Page 3 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

The next day, Angie stripped the damp wraps from her hands and tossed them into the bin of workout equipment she kept in the barn. The punching bag hung in the hayloft, where she used it to blow off steam—and speaking of steam, it felt like the air up there was thick enough to cut with a machete.

The loft trapped heat even with the hay doors open and an industrial fan blowing directly over her workout mat.

She liked to say it was like hot yoga, but free.

The space boasted the added benefit of not being in the house, and not being in the house meant that she did not have to see Stevie.

She wiped a sweaty forearm over her forehead, grimacing as wet skin slid over wet skin.

Her sports bra and workout shorts were equally wet. They really needed to install an outdoor shower before summer got much further underway. Stevie could use it after work or after a long session with Olive, her horse, and Angie could use it whenever the hell she wanted.

She dried the worst of the sweat off and left the towel around her neck while she assessed her body. Her wrists ached a little from her routine. Had she gone too hard, or just too long? Immediately, she heard Stevie’s voice in her head say, That’s what she said .

She smiled. Then she remembered the evening before, and the smile died.

Her chest twinged uneasily at the thought of going back inside, even with the promise of a shower.

Instead, she walked to the window of the hayloft and sat, legs dangling over the edge.

The wood scraped pleasantly against the back of her thighs.

Outside, the apple trees in the orchard had just finished blooming, but she imagined a hint of their sweet fragrance as the breeze blew through the new green leaves of late June.

Olive grazed in the pasture, flaxen tail swishing to ward off flies.

Leave it to Stevie to find a horse with hair that matched her own.

Her fingers itched with the need, omnipresent and oppressive, to run her fingers through Stevie’s smooth blond locks.

Every once in a while, Angie was able to convince Stevie to let her do something different than a ponytail.

Sometimes she’d braid Stevie’s hair, Stevie sitting at her feet while they watched stupid B-list sci-fi films, and sometimes she’d wheedle Stevie into letting her run a straightener through it.

Stevie whined, but Angie knew she secretly loved every second, even if she didn’t really care about the outcome.

Her chest twinged again. She bit her lip, testing the edge of her teeth against the skin right up until the point before her lip split. It helped a little. A swallow darted over her head with a flutter of wings.

The morning had been fine. Neither of them was morning people.

They exchanged cordial grunts and appreciative sighs when the coffee announced it was done brewing with its chipper beep.

Stevie had errands to run, and Angie had paperwork to catch up on in her barn office, which gave them purpose and an excuse not to deal with the elephant that had taken up residence in her house in Morgan’s absence.

Now, though, she strained for the sound of tires on gravel and the slam of a car door announcing Stevie’s return, but only heard the bark of the dogs boarding for the weekend.

Angie’s dog daycare and boarding facility, a satellite of the veterinary clinic, was closed Sundays, and she handled the feeding and morning play hour by herself.

That still left plenty of time to hang out with Stevie, which is what she usually did on Sundays.

Neither of them had mentioned plans for later before they parted ways today.

I hate this .

The thought was vicious and swift, and her eyes stung.

An emotion she’d never really had a name for yawned like an abyss inside her chest—a pure, dark, agonizing need, distilled into nothingness, impossible to fill and always hungry.

She stared at the orchard. Her orchard. Her home.

When she inherited the property, she’d naively thought it would be enough, and when her friends moved in, surrounding her with loyalty and trust, she’d prayed they would replace her losses.

But unconditional love, she theorized on the nights she lay awake counting her sins, left behind a black hole when retracted.

She’d tried to fill it. Her twenties had been a wreck of bodies, of whispered endearments she’d never been able to return, until at last she stopped trying.

It wasn’t fair to her partners. Sex for sex’s sake was different.

It could, under the right circumstances, temporarily mimic satiety, or at least drive her far enough out of her body she no longer felt the pangs of hunger.

Fuck or flight: her two reactions.

There was enough pop psychology on her social feeds to tell her why she bolted.

Girl’s family betrays her; ergo, girl cannot let anyone else in ever again, even if she wants to.

The few times she’d come close had ended .

. . badly. A breakup over text. Ghosted messages.

Cheating. Being a complete piece of shit was better than the alternative apparently.

She would not feed Stevie to that void.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. A text from Stevie popped up, a meme referencing one of their inside jokes. Her lip quivered as she smiled.

Fucking hell .

She tapped out a reply, which was mostly GIFs. Words were too hard. Her blood raced beneath her skin. She would have ripped free of it all were such a thing possible. Anything to get away from this torturous longing.

Instead, she opened a new message.

You free tonight? she asked Lana.

Yeah, came the near-immediate reply. Lana always had her phone on her, which was annoying in person, but convenient for emergencies.

Your place cool? she asked.

The dancing dots that indicated Lana was typing had time to complete a full routine before the reply finally arrived.

A friend is crashing at my place. I’ll come to u.

The “friend” part was probably a lie. More like some poor girl who hadn’t yet learned who she was sleeping with.

Now it was her turn to send the dots into a waltz.

As an unspoken rule, she didn’t have Lana over on her day off, or really ever if possible.

Days off were when she hung out with Stevie.

To break that rule after what had almost happened the night before would be tantamount to a slap in the face.

Only a truly deplorable asshole would do such a thing to their best friend, but if she didn’t, she would end up beneath Stevie, and then she’d ruin everything.

The void behind her ribs snarled. She closed her eyes, but that made it worse, because behind her eyes she was alone in the dark with the truth.

Stevie fiddled with her phone, not paying attention to the images and videos flying past with each flick of her thumb.

Marvin, her pit bull, lay stretched out on the couch beside her with his head in her lap and his eyes looking up at her with the kind of abject adoration that, as Morgan had once told her, only someone who did not understand puns could feel about Stevie.

She stroked a gentle line between his eyes with her free hand.

“Who’s my boy?”

I am , his expression replied, though that expression also telegraphed a desperate need for french fries and access to the cat’s litter box. She didn’t mind being on the same level as fries. Cat shit, on the other hand . . .

James, Angie’s excessively large and grumpy black Maine coon, studied her clinically from his perch on the back of the faux leather armchair by the game room bookshelf.

“You are not my boy,” she told him. He didn’t blink.

Truthfully, she and James had come to a truce some time ago; the antipathy was mostly for show on both counts.

He even deigned on occasion to sit next to her, so long as she did not make any overtures of friendship not initiated by him first. This was significantly more than he allowed most people.

Her own childhood cats had been friendly, affectionate creatures who warmed up quickly to strangers, but they’d led very different lives than James had.

Thinking about his story made her sad, so she didn’t. What she thought about instead wasn’t much better. Angie was so much like her cat it was laughable, except she didn’t feel like laughing.

Had something almost happened the night before? Had she imagined it?

Her stomach tightened with nerves. Angie was in the kitchen, but soon enough she’d venture into the game room.

That was okay. That was fine. They just needed to adjust to the reality of Morgan and Lilian’s departure and the new dynamic that void had created between them.

She’d suggest they play a game, and that would break the ice enough to maybe talk about the weirdness.

Or they could never talk about the weirdness. That was fine too.

Angie’s footsteps approached. Stevie looked up, the smile she’d prepared pinned to her face: bright, carefree, the comic relief people expected her to be. Angie’s answering smile was shaky, and she dropped her brown eyes quickly.

Stevie’s smile fell and died before it hit the ground.

“Wanna let me kick your ass?” she asked, nodding at the console tucked in the TV stand of their game room.

The main living room had felt too big and empty.

This room, with its deep couch and single armchair, the shelf behind it devoted to the books both she and Angie loved, as well as comics and other accoutrements of nerddom, was safe.

“I might draw, if that’s okay.” Angie pulled her sketchbook from the shelf behind her chair.

“What are you working on?” She refused to be daunted. They could get through this. They had to.

“Nothing much. Doodles really.”

“I like your doodles.”

“You’re my best friend. You have to like them.”

Still, she saw the smile Angie tried to hide.