Page 40 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

The blunt question, though gently asked, raised Stevie’s hackles, but Ivy’s gaze was direct and honest. Under this scrutiny, something in Stevie broke.

No, she did not think Angie was incapable of a real relationship.

Quite the opposite. But none of that mattered if Angie didn’t believe it herself.

The livid bite marks on Angie’s arm were proof enough.

Self-inflicted, she’d said, and the angle was right for the explanation.

She’d seen marks like that on Angie before when Lana had not been around.

“Aren’t we all?” she asked Ivy in return.

“Doesn’t stop most of us from trying.”

Which was all Stevie wanted: the opportunity to try, to show Angie that if she could just let herself be loved .

. . What? Love and time would heal all wounds?

She wasn’t that naive. Love and therapy and time made wounds manageable, or at least that had been her observation.

She’d been to counseling a few times herself when it was available with her tuition.

Yeah, she’d hated it, but also, yeah, it had helped.

She’d never told that to any of her friends, though, which proved the actual status of her enlightenment.

Maybe she should tell Angie.

“Everyone’s fucked up in their own way, though.

” Stevie needed to stop talking. She’d promised Angie she wouldn’t tell any of their friends, and here she was, hedging around the truth with Ivy of all people.

“I know she’s trying to protect me. She thinks labels—I actually don’t know what she thinks about labels, but . . .”

Out it came. Ivy listened calmly to the flood, quiet until Stevie finished with, “. . . but I’m going to get hurt either way, and I wish she’d just fucking try. At least then I won’t always wonder what could have happened.”

“You’re not wrong. The wondering is awful.” Ivy’s grimace suggested personal experience.

“You can’t tell anyone, though. Especially not Lil. I promised Angie.”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll ruin your proposal with a flock of seagulls.”

“Unnecessary. You have my word.”

Stevie believed her, which did not ease the panic. She wished she could cram the words all back in her mouth, her cheeks expanding like a chipmunk’s.

“Stevie . . .” Ivy, perhaps sensing her panic, squeezed her wrist gently. Her fingers were cold. Poor circulation, Stevie remembered dully. “We can’t fix other people. But you can be there for her. Just make sure you’ve got someone there for you, too.”

“I’ve got Marvin and Olive,” she said, meaning it.

“Don’t forget about me either.”

The sincerity made her squirm, and she looked away from Ivy’s emerald eyes. She hadn’t been kidding about matching the stone. “Thanks.”

“How much do you hate these kinds of conversations?”

Stevie, hearing the smile in Ivy’s voice, deflated with a sigh of relief. “So much.”

“Let’s ride then.”

“Thank god. You up for it?” She nodded at Ivy’s hand.

“Only one way to find out, and I’d rather walk Freddie than nothing at all. I’ll let you know, though. Buddy system.”

The implication was obvious: should Stevie need it Ivy was there for her, too.

“Okay then, buddy. Let’s ride.” Something occurred to her. “Will the ring be done on time? Aren’t we going to the island in, like, two weeks?”

“It will be done.”

Stevie supposed if one had the money to pay for it, almost anything was possible. She thought with a throb of guilt of Angie’s roof and the other maintenance the house needed. Money didn’t solve everything, but it did make living a hell of a lot less stressful.

“One more thing.” Ivy paused at the tack room door, her eyes on Jaq’s sweatshirt, which hung from a hook. “See if you can get a look at Jaq’s wrists. I thought I saw a bruise the other day during our lesson, but she wears all those bracelets so I couldn’t tell.”

“A bruise? What kind of bruise?”

“Fingerprints.”

The watercolor pigment bled across the paper, following the wet streaks left by her brush. She added more red to the horizon line. Sunrise. Pain didn’t change the sky.

She closed her eyes on the sudden flinch of memory, ducking away before it could spread like her paint.

Three days since her slip with Lana. The guilt hadn’t lessened, or the unease that stained everything for weeks after a trigger—the reminder that nowhere was ever truly safe.

People needed the illusion of safety for sanity.

Angie needed that illusion. But memory was like a fish, darting up out of the dark.

Angie rinsed her brush and set it aside, pushing back from the desk, which she’d found in the back of the barn when she’d first inherited the place.

She’d sanded the desk down and stained the wood, but some of the old marks of use remained.

She liked to think it had been her great-aunt’s, though in truth it could have belonged to anyone in the family.

Her phone lay face up on the surface. Two new messages from Lana sat unread, but she hadn’t cleared them yet.

LP: You all good?

LP: Thought you said you weren’t ghosting me.

Guilt urged her fingers toward the phone again. Stevie wouldn’t think Lana deserved a response. None of her friends would, but Lana . . .

If Lana was a monster, then so was Angie, for Lana was the other side of the same bitter coin.

She typed I’m sorry and deleted it several times. Lana wouldn’t be watching the dots. She would have put her phone down, returning to whatever, or whoever, she was doing. Lana didn’t know Angie was typing. She had time.

AR: I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch about this. I’m okay. Thank you for the other day.

It was too easy to picture Stevie reading that message and getting the wrong idea, not that Stevie would go through her phone. She tried again.

AR: I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch. I’m okay now. Thank you for talking me down.

Predictably her phone buzzed swiftly.

LP: We should hang

Her sigh ruffled the papers on her desk. Discovering Lana was capable of feeling certainly didn’t preclude her from being a douche.

AR: I meant it when I said I can’t. Please take care of yourself, though.

Lana didn’t respond for a solid twenty minutes, which was something of a record. Dread pumped through her veins. Lana could be vicious when she didn’t get her way.

LP: Fuck you too

Pause. She waited for a block text of diatribe telling her all the ways she’d regret this, how she’d never find anyone who fucked her like Lana, blah blah blah, some swearing and promises that she’d be back.

The text came in. She considered deleting it unread, then remembered Lana’s hurt, scornful words: You can’t just ghost people .

Except she could apparently. And had. And it had been easy.

All this time, she’d thought she went to Lana because she, Angie, wanted to be hurt without hurting other people, but that had been a lie she’d told herself.

Had it felt good to ghost Lana? Had there been release in swiping away her messages unread, no explanation, leaving Lana wondering what she’d done to deserve that hurt?

As Angie had often wondered what she’d done to deserve the hurts she used Lana to excise?

Yes, Lana was an asshole. No, Angie did not love her.

The ease with which she’d put Lana aside, though, sent a chill through her stomach.

The void had swallowed another person whole and found no satiety.

She did not want to be that person. Heart pounding, she opened the message.

LP: Stevie? Seriously?

The dread morphed into a relieved anger so sudden and intense she struggled to breathe around the space it took up in her chest. There was still time for Lana to lash out, but the reprieve was welcome however momentary.

A squabble over Stevie was manageable. Lana knew Angie well enough to hurt her badly if she wanted to, and she had chosen restraint even if Angie did not deserve it.

What had Lana said about Stevie? Maybe she’ll like being used?

That wasn’t what Angie was doing with Stevie. Her fingers flew across the screen as she responded in kind.

AR: Yes, Stevie. So? You still with that Bridget girl?

Poor, dumb, pretty Bridget. Lana had described her as the base model for blonde jokes. Gorgeous, though. Angie had seen pictures of her on Lana’s socials, gazing at Lana in adoration.

Adoration made Lana shut down. Angie knew this, and it struck her, as she sat there staring at her phone, that there was a possibility she knew Lana better than any of the other women Lana dated, at least in some regards.

And maybe Lana knew Angie, too. Bodies revealed certain truths under pressure.

Lana fucked like someone trying to murder their ghosts.

Angie had been willing to stand in for one, hoping Lana could kill some of hers, too.

That wasn’t nothing. This was an ending.

Angie should feel something besides emptiness.

LP: Let me know when she gets tired of your bullshit.

LP: Think she’ll stick around when you step out on her?

AR: Like you step out on Bridget?

LP: No.

LP: Like how you fucking hit and run

Angie blocked her.

God, she wanted to hit something. Biting her lip until the skin tasted faintly of copper, as it did right before it split, she stared at the walls of her room until her vision buzzed with the effort of keeping her temper in check.

It wasn’t that she had a temper, exactly. It was that on the rare occasions when she did get angry, it erupted, and everything she’d tamped down since the last time she’d lit up came with it.

Lighting up. That would help. She fumbled around her desk until she found her pipe and a jar of weed grown by Stormy’s brewer, and she curled up in the chair by her window.

It took off the edge. She listened to the wind in the evening sky and traced the patterns of the barn swallows against the fading blue. Then she texted Stevie.

AR: Morgan can’t keep you out of my bed forever

She took another hit while she waited for Stevie to reply. Her hands shook. If she narrowed her world to this, weed and Stevie, she could handle it.

SW: Should I tell Morgan you’re threatening her?

AR: Any more cases?

SW: Why, want something?

AR: Presumptuous much?

Yes. She did. Desperately. Not in the way she usually wanted Lana, but— She fumbled the bowl and set it down before she dropped it. Was it in the way she usually used Lana? Pressure beat at her temples.

SW: Always making an ass of you and me. Or maybe just your ass. Can I assume your ass?

Stevie’s lame joke cracked a smile on her face, breaking the rising flood of panic. This was Stevie. Angie always wanted Stevie. If occasionally it was for the wrong reasons was that really such a problem?

AR: You tell me

SW: You show me

Easy enough. She scrolled through the photos on her phone and sent one she knew would crack Stevie up: a shot of some baby donkeys Stevie had sent her a few months ago.

SW: I can’t even be mad, look how cute they are

Slowly, her face relaxed and then her shoulders relaxed until the feeling of spinning dangerously out of control diminished.

If she told Stevie about what had happened at Stormy’s, would she freak out?

Angie wouldn’t blame her after the bullshit with the picture Lana had shown Stevie.

Honestly, she really needed to stop sending compromising pictures to people who wouldn’t hesitate to use them against her.

Or would Stevie understand even if it hurt?

What would she say? “I ran into Lana at Stormy’s and had a bit of a meltdown” didn’t quite sum up events. It wasn’t like she’d sought out Lana. Lana had found her.

Lana wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Angie had reached for Lana in that moment of blind panic, and if Lana hadn’t turned her down out of disgust, Angie would have betrayed the one real thing Stevie had asked of her.

She’d wait for now. Stevie didn’t need to know the depths of her instability. Nothing had happened so it wasn’t a lie. (It was a lie, and she’d deal with it, but not tonight.)

Lighting up again, she closed her eyes, imagining how Stevie might wake her up when she got in at last. No doubt she’d try to be quiet, something Marvin made impossible, and Angie would pretend to be asleep until Stevie was beneath the sheets and she could pull her close, perhaps too tired to do more than cuddle or perhaps not.

It was hard to count late at night when rules were already made flexible by darkness.

Smoke rose in a thin tendril out the window.

No, getting high was not the best coping mechanism, but as she rubbed the bruise on her arm she congratulated herself on at least abstaining from more self-harm.

If only Stevie were home now . She never felt like this with Stevie around.

AR: Wanna hear a dirty joke

SW: Filthily

They exchanged dirt puns until Angie gave up, and by the time she rose, stretched, and prepared to feed Marvin and James their dinners she was smiling.