Page 8 of Windlass

Still, Angie’s body responded, and as Lana’s nails claimed each rib, pain tinging the edges of arousal, she closed her eyes and let the dark, wet heat of oblivion wash over her.

She’d met Lana at a farmer’s market, of all places, innocuous and wholesome, and in sharp contrast to the way Lana had looked at her across the gap between vendors’ stalls. Lana had been with another girl—she was always with another girl—but when Angie was walking back to her car, past the rusting park benches and the couples lounging with their dogs, a hand had touched her forearm.

When she’d spun around, Lana had been waiting, hands now shoved in her jean pockets, looking at her from beneath the brim of her snapback, a knowing smirk on her lips. Angie, who always had a pen on her in case she saw something she wanted to sketch, stepped into Lana’s guard and wrote her number on the exposed skin of Lana’s wrist. They’d not spoken a single word to each other, but when her phone buzzed with an unknown number two days later, she’d known, just as she had at the market. Void called to void.

Now, Lana pinned Angie’s arm behind her back, pressing Angie’s face against the door as Lana bit the muscle where her neck met her shoulder. She stifled a sound. Stevie was somewhere on the other side of that door. Cruelty was one thing, salt in the wound another.

Lana bit harder. This time she gasped, Lana’s teeth not quite breaking skin, and she hated herself for her body’s immediate answer. Need rippled out from Lana’s bite. Need, and with it the permissions she did not grant herself lightly: to feel, to weep, towant.

She pictured Stevie standing on the other side of the door, listening with that same terrible expression—perhaps resting her forehead opposite Angie’s. Lana’s teeth found her shoulder blade and scraped along it. The moan that sensation ripped out of her throat would have carried easily through wood. Stevie could have heard every breathy second of it.

The thought of Stevie listening to Lana fuck her horrified Angie. She also couldn’t deny the slick heat gathering between her legs as she imagined Stevie standing inches away, unable to move, pinned in place by Angie’s voice. Would Stevie want her then, despite herself? Sometimes she wondered if she kept Lana around because only in these moments, safe in the sanctity of pain, could she let herself imagine Stevie on her knees, Angie’s leg around her shoulder, Stevie’s tongue deep inside her as she said without words, finally, the thing that had lain unspoken between them for years.

If Stevie knew—if she had any idea that the only way Angie could come was by silently screaming her name—

Lana’s jaws clamped down like a cat with a kitten. Like a kitten, she made a mewling sound, the arm twisted behind her back straining painfully in the socket, her free hand pressed flat against the door in supplication.

Stevie, she mouthed silently. The wood tasted like dust.

Stevie’s headphones could only do so much. They blocked sound, yes, but did nothing for her imagination as she sat curled up on Morgan’s window seat staring out at the stars. Angry rock music blasted her eardrums. She did not take in a word.

If only she could be sick. Shefeltsick. Her stomach twisted and cold sweat prickled her hairline while the rest of her flushed hot and cold in time to her heart’s vicious rhythm.

She always hated seeing Lana’s ugly mug. Why did this time, though, feel so much worse? It wasn’t like she’d expected Angie would drop Lana merely because Morgan had moved out. That logic made no sense. Yet,hadshe expected it? Had some part of her hoped Angie would forget about Lana just because it would be easier for Stevie since she’d never dealt well with Lana’s presence even with Morgan and Lilian around to act as buffers—and restraints? If she had, she was an idiot. No, it wasn’t cool that Lana was at their house, especially on a day they normally spent together, but Stevie didn’t own Angie’s time. Angie dealt with things in her own way. If Lana was how she wanted to deal with Morgan’s departure, that was her choice, even if it was clearly the wrong choice.

It certainly proved one thing: the previous night had been in Stevie’s head. They hadnotalmost kissed. That was wishful thinking or, worse, she’d made it awkward with her one-sided attraction, and Angie needed to wash the taste out of her mouth with a stinking cup of Lana.

She could call Morgan. No—then Morgan might feel guilty about moving, and Morgan deserved happiness and at least a week unmolested before Stevie started giving her a hard time.

She could and would get through this on her own. It would be fine. Itwasfine.

It was not fine.

She stood with angry haste and walked to the door, throwing it open. Her music drowned out any other sounds as she walked down the hall to the stairs, which had the misfortune of being located right by the back two bedrooms. She tried to move swiftly and quietly. The song ended, however, before she could fully round the landing, and in that silence, she heard the thud of bodies moving against the door. She tripped. Caught herself. Half-wished she hadn’t. A tumble down the stairs sounded pretty damn good. At least she’d have Angie’s attention.

No, Stevie was notthatpathetic. They could at least have done her the courtesy of making it to the bed, though.

Yet even as angry as she was at Lana and, if she was honest with herself, Angie, fair or not, she couldn’t stop herself from pausing. Lana was dangerous.I’m here for you, she willed Angie to feel.I hate you right now, but I’m here.

She caught the first note of a moan before her music started back up. It followed her out of the house and across the yard to the barn, then up to the loft, where she ducked beneath the railing that separated the open space over the stalls, and balanced on the wooden beam above Olive. When she got to the place where one beam perpendicularly met another, she sat, headphones around her neck, and listened instead to the calming sounds of horses browsing on hay and shifting their weight from hoof to hoof. Tears tracked silently down her cheeks.

She needed to grow up and get over Angela Rhodes.

Morgan glanced over at her for the seventh time as they drove to their first appointment.

“What?” Stevie said, not bothering to soften the word. Morgan grimaced.

“Do you . . . want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” And there wasn’t. There really fucking wasn’t.

“Just checking.”

“Well, don’t.” Stevie crossed her arms over her chest, aware it made her look like a petulant child, but needing the protection around her ribcage. Morgan switched off the radio.

Bad sign. Very bad sign.

“I’m not going to talk about it,” she said to forestall whatever Morgan was about to say. “I can’t, and you don’t need to deal with my bullshit.”

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