Page 72 of Cold Foot Revenge
Maybe now this place could heal.
“You did good, Wolf Mask,” Dylan said, pulling her against his ribs.
“So did you,” she uttered on a breath. “Thank you for making me safe.”
The small smile was back just at the corners of his mouth. “Always.”
And she could hear it so clearly in his voice as he said that one-word oath.
Truth.
Chapter Eighteen
“You’re awfully quiet over there, Wolf Mask,” Dylan called from where he was wading in the shallows of the river with his niece holding on tight to his two index fingers. Garret was standing beside him, arms crossed and smiling down at baby Breah all dressed in her strawberry swimsuit. She would be walking on her own any day now.
“I’m enjoying the view,” she teased. Dylan did look extra hot today in his swim trunks, with his six pack out, and his skin all tanned from the summer sunshine.
For the past month since the end of the Grit-Bron Crew, she and Dylan had sought sanctuary in Wreck’s Mountains, living temporarily in Sasha’s rental next door to Tawk and his mate, Tammy.
“Dylan is right,” Raynah said from the folding chair beside her. She lowered her bright red sunglasses and gave Roxy a knowing look. “You’ve been quiet for a couple of weeks now. I keep waiting for you to talk about it, but I get it. You have a hard time trusting.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” she assured her friend. “I saw your crocodile death-rolling one of my enemies before you even met me. I trust you. I’m just…thinking a lot.”
“And worried that those thoughts will hurt Dylan?” Raynah guessed.
Roxy pursed her lips.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Whatever it is, Dylan is an understanding guy,” Timber said from the other side of Raynah, where she was laying on a towel. “Anyone who sees you two together can feel your bond.Keeping secrets will hurt you more than any truth could. Trust me.”
And you know? Roxy trusted Timber too. And Sasha, and Harley, and Katrina, and all of the members of the Cold Foot Crew. They had been so welcoming and warm, and accepting.
“I think I don’t know how to be normal anymore,” she admitted.
“Well, you’ve been through a lot,” Sasha said. “I think it’ll take a bit to settle into a steady life.”
“It’s not really that…”
“Girl, just spit it out,” Katrina said from where she was sitting in the shallow waves in a plastic chair, her feet up on a blue cooler.
“I feel like there is unfinished business. I feel far away from my Turn.”
“Have you talked to Crystal lately?”
“Every day, but it’s different being so far away. I don’t have a how-to book on how to be a Maker, but I feel like I’m doing this wrong.”
“I would probably feel the same,” Raynah said softly. “I get it. I imagine it would almost be like a maternal instinct. Those instincts are impossible to ignore if you’re a good woman, and you, Roxy, are a good woman.”
A sudden wave of warmth filled her, and she closed her eyes at how good that sounded. “How do you know?”
“Because you are here in paradise thinking about the people you left behind.”
Dylan glanced back at her, and his smile had faded, and his eyes held a softness that tugged at her heart.
He picked up Breah and pointed at Roxy, then he said something to the little girl, and they waved.
Heart full, Roxy waved back at them, but her eyes were burning as she smiled. Talking about this stuff was a floodgate to her.
