Page 61 of Crocodile Tears
After a satisfying meal, we blew up the air mattress and sat watching the storm through the windows. Peeks of moonlight were starting to appear as the rain died down.
“Sunrise will be beautiful,” Dove mused. “Nothing like a sunrise after a storm.”
I hummed, leaning my shoulder into her as I put my hands in my fleece pockets. There was something crinkly in there, like an old receipt. I ignored it as we kept watching the last flashes of lighting in the sky, but then suddenly, a horrifying realization dawned on me: it wasn’t crinkling under my fingers . . . it wasmoving.
“Gah!” I exclaimed as I pulled my hand out of my pocket to reveal a wolf spider clinging to my palm.
“What?” Dove screamed as I flung the spider across the room, and we both leapt up onto the cot.
“Ughhhh, it was hairy! Why was it so hairy?!” I shouted as Dove doubled over laughing and clutching her stomach.
“Oh my god, don’t do that,” she managed through fits of laughter. “I thought there was an axe murderer outside or something. It was just a spider.”
“I’d rather an axe murderer. That spider and I were holding hands for like ten minutes before I realized,” I whined, wiping my hands down my shirt, my skin crawling. I unzipped the fleece and flung it across the room as the giant spider disappeared in the cracks in the floorboard.
“It wasn’t trying to hurt you,” she soothed. “It was hiding from the storm.”
I glared at her. “You are entirely too calm about this.”
“We’re in a boat shed,” she said with a jovial shrug. “Of course there’s spiders. Why do you think Crane always wanted to come out here?” She bit her lips together, her shoulders still shaking with restrained laughter. “What would all your adoring fans think about zombie hunter and sword-wielding superhero Deacon Harrow squealing at the sight of a spider?”
“If you told them, I’d deny it,” I warned as I shook my hands out. “I feel like they’re crawling all over me.”
“They’re not.”
My hand shot to the back of my neck as something touched it, and I barked out a cry as I grabbed a fistful of shirt and whipped it off, making Dove laugh even harder.
“There’s nothing on you,” she said, smoothing a warm hand down my bare back. “It was probably just the tag.”
“We’re not all spider people, okay?” I finally laughed along with her as she soothed her arms across my skin.
“I know,” she comforted, kissing my shoulder.
“I should be the one heroically rescuing you from spiders.” I dropped a kiss to her hair.
“You can rescue me from all the other things,” she suggested. “You rescued me from Ivy Blanc. I’d take a spider over her anyday.” She kissed across my skin as I laughed. “We’ll take turns on who has to be the brave one. Right now, it’s mine.”
I smiled, turning and pulling her flush against me as her hands continued to rove up and down my sides. “You make me want to be all the best parts of myself,” I murmured.
Her gaze softened, deeper emotions blooming to replace the lighthearted ones. “You make me want to be all the best parts of myself too,” she whispered, dropping her cheek to my chest.
We stood there slowly rocking, the storm our only soundtrack. And I knew this was one of those moments that anyone else would think of as small and inconsequential, but for me, it would forever be on loop in the highlight reel of my life. In that second, I knew for certain the thing I’d wondered when I’d first knocked teeth with her—maybe I’d just found the love of my life. Maybe soulmates were the ones who made us want to be the very best version of ourselves. Even twelve-year-old me had known—this was what love felt like.
When Dove finally released me with a yawn, I slid my hands down her sides. “You should sleep,” I offered. “I will hold vigil against the army of hairy spiders.”
She laughed. “Why don’t you just come to bed too?”
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep tonight knowing those things are creeping around the place,” I admitted.
“Hmm. Maybe I have better ways we can pass the time,” Dove suggested, and suddenly I forgot all about the spiders as she lifted on her tiptoes and kissed me. Any place where Dove Lachlan’s lips were on mine was paradise.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dove
Instead of heading straight to the zoo the following morning, Deacon led us down the road that curled around the parking lot and down a private beachside drive. To one side were rolling hills of pebbled shoreline scattered with patches of seaweed and driftwood. A boardwalk cut across the dunes, leading all the way to the northern point of the island. In the summer months, it would be filled with joggers and cyclists getting their morning workouts in, but in the off-season it was a picturesque, private landscape. We followed the gravel to the very end before turning down a narrow lane to a white picket fence.
I paused, looking at the periwinkle shutters, window boxes overgrown with wildflowers, and pearlescent abalone shells tinkling from the garden gate. The first peeks of sunrise kissed the wind-worn shingles of the beach house, adorning it in a golden glow.
