Page 38 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

“Hey gorgeous.” Angie slid onto her preferred bar stool and blew Stormy a kiss.

The cafe was transitioning from a few evening coffee drinkers into the bar crowd, but the louder tables were outside in the courtyard Stormy had managed to build in the alley behind the shop, stringing lights, lobster pots, and plants to add a pleasant atmosphere and to hide the chipping paint and graying shingles on the backs of the houses along what passed for Main Street.

Inside, it was noisy enough that she couldn’t whisper.

“Lovebug!” Stormy brightened considerably. She looked tired. It was that time of year for them both. They exchanged a few snippets of local gossip while Stormy poured her a beer.

“Got any odd jobs by chance or know anyone who does?” The bills had piled up, and the roof was nowhere near fixed.

Stormy’s relaxed, if haggard, expression sharpened. “Maybe. You okay? Business okay?”

“Just some bills I want to get paid off.” It wasn’t a lie.

“I can ask around. You’re always welcome to pick up a shift here, but the pay is what it is.”

“Do you—” She stopped at the sudden shift in Stormy’s expression. It radiated displeasure. Angie turned to follow Stormy’s eyes and met Lana’s instead.

Well shit.

“I need to talk to you,” Lana said without preamble.

“What about asking?” said Stormy, furious electricity crackling from her hair in Angie’s imagination.

“Angie.” Lana ignored Stormy completely.

Her body glued itself to her stool. Lana’s eyes snapped, her cheeks stained with high color. She was angry and coldly beautiful, and Angie didn’t want her at all. Still, the tug of inevitability started in her chest and spread to her gut, thick and tarry.

“Have a seat then,” said Stormy.

“Mind your fucking business,” Lana snarled.

That broke Angie’s paralysis. “Watch it.” She slid off the stool and grabbed Lana’s arm.

“Ange—”

“I’m fine,” she said to Stormy. The last thing she needed was Lana causing a scene again. “Let’s go.”

She pulled Lana out of the cafe and toward the shore.

Seagulls screeched in the fading evening light.

She stopped walking when her feet hit the crunch of gravel near the boat launch and turned to face her ex-whatever-she-was.

The wind stirred Lana’s straight hair. She wished it would blow off her stupid hat.

“What the fuck, Angie?”

“I told you. I’m not available right now.”

“You told me that after I had to track you down,” Lana said. “You were just going to ghost me?”

“Like you haven’t done that to me.”

“I’ve never ghosted you.” Lana’s scathing reply was as close as she got to earnestness. It lit a match to Angie’s latent anger.

“You’ve left me on read. Taken a week to get back to me.”

“But I did get back to you.” Lana crossed her arms over her chest, which was not a gesture Angie was familiar with seeing on her frame. It made her look nearly vulnerable.

“Like you even care,” she shot back, her mouth full of sudden acrid guilt.

“That’s a fucked-up thing to say.” Lana’s tone was as harsh as the words, but it wavered. Angie shut her mouth on another snide reply and searched Lana’s face in surprise. Was that, hurt?

“Just go back to whoever else you’re fucking,” Angie said more gently. Why had Lana gone to the effort of tracking her down not once, but twice?

Lana looked away over the harbor, presenting Angie with her clean profile and her tense jaw. Wind stirred hair Angie had felt sweep over her body, fine and soft—unlike Lana.

“Lana,” she added, hesitantly resting a hand on Lana’s arm and expecting her to jerk away in anger. Lana didn’t. Instead her eyes cut back to Angie, angry, yes, but also bruised.

Her skin did not feel like Stevie’s.

“Fuck off,” said Lana.

“Hey—” Angie started.

Lana reached for her face, eyes on her mouth, ready to try to break Angie’s rule like usual.

“Stop.” Angie pulled away.

Lana stopped. That was always a coin toss. Her hand hovered by Angie’s neck, and Angie took it, enclosing it with her own.

Then she asked Lana something she’d never asked before. “Are you okay?”

Lana grimaced but didn’t answer. She might as well have shouted “No” across the water.

She knew Lana wouldn’t talk about whatever was bothering her.

That wasn’t what they were to each other.

You didn’t tell your punching bag your problems, and Lana was Angie’s bag just as much as she was Lana’s.

Angie just hadn’t thought Lana viewed her as anything more than a quick fuck and a pressure release: the valve that allowed her to date other women without hurting them the way she hurt Angie.

Angie wanted to be hurt. Lana’s girlfriends usually didn’t. She had never once considered that Lana might need her in any way beyond that.

“Hey.” Angie ignored Lana’s flinch at the gentleness in her voice. Not waiting to see how Lana would react, she hugged her, feeling that lean, hard body stiffen almost painfully as Lana held herself together before she at last melted around Angie. Lana allowed herself one shuddering breath.

“ Angie .”

The way Lana said her name told Angie everything she’d failed to see in the years they’d been using each other.

Lana was cold and often disrespectful and sometimes undeniably cruel, but she had shown Angie unwavering loyalty in her own way.

She’d been there almost every time Angie had needed her.

She’d hurt her during a scene, sometimes badly, but was her brusque aftercare the closest Lana ever came to sweetness? Did Lana actually care about her?

“I—” Angie didn’t know what to say.

“You can’t just fucking ghost people.” Lana regained her composure. “Not after four years. You owe me more than that.”

“I—” Again, she could not find a single word to follow.

“You what? Spit it out, Ange.”

“I—I didn’t know .”

“Didn’t know what ?” The anger in Lana’s voice offset the pain her eyes could not hide. Angie’s gaze couldn’t settle, staring at one of Lana’s eyes, then the other, then her mouth, hands, hair. She couldn’t breathe.

“I thought—” Her lungs were on fire. Lana waited for her to finish her sentence, impatience showing in the whiteness of her knuckles. What did Lana want? What would make this moment end so that she could be alone and far away from here? Haltingly, she managed, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry—Jesus Christ. Whatever, Angela. Go fuck your new toy. Maybe she’ll like feeling used.” With that, Lana stormed off, leaving Angie hyperventilating by the ocean.

The world was strange, overbright and loud, and at the same time miles and miles away.

A gust of the cool sea air hit her face once more like a welcome slap.

She dug her fingernails into the meat of her palms until she could duck into the shadow of a closed boutique’s alley and bite down on her arm until pain sparkled behind her unseeing eyes and the crushing pressure of her skin eased enough for her to breathe without screaming.

Most of the time she was able to keep these things locked in her chest. Nothing from that part of her past deserved to be examined. It was one of the many reasons she had no interest in therapy. Now, though, the lid wouldn’t shut. Whispers streamed out of the crack.

Was she as bad as—

Not as bad as him , but—

She hadn’t known that Lana—

She leaned forward, then slammed her head back against the brick wall hard enough to make her teeth clack in her jaw, bright red pain burning away the sensation of hands on her body.

The box, murmuring It’s not cheating on your aunt if I don’t kiss you.

Other times, like a hole in a dam, one leak blew it all wide open. Her jaw locked on a scream. She needed out. She needed out now. She needed—

Memory snapped at her heels. She tried to stop the flashback, but it barreled forward.

No one had believed Angie. She’d stood in front of her parents and begged them to make her uncle stop.

They’d blamed her . She’d gone to her parents with complete faith they would save her.

They were her parents. They loved her. Of course, they would protect her.

Of course, they would believe her and take her side.

No one was ever really safe to trust.

“Ange.”

She didn’t look up. The bricks opposite spun.

Lean arms folded her into a hug that was more vise grip than embrace. A hiccup of agonized relief escaped before the panic attack broke over her in a deluge. Lana hadn’t left. Lana was still here.

Lana pushed her against the wall with her hips, one hand cradling her head, the other hand over her mouth so she could scream aloud.

She did. Lana’s hands tasted familiar: a little bit of weed, hair spray, and salt.

When her throat was flayed and no more sound came out, Lana tucked Angie’s head beneath her chin and pulled her into a real hug—the kind of hug she only gave Angie after particularly rough sex: tender and a little dismissive, but present.

Or had it been dismissive? Had Lana simply not been comfortable showing real emotion?

Only when Angie’s breathing had held steady for several minutes did Lana pull away. Angie reached for her, still blind, her body seeking the oblivion Lana had provided so many times before.

Lana put her hand on Angie’s, which had fisted her shirt into a knot, and pried her fingers loose.

“Trauma makes you such a slut,” she said. “Come on. I’m not fucking you with snot on your face.”

She expected Lana to lead her to her car. The blast of light and sound as the door to the cafe swung open did not make sense at first.

“What did you do to her?” Stormy’s low, angry hiss penetrated the fog.

“Just keep a fucking eye on her.”

“I swear to—”

“Suck my dick. And put an ice pack on her head.”

Angie felt Lana’s departure as a pressure change. She half turned to follow, but Stormy called over her shoulder for someone in the kitchen to watch the till and bustled Angie out the back door and up the stairs to her apartment, where she sat down on Stormy’s vintage velvet couch.

“Baby girl, talk to me. Did she do that to your arm?”