Page 39 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

Angie looked down at the livid red marks, clearly teeth, scraped into her skin. The bruise would be unpleasant. She shook her head.

Stormy searched her face. Realization hit her with visible decisiveness. Rising, Stormy crossed to the kitchen of the small apartment and ran a dishrag under cold water, then grabbed an ice pack from her freezer. Angie accepted both, a few drops of water running down her wrists.

The cold brought her mostly back. Stormy crouched before her, hands on Angie’s knees, gazing at her with an aching tenderness Angie couldn’t bear. She closed her eyes and breathed.

“I’m okay now.”

“What happened? What did she do?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

Angie laughed, though in truth the English language lacked a word for the sound her body made. Laughter was its pale cousin, several times removed.

“She told me trauma makes me a slut.”

Stormy winced. “Bitch.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“Did you . . .” Stormy let the sentence hang awkwardly in the air.

Angie shook her head. The sting of rejection and shame prickled over her skin. And Stevie . . . She couldn’t think about Stevie yet.

“Okay then. Good.”

She did not tell Stormy that Lana had turned her down. She should have. It would have been one of the first times Lana had done something obviously laudable, but her throat was too tight to form the words.

She should tell Stormy Lana cared and that Angie had hurt her. Used her. Treated her like a thing instead of a person because Angie was fundamentally broken.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head again.

“That’s fine. I need to pop back in and see if Jenny can cover me until closing, and then I’ll be right back.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Angie croaked.

“Promise you’ll stay here?”

She nodded a third time.

“Let me get you a blanket. Lie down, love.”

Angie obeyed, the velvet of the couch soft on her bare arms and against her cheek. Stormy tucked a pillow beneath her head and draped a light blanket over her body, which curled in on itself, and planted a kiss on her temple.

“I’ve got you,” she promised, and then, like Lana, left.

Unlike Lana, Stormy returned. Or perhaps that was like Lana, for hadn’t Lana come back for Angie after all, guiding her through her panic attack as she’d done, she now realized, many times before?

Hadn’t Lana known on some level that Angie needed her, and broken off her furious exit to make sure Angie didn’t hurt herself?

Angie had cast Lana aside the moment she got what she really wanted.

She made room on the couch for Stormy, who carried a cup of herbal tea and her TV remote, which she used to put on reruns of a show they’d both enjoyed a few years back.

With Angie’s head in her lap and her nails gently scratching Angie’s scalp like she would a cat, Angie fell into something like sleep.

Her last coherent thought before waking was wondering how Stevie might look with that same hurt shining from her face.

“I’m really not the person you need on this,” Stevie said as Ivy ushered her into the tack stall and sat on her trunk, patting the polished wood.

“Sit.”

Stevie sat because Ivy wasn’t the sort of woman a person said no to unless they were willing to dig a few trenches around the hill they would probably die on. Stevie picked her battles.

“Just tell me which one seems most like Lil. Gut reaction.”

Stevie took the phone from Ivy, whose hand was noticeably shaking.

“Nervous much?”

“More like nerve pain.” Ivy rubbed the offending appendage. To herself more than to Stevie she added, “I should have grabbed a brace.”

“Flare?”

“I’m hoping not. Look at the rings.”

“Fine.” Stevie drew out the word as she brightened the screen and stared at the picture in front of her. “How many are there?”

“Five. Swipe left.”

Stevie swiped. She didn’t even attempt to keep a neutral expression. “What the . . . Ivy, could the price of these feed a developing nation?”

“Not important.”

“Kind of important,” said Stevie. “Lil thinks diamonds are evil.”

“Evil’s a stretch.”

“Is it?”

“Fine, maybe not. Don’t worry about the ethics.”

“Lil will worry about the ethics.”

Ivy ran her shaky hand through her hair and exhaled sharply. She was nervous even if that was not the reason for the tremors. Stevie almost felt bad for her. Normally she would have, but while she knew nothing about fancy jewelry, she could tell this was expensive.

“It’s—the diamond’s my grandmother’s. These are examples from the jeweler. It will be custom.”

“Naturally.”

Ivy leveled her with a look. Stevie grinned anyway.

“This is the original,” Ivy said, reaching over to swipe the screen.

“Grandmama must have had strong fingers,” Stevie said, awed. The size of the stones on that ring would sink her if she fell in a river while wearing it.

“Runs in the family.”

“Nice one,” said Stevie.

“You think I’m joking?”

“I would never impugn your sapphic sex organ.” Stevie crossed herself. “So what about all the other stones?”

“Sapphires and emeralds.”

“Emeralds because your name is Ivy, am I right?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of matching my eyes, you know when she reaches out and lovingly touches my face.” Ivy reached for Stevie with mock seduction and booped her nose. “Also, it would look nice with her skin tone.”

“And sapphire?”

“Because it’s classic. Both lab grown. The ones on the original ring are going to my sister.”

“So you do have ethics.”

“Not too many; don’t worry. What do you think?”

“You’re right that Lil’s a classic girl at heart,” Stevie said slowly.

Sweat pricked her armpits. She really, really was not the person to be asking about this.

Angie would know, or Stormy, or honestly even Morgan, because she at least had experience buying engagement rings even if her first fiancé had broken things off, but Stevie had no idea what to say.

When she’d thought about her own potential long-term partnerships, she hadn’t given much thought to this aspect. A ring was a ring, right?

Wrong, apparently. The options presented sparkled on the screen. She tried to sort through the differences: stone and band material? Shape of the stone? They were all lovely.

“Gut reaction.”

“My gut says, ‘Lil loves you, not a rock.’ But . . .” She swiped through again until she came to the simplest of the bunch, then swiped back to the first, noticing something.

The band, which she’d initially overlooked beside the large stone, twisted like vines.

Two emeralds nestled against the diamond like leaves. Lilian. Ivy. The Lily and the Ivy.

“That one.”

Ivy sagged beside her. “Thank god.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the one I thought she’d like.”

“Did you already order it?”

“What? No. I just—I’d like to think I know her, you know?”

Stevie abruptly, horribly, pictured hereself in Ivy’s position, looking at rings—but for a woman who would never say yes. In a voice that might have been normal, she said, “Makes sense.”

“And the band? Platinum? Gold?” asked Ivy.

“That’s on you. Whatever’s in the picture looks nice.” She handed the phone back to Ivy.

“You’re an angel.” Ivy flashed her a brilliant smile.

“Let’s not get crazy.”

Ivy looked like she was about to stand, but paused, staring at Stevie thoughtfully.

“Uh oh,” said Stevie. “What’s that look for? You promised you were done psychoanalyzing me.”

After a pause, Ivy said, “Lil told me not to ask you this.”

“Well, now you have to tell me.”

“What’s up with you and Angie?”

“What do you mean?” It was a lame response, and the raised eyebrow she received said as much.

“I’ve known you for, what, almost a year?” At Stevie’s shrug, she continued. “Something’s different.”

Dust had gathered on a pair of boots Stevie had left in the corner.

It accumulated quickly in the barn, sifting down from the rafters and blowing up with the wind.

Jaq could dust if she ran out of other chores.

She had no answer for Ivy. The lie she’d planned in case anyone asked had been good.

Only she couldn’t remember it now. She remained horrified by the image of standing before Angie with a ring, and Angie shaking her head no, tears in her eyes, but saying no all the same.

“Nothing.”

Ivy waited.

“Nothing serious,” she amended, which was the truth.

Angie hadn’t come home until late last night.

She’d been at Stormy’s watching a movie or something, or at least that was what she’d said in her text and confirmed this morning, but something about the way she’d said it had rung a distant alarm bell.

However, Angie had looped her fingers into Stevie’s belt loops, which she knew drove Stevie crazy, and dismissed Stevie’s doubts. They came back, now.

“Can I say something completely out of line?” Ivy asked. “And it is out of line. Stop me now if you’d prefer.”

“And not know what you were going to say? I’m incapable.” And sweating. Ivy’s “tough question” routine wouldn’t be out of place in an interrogation room.

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the cat, yes. I have nine lives. What terribly inappropriate thing are you going to lay on me, Dr. Holden? No Holden back.”

“Never heard that one before.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Are you sure?” Ivy asked. When Stevie nodded, Ivy continued, rubbing her shaking hand with her steadier one again. “Don’t waste time.”

“She’s not a waste of time.” The words were out before she could clock their implications.

“That’s not what I mean. Don’t do what I did with Lil. If you love her—”

Stevie held up a hand. “Nope, that’s enough.”

Ivy held her hands up, too, in a gesture of appeasement. A silence fell that was awkward on only one side; Ivy’s silence held only pity.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stevie heard herself say in a small voice. “She thinks she’s too fucked up for a real relationship.”

“Do you?”