,” he says.
“I’m not worried you’re going to hurt yourself,” I say. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“Things are good right now.” I mean it. Sitting here together while Kit washes her new clamshells in the ocean, the sun too bright and the air pleasantly briny, that’s an understatement. “I don’t want anything getting in the way. A selfish part of me doesn’t want this to end yet. That’s all.”
His hand brushes mine.
I almost jump at the contact. When we’re out and about, we’re careful to avoid touching in case Kit notices.
“Finding the egg a better home, you mean?”
“Well, yeah.” I lean back, staring up at him. “And us.”
A line forms between his brows. “What do you mean?”
“Every time you ask what I’m thinking, I can practically hear you thinking. And I don’t want you to feel like you need to…” I chew my lip, trying to figure out how to say this nicely in a way that will let him feel safe and secure.
Holden doesn’t do things lightly.
Not even this weird, unexpected thing we’ve started by accident, but I don’t want him getting too caught up in putting a label on us. Making it official or deciding it was always a mistake after all.
There are a million reasons why we don’t make sense.
But this feels so right, I can’t believe it’s not meant to be.
It also feels fragile, this quiet peace we’ve carved for ourselves. Like if we make one wrong move, it’ll all come crashing down on our heads.
The truth is, I’m scared of that happening.
I’m afraid to let go when we’ve just barely begun to hold on.
“No need to decide anything right now,” I whisper, and he’s still watching me intently, that desert night back in his eyes. I can’t believe I get to call him mine, even if it’s just for now. “What we are. What this is. Where we go from here.”
“What brought this on?” His eyes search mine.
“Anxiety, of course. The story of my life. I don’t want anything to change. Not yet,” I whisper.
He reaches up and drags his thumb down my bottom lip. The rush of heat through my body feels incendiary.
“What makes you think it’ll change so fast?”
“Because. You’re the kind of guy who likes to make things happen. You don’t dillydally once a decision gets made.”
“And that’s bad?” He drops his hand. I already miss his touch.
Ridiculous.
“It’s okay to just chill in the moment, you know.” I force a smile. “Just breathe, big guy. Enjoy life without overthinking.”
“I don’t overthink.” Amusement flashes behind his pointed frown. It’s all in the twitch of his lips, the warmth in his eyes.
“Daaad!” Kit calls, and we both look over. “Dad, Cleo, come look!” She’s pointing at a rocky tower offshore where a group of puffins are nesting.