Page 34 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

“You have no idea.” Lilian smiled. “It will be fun, though. We haven’t all had the chance to hang out together in a long time.”

“And we get to be fancy ,” said Angie. “Wear something that absolutely murders her.”

“We’ll see.”

“No, we’ll see,” said Stormy, casting Angie a conspiratorial look. “Send pictures. We’ll tell you which to choose.”

“And can I borrow a dress?” asked Angie.

“Why, anyone you want to murder?” Stormy asked her.

“I don’t need a dress to do that.” She leaned back in her chair, not needing to feign the self-satisfaction dripping from her voice.

“No you don’t, girl. Things are good, then?” Stormy raised a meaningful eyebrow.

“I’m always good.” Stevie had told her she was a good girl. She shivered.

“Good,” said Lilian in a tone that was a bit too neutral to be genuine.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Angie pressed, like an idiot.

There was a reason she hadn’t wanted her friends to know what she and Stevie had arranged even if they knew there were feelings involved on both sides.

Everyone knew, but if they suspected she and Stevie were involved in reality, they’d have expectations.

Stevie would have expectations. And when Angie let them all down, she’d lose everything.

Maybe she should tell her friends so they could talk her out of this.

She eyed them. These were the two people she trusted more than anyone else in the world—except Stevie.

But even they could not talk her out of things now.

She curled her toes in her shoes to keep from fidgeting.

Stevie, filling her completely. Completing her.

Quite unexpectedly she wanted to cry again.

“I was worried it might be, um, lonely in the house,” said Lilian. “Just you and Stevie.”

“Guilty conscience?” Angie tried to play the conversation off.

“Do you two just make the absolute worst jokes all day now?” Stormy asked.

“Pretty much.”

Lilian snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. The island house has five bedrooms. Six, technically, but that room is tiny and barely fits a crib.”

“The house was designed for us.” Stormy counted off on her fingers.

The way Lilian was looking at Angie, however, told her where this conversation was going.

She tried to pull her attention back to the present instead of lingering on how it had felt to fall asleep tangled up in Stevie and wake, watching Stevie’s sleeping face until the early morning sunlight roused her.

“One of the bedrooms is Ivy’s parents’, though, and they don’t like when other people use it. Someone will have to share.”

“Are you saying . . .” Stormy adopted a dramatic whisper, “there is only one bed ?”

Only one bed again ? Was the universe toying with her?

“Technically no. One of the rooms has a king that’s made up of two twins, so we’ll pull those apart. Do you mind bunking with Stevie, Angie? Or Stormy?”

“Or Stevie and Stormy,” said Angie, “and I get my own suite.”

“No offense to your girl, but I am not sharing with her,” Stormy said. “Or you.”

“Wow. That hurt. I don’t even snore.” Your girl . She didn’t hate the way that sounded.

“It’s not the snoring.”

“I won’t sleep naked.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” said Stormy. “Not that I mind, aesthetically speaking.”

“So you’ll share with Stevie?” asked Lilian.

“Only if Stormy tells me why she won’t share a room with me .”

Stormy appraised her with a perfectly manicured brow and sipped from her mug. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

“Oh, but now I have to know.” She wasn’t actually offended, but her curiosity was piqued, and an anxious little voice in her mind wondered what she’d done wrong.

“Angie, love, I mean this with all the love in my heart, but you talk in your sleep, and the things you say are filthy .”

Angie waggled her eyebrows. “Was I calling out your mom’s name again?”

“There were names.”

“I can’t control what I dream about.” She tried to wipe away the defensive note in her voice. Stormy was teasing her good-naturedly. It wasn’t her friends’ fault she was an emotional teeter-totter, especially after her confrontation with Lana.

“I’m not judging.”

“And you think Stevie wants to hear that?” Angie asked.

“Depends on the name,” said Lilian, slyly.

“Don’t even.”

The conversation drifted away from dating and turned toward the facts of their lives.

She considered telling them about her roofing dilemma, but as always something stopped up her throat.

She thought, too, of Stormy’s comment. Was she teasing, or had Angie actually had a sex dream the last time she fell asleep on Stormy’s couch? Worse, had it been about Stevie?

The good ones usually were. The bad ones invariably featured her exes, and the worst featured family and friends, people she had thought she could trust.

She didn’t need a therapist to analyze those.

There were reasons why she had not kept in touch with most of her old friends, and there were reasons, darker still, why she spent as little time as possible with her family.

She didn’t need nor want to be thinking about the past. True, she could not control her dreams, or the occasional intrusive thought, but she’d gotten pretty damn good at suppression over the years.

Besides, the upcoming weekend had just become a lot more interesting.

An image of Stevie fucking her with a quieting hand over her mouth washed away the momentary insecurity brought on by Stormy’s words and washed away, too, the slick, oily feeling of half-glimpsed trauma.

She took another sip of her drink. It had cooled beyond her preference.

She drank it anyway.

Stevie fiddled with a piece of broccoli, ostensibly helping Angie prepare a salad for dinner, but in reality sitting on the counter next to the cutting board.

Angie’s phone sat beside her. Stevie’s eyes kept returning to the screen, which periodically lit up with notifications.

That fucking photo. Could she live without knowing?

And what would she do if Angie had sent that photo?

She didn’t know. Three days had passed since the incident with Lana, and despite her best efforts she had not been able to forget about it.

Nor had they had sex. Angie seemed determined to either teach Stevie a lesson or murder her.

She wasn’t sure which. The combination of lust, suspicion, and hurt made her stomach ache.

“Are you going to chop the broccoli or play with it?” Angie plucked the stem from Stevie’s fingers and nestled into the space between Stevie’s legs where they hung off the counter, waving the broccoli in front of her face.

Stevie snapped her teeth at it, a smile coming on even with the stomach ache.

“Is playing with it an option? You ever have to make those dioramas in school, where everyone used broccoli as trees and it was a huge waste of food?”

“Probably.”

“Mine had a volcano. Vinegar and baking soda, baby. And food coloring. It was awesome.”

Angie held the vegetable in front of Stevie’s lips. She ate it obediently, cheeks bulging, wishing that she had chopped the pieces into more manageable sizes and that Angie’s fingers had lingered.

“Slaughtering innocents.”

“They had it coming,” Stevie said, though the words came out garbled. She chewed a few more times and swallowed. “I had some tiny dinosaur figurines I added, and some of my brothers’ army men. The dinosaurs survived.”

“I love you,” Angie said easily, then stilled. Her tone had been the sort she reserved for friends, the way she might tell Stormy or Lilian she loved them: affectionate and amused. She’d told Stevie the same a thousand times, but things were different now.

“I know what you meant,” said Stevie.

“I just . . .”

“Hey, do you know what you should do right now?” Stevie waited for Angie to look up before continuing, not wanting to pursue this particular topic for a moment longer. When Angie did, Stevie cupped her cheek.

“This?” Angie took Stevie’s hand and drew her thumb into her mouth. Stevie’s body, charged with several days’ worth of direst need, lit up along every neuron.

Stevie groaned. “Not what I was going to say, but that’s a much better idea.”

“Too bad I have to make dinner.” Angie nipped her thumb and released her. “Can you read the recipe to me? It’s on my phone. Here.”

Stevie accepted the unlocked phone with a nasty kick to her ribs that might have come from her heart or the universe. The recipe was pulled up on the screen. She read off the first line.

“’Of all the salads I’ve made over the years, only one screams ‘summer’ as loudly as . . .’ Is this one of those long introductions that turns into someone’s life story and you have to scroll for a million years until you get to the recipe?”

“Press the ‘jump to recipe’ option up top.”

“I don’t see it. Oh. Okay, here we go. What part do you need?”

“The vinaigrette dressing.”

Stevie listed the ingredients while Angie snatched them from the granite countertop and measured. All the while, the temptation to navigate away from the recipe to Angie’s messages grew stronger and stronger.

If she was wrong and the picture was old, she’d have betrayed Angie’s trust. If her fears were right and Angie had sent that picture after they’d started their .

. . arrangement, she’d have betrayed Angie’s trust and hurt herself in the process.

Looking was a lose-lose scenario, and yet .

. . Her thumb hovered. She read off the next instruction. Something about whisking.

She didn’t need to read any of the messages, just confirm the photograph. Angie could talk to whoever she wanted; Stevie couldn’t bear sharing her body. She couldn’t. The thought made her want to scratch off her skin like a reptile.

“Stevie?”

“Huh?”

“What next?”

“Actually, Ange . . .” She set the phone down and tried to breathe normally. There was still time to drop it. She didn’t need to drag them into this. Things were good, and that was what mattered. “Never mind.”

Angie set down the whisk and searched her face. Those hazel eyes were so lovely in the evening. “What’s up?”

“It’s not important.” Why, why, why had she said anything at all? She was such an idiot.

“Then tell me.”

In one breath, merging some of the words, she said, “Lana showed me a picture you’d sent her.”

Angie’s face paled. “What picture?”

“Just a topless shot. But she implied it was recent.”

“I have not sent her anything.”

“Okay.”

They stared at each other.

“I’m not trying to control you or anything,” Stevie began, “I just want to know if I’m—how invested I should let—” she broke off. “I’m not phrasing this right. It’s your body. I know that.”

Angie picked up the phone. Her thumb flew across the screen, and then she was standing beside Stevie, scrolling through her messages with Lana.

“You don’t need to show me,” Stevie said, feeling shittier and shittier.

“This one?” Angie paused and flashed the screen at Stevie.

“Yup.” Resisting the need to curl in on herself was taking supreme willpower. “Ange—”

“May thirteenth,” Angie read, and flipped the phone for Stevie to confirm. She saw the time stamp. Relief poured down her spine.

“You really didn’t need to. I trust you. I would have believed you.”

Angie shoved the phone into her pocket, and Stevie read the suppressed anger in the motion. “That’s not true.”

“Have you ever lied to me?” Stevie asked Angie. “About something big?”

“Yes.”

Stevie flinched. “I haven’t lied to you.”

“I’ve lied to protect you, you idiot.” The last was said tenderly, and Angie approached her, anger dissipating.

“Protect me from what?”

When Angie didn’t answer and held her gaze, however, she knew. Angie had lied about things like this before they’d started not-dating. Where Angie was at night, what she did, what she let Lana and people like Lana do to her.

“Me, obviously.” Angie’s hands slid up Stevie’s thighs with the words. “Every time I didn’t touch you when I wanted to.”

Or . . . that.

She wrapped her legs around Angie and drew her closer, not caring suddenly that Lana had touched Angie. Right now, in this moment, Angie was hers.