Page 3 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle

Alone Not Lonely

T he bell above the bait shop door doesn’t ring, because I don’t give it the chance. I slip in quiet, like maybe if I don’t startle him, Cal won’t throw me out again.

I’ve been trying his patience for days, at this point.

He’s behind the counter like he always is, the sleeves of an unfair Henley shoved up, shoulders bent over the table like he’s trying to intimidate the fish into gutting itself.

He has the blade in one hand, steady as anything.

It moves through flesh like air. Like the fish was never alive to begin with.

He doesn’t look up, though he knows I’m here. His jaw ticked. His shoulders hiked just a touch. He’s proven himself to be very good at reading people, but I can read him too.

“You’re very antisocial for someone who works in retail,” I say, kicking a heel against the counter opposite him, sipping on my iced coffee. I made it myself, in my favorite cup—pink plastic, shaped like a juice box.

“Not in retail,” he mumbles.

“You have a register.” I point at it. “Retail.”

Still no glance in my direction. I lift myself to sit on the counter now, legs dangling. Cal puts up a Herculean struggle not to look, and I fail to contain my smirk as a result.

The smell of salt and fish oil is stronger here, but under it is something sharper. Brine and metal. Something other, like rain that hasn’t fallen yet. I know it’s him.

I watch him for a minute, because I want to see what he’ll do, but he just continues gutting fish.

I didn’t know bait shop owners had that particular pleasure, but apparently dead fish can prove rather attractive bait—except, as Cal has told me, you have to get the guts out, because they spoil fast, and they can ruin the rest of the fish.

The more you know.

I hop off the counter and wander toward the back, like I haven’t done this exact circuit already.

Like I didn’t stand right here yesterday, watching the water in the tank flicker with a light that didn’t come from electricity.

Today I don’t touch it. I just lean over the rim and let my fingers trail the smooth, glass lip.

“What’s down there?”

Cal doesn’t look up. “Live bait.”

“It’s deeper than it looks.” I flick the surface of the water and watch it ripple.

He flinches. “It is.”

I squint. Something shifts beneath the surface, slow and deliberate. Not the darting scatter of fish, but a curl. A stretch. Like something waking up. “Some of it moves weird.”

He goes still. Not a big reaction, just a fractional pause, like someone hit mute inside his chest. Then the knife keeps moving, but slower now, like he has to concentrate harder to control it. The air feels tighter. I shouldn’t be fucking with his stuff. I know that. He doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t like me .

“You shouldn’t be back here,” he says.

I straighten slightly, slurping my iced coffee. “Am I bothering you?”

“Yes.”

I glance over my shoulder, grinning easy. “You don’t look bothered.”

He sets the knife down like it weighs more than it did a second ago, then wipes his hands on a towel, slow and methodical. “Go upstairs, Neviah.”

Oof. I’m not immune to the way he says my name. I still don’t move, though. “You’re really not good at customer service.”

“I’m not trying to be.”

I tip my plastic juice box up, popping the lid to get the last of my coffee. “So what are you trying to be?”

His eyes flick toward mine, finally. I can’t read them. “Alone.”

I let out a little breath, surprised and not, as I press the lid back onto my juice box. “Alone,” I echo, like I’m rolling the word around in my mouth to see how it tastes.

“That’s how I like it.”

I tilt my head, study him. “Nobody likes being lonely. ”

I know that isn’t what he said, but I kind of want to see how he reacts.

Most people would argue that they didn’t say “lonely.”

Cal doesn’t even blink. “That’s not true.”

“No.” I lift a shoulder. “Some people like being alone . People don’t like being lonely. That’s different.”

Something in his posture shifts. A flicker of attention sharpens behind his expression. Like he’s seeing something I didn’t mean to show. Something hollows out in my chest.

He steps out from behind the counter, and I suddenly feel crowded. His body takes up more space than it should. I feel it like gravity—and I brace.

“Is that why you’re here?” he asks.

My throat tightens. “What?”

“Because you’re lonely.”

There’s nothing cruel in the way he says it. No edge. Just… understanding. And that’s worse, actually. I go still. Then I smile, and I know it’s brittle as hell.

“I’m not lonely,” I chirp. “I’m alone . That’s different.”

I don’t give him time to respond.

My stupid plastic juice box shakes in my hand as I turn and walk. My ribs are screwed in too tight. The air’s grown too dense to breathe, and by the time I’m outside, I don’t even remember opening the door. I don’t even hear the bell, though I don’t try and stop it ringing this time.

Maybe he even calls my name. I don’t know, because I’m already stalking off.

The wind off the sea hits me full in the face. I let it, and I don’t stop walking.

I don’t mean to end up at the shoreline.

I just have to go . Past the narrow streets and the sagging porches, that woman who’s always sweeping her fucking porch, past the bookstore with its window full of dust and the diner with the neon sign half burned out.

My boots scuff over old cobbles until they hit sand and start sinking a little.

The sky’s the same gray as the sea, flat and quiet and not even pretending to be pretty.

It’s not pretty here. It’s ugly .

I drop down onto a rock near the edge of the searching tide, and I curl my arms around my knees.

I’m not cold, but I feel like I should be.

Like maybe that would explain the way my chest hurts.

Not the sharp kind of hurt, either—just that really heavy pressure of being seen too clearly, too fast. Of not being able to put the wall back up before someone noticed the crack.

I wasn’t trying to be an asshole with the whole alone versus lonely thing, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I played myself.

I don’t hear him approach, but I feel him. That shift in the air, the way the tide seems to hush itself when he’s near. It’s like it can sense him. When I glance over, Cal’s standing a few paces back, hands in the pockets of that same hoodie as always, hood pulled up to shield against the wind.

“Look,” I say flatly without getting up. “It’s my turn now. I want to be alone. Or lonely. Whichever. Can you please leave?”

“No.”

I huff out a sharp breath, almost a laugh, but not really. “Why not?”

He hesitates. His feet shuffle in the dirt and sand. “Because I upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me,” I bite out. “I’m just upset.”

He doesn’t answer right away. The waves break soft, melting into the sand. I feel his eyes on the back of my neck, roving over my shoulders, like he’s cataloging me.

“Why are you upset?” he asks finally.

I don’t answer, just wrap my arms around myself tighter, resting my chin on my knees. My ass is definitely going to be wet when I stand up, but I’m past caring at this point. Seems like everything here is wet.

Cal takes a step closer, boots crunching over the grit. “You shouldn’t sit so close to the water.”

I tip my head, so I can just about see him over my shoulder. “Why?”

He’s inhumanly still. If I didn’t know he was a living thing, and he wasn’t wearing clothes, I’d wonder if he was a statue.

I bite down hard on my lip to stop myself from thinking about him without clothes .

As if I haven’t already.

Cal hums a disagreeable sound. “It can be unpredictable.”

“Maybe I don’t mind that,” I murmur, looking back out to the horizon. “Maybe I’ve had too much of predictable. Maybe I need something a little more capricious.”

His breath pauses. “No. I don’t think you do.”

Something in me folds tight at the center. So tight it hurts, actually. I glare out at the ugly, gray sea. “You have no idea what I need.”

“No,” he agrees. “So tell me.”

I don’t know either. That’s the problem.

“I need to be alone,” I say. My voice shakes. I dig my fingers into my arms, leaving white fingertip grip stains. “How about this? I respect your boundaries. You respect mine. Okay?”

He doesn’t move. I grit my teeth, then launch upright so fast I sway a little on the uneven rock. I was right—my ass is soaked through the seat of my jeans.

I stomp up to him and jab a finger into the center of his chest, which is stupidly firm under my touch, but we’re not dwelling on that. He doesn’t deserve it when he’s pissing me off like this. “Are you hard of hearing or just stupid?”

He quirks a dark brow. “Neither.”

“Then what part of this do you not understand?” I snap. “Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”

“No.” His voice is firmer now, less patient, but still maddeningly even.

My whole body flushes with heat. I think I might be made of lava, at this point. “Why the hell not?”

He looks right at me, unblinking. Those dark gray eyes are as stormy as the sea, but they aren’t ugly at all, and for some reason that irritates me more. “You don’t want to be alone.”

I shove him. He barely moves.

“I don’t know what I want,” I yell. “But it’s not this!”

He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even raise his voice as he asks, “What would help?”

My breath hitches hard in my chest. I’m breathing too fast. My hands clench, and tears sting the backs of my eyes even though I don’t want them there. I press my fingers hard into his chest again and again and it’s not enough. Nothing’s enough, even when I’m almost clawing at him.

“I don’t know ,” I say, almost choking on it. “I don’t know, I just—”

I shove him again, but this time his arms move. They wrap around me, quick and warm and unshakably strong. He pulls me into his chest like I weigh nothing. My face presses into the front of his hoodie, damp in the humid air and smelling of salt.

The panic goes quiet. All the pressure in my ribs just… lets go. His arms tighten slightly. Just enough to tell me I’m not going anywhere. His hand comes up, slow and sure, brushing over the back of my head.

“ This ,” he murmurs, low and soft, “is making you feel better.”

I let out something between a laugh and a sob. “Well, I’m not immune to a good cuddle.”

He exhales against my temple and holds me tighter. For a moment, I forget how to be sharp.

But then something shifts—not in me, in him.

His body tenses, but it isn’t restraint.

It’s more like something underneath all of this pulling uncomfortably taut.

The air is suddenly oppressively warm and wet.

My skin prickles where it touches his, and a pressure at my lower back pulses once, like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to either of us.

Cal jolts like I’ve poked him with a cattle prod, letting me go all at once and stepping back fast. His hands flex at his sides, and he dips his chin, refusing to meet my eyes.

“I shouldn’t—” he starts, then cuts himself off. “I’m sorry.”

He turns before I can say anything, shoulders tight and posture uneven. Then he’s gone, leaving the space around me humming, and my insides humming even louder.

I don’t plan to follow him, but my feet move anyway.

The beach is behind me, but the wind sting clings to my skin.

My chest feels hollow and overfull all at once.

I tell myself I’m just going back to the attic—that I’m not following the broad line of his shoulders or the storm still rippling beneath his skin, because for some reason I can feel it too.

But my steps stop abruptly in the hall instead of going for the stairs, and I let them.

I let myself linger at the bait shop door.

Then I let myself push it open.

The hinges creak open with a reluctant whine. The shop is dim, so for a second, I think he isn’t in here. The tank in the back casts an eerie green glow through the gloom, pulsing soft and alive.

Then I hear movement behind the partition. Not loud. Just a kind of wet slap, saturated fabric or water rippling somehow, even though it shouldn’t be possible, because the tank is nowhere near. There’s a low, muffled noise like someone breathing too hard or not enough, or possibly both.

“Cal?” I feel stupid for calling out for him, and for following him. Like I wasn’t the one who stormed off in the first place, then shoved him and yelled at him to get away from me.

There isn’t an answer, but the movement stills.

I take another step. Then another. My boots don’t make much noise over the worn wood floor untilI round the corner—then they squeak hard as I freeze.

He’s shirtless, his back to me, muscles taut and carved in hard shadow. The hoodie lies in a crumpled heap at his feet, soaked through again, somehow. I don’t know how, because it wasn’t raining.

His spine looks too long, the skin darker at the base, where it hits the waistband of his jeans, slick and wet with something I don’t think is water. Something that gleams blackly in the green light. Something that moves on its own.

It curls and disappears before I can process it. I blink once, hard. I’m about a hair away from physically rubbing my eyes. “Cal.”

He turns. His eyes aren’t gray. They’re liquid black. Deep and lightless and infinite.

We stare at each other.

I don’t move. My brain scrambles to make sense of what I’m seeing—the tension under his skin, the ripple of something not-human barely held in check. There’s a throb of heat low in my belly, a flicker of something that should be fear, but isn’t.

His gaze holds me, void-like and bottomless. He doesn’t say a word .

That’s when I bolt. Back out into the hall and up the stairs two at a time until the attic door slams behind me in the howling wind. I press my back to it and drag in the fractured breath that chased me up here.

I don’t know what I saw, but whatever it was, it wasn’t real. There’s no way. It was the light, the storm, that weird as fuck dream still clinging to the back of my eyes.

It wasn’t real, whatever it was. It can’t be.