Page 97 of Caution to the Wind

I didn’t say anything as I opened the door for her because I was afraid the words would come out jealous and bitter.

But Cleo proved she knew me well when she hobbled into the shop and turned to flash sparkling eyes at me. “But it was never really the same, so we didn’t do it very often. We made our own rituals. It felt wrong to step on ours.”

We exchanged little grins that felt almost shy, like we were both almost embarrassed by how much we’d missed each other.

“Mei Zhenette Raisinet!”

I wheeled toward the sound of that familiar voice a second before I was hit by someone even tinier than I was. My laughter exploded out of my chest at the impact as Lin squeezed me in a hard, tight hug.

“Lin,” I whispered, curling around her, pressing my nose into her hair to find it still smelled faintly of rice water.

“It is good to see you,” she whispered back in Cantonese, still holding me a little too tight.

I’d often wondered if Old Dragon had broken his promise and told Lin exactly what happened when I went home that night after the events at Turner Farm. It just didn’t make sense that she could still be so…kind without knowing I hadn’t had a choice in my disappearance back then.

But then, Cleo didn’t know, not really. She only had a vague sense that Florent had done something inexcusable, and we no longer had any kind of relationship.

And she still loved me.

In fact, over the years, it wasmewho had kept a greater distance between us, thinking she deserved better.

I shook off my introspection as Lin stepped away enough to clasp me firmly by the cheeks to inspect my face.

“Too pale,” she declared, dropping her hands. “Too thin. It’s good I brought in mooncakes for you. Salted egg yolk and red bean.”

On cue, my stomach rumbled, and the three of us laughed right there in the centre of the busy room like we were back in Axe-Man’s Calgarian bungalow.

“You know I’ll never say no to your mooncakes, Lin.”

“You’ll never say no to me at all,” she declared with an arched brow and narrowed eyes.

I laughed again as she led us to a long row of black massage chairs almost like the ones she used to have. I helped Cleo get settled in the chair, forgoing the massage so it didn’t press against any of her still-sore muscles or contusions. The salon was still relatively empty so early in the morning, which was why I’d decided we should come in. Cleo didn’t need to feel like people were whispering about her or that she had to field a bunch of questions from well-meaning townsfolk. Taylor Swift was playing from the speakers, and the salon was bright and cheery, with one red-painted wall and a few huge acrylic landscape paintings on the others.

“Those are gorgeous,” I murmured, almost without realizing it.

The woman painting my toes, Agatha, grinned at me. “Don’t let Lin hear you, she’ll take any excuse to brag about her boy.”

“Lin!” I gasped. “You’re dating someone?”

Agatha, Cleo, and Lin all laughed at me.

“I’m afraid I closed up shop a long time ago,” Lin said happily, expertly painting the toes peeking out of Cleo’s cast a sparkly, pretty purple. “Agatha is talking about Axe-Man. He did all the paintings in here.”

“Close your mouth,” Cleo teased me the way she used to. “You could catch fish in there.”

I shut my jaw with an audible clank as I sought out the paintings again. Axe-Man had only just taken to painting with acrylics back in Calgary, and he’d been super secretive about his studio in the garage, so I’d never seen what he was working on. From the looks of it, he had massive amounts of talent. The canvases were vibrant and detailed, but there was something almost abstract about them that evoked feeling. The sunset over Entrance Bay was all peaches, the pinks and oranges and warm yellow tones of the fruit as if the sun was bursting overripe across the sky. The view of the lake I now recognized as the same one beside his house was gloomy, the trees on the far shore jagged and overcrowded like soldiers waiting solemnly to die. It should have been a sad painting, but it was oddly peaceful.

“He could make a fortune off these.”

“He doesn’t sell them,” Cleo told me, staring at that one of the lake as if it called to her. “They’re meant to be gifts. Sometimes he sets out to paint one for someone. A birthday or Christmas or Lunar New Year. But sometimes he paints one and realizes he did it for someone without realizing it.”

I tugged the sleeve of my tee over my wrist, suddenly acutely aware of the art I’d stolen from him already. As an artist myself, I’d always known it was highly unethical to steal his work the way I had, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. Once I had the koi fish inked around my belly, I was addicted. Now, I had twenty-two tattoos all over my body, each of which had originally been drawn by Henning’s hand.

Axe-Man, I had to remind myself, not Henning.

A different man now than he had been.

It was funny that I felt so unchanged when he obviously was not. It was like I had fossilized around this need inside me. My wants and needs had calcified at the time and place I’d discovered my love for Henning Axelsen and then abruptly been torn from him. Anyone seeking to excavate me,knowme, ultimately failed because they couldn’t know my core motivation. Why I got up in the morning and went to bed at night. They couldn’t know I was stuck in time trying to right irreversible wrongs.