Page 31 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Rone let them go. He waited until the dock creaked and the footsteps thinned and a gull’s ragged complaint rolled in to take up space again. Then he exhaled slowly, like he was bleeding air out of a line before it burst.
Echo looked up at him, amber eyes sharp. “With me,” Rone said, and the dog flowed to the pilot house.
Isobel must’ve finished in the bathroom because he found her upstairs. She had one of the push brooms they used for deck rinse-downs braced against her hip, and she was herding glitter into a trembling ridge, the bristles sighing and rasping over the nonskid. It would have been admirable if she’d been moving anything but shards; as it was, the glass folded and skittered and leapt like fish from the path of the broom, catching the light and throwing it back at her eyes.
Her face was paper-white except for the shift of color in her cheeks each time she breathed. Sweat had glued wisps of hair toher temples, and the hollow under her throat was working. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t talking. She was pressing movement over panic, and it had worked right up until it didn’t.
The broom juddered. The line of glass collapsed. Her hands shook so hard the handle ticked the window frame in little, helpless taps.
“Hey,” Rone said softly.
She jerked. Echo whined, a single syllable of concern, and nosed her calf. She blinked down at him, opened her mouth to say something that would be brave, then closed it again. The broom handle made one more delicate knock against the frame.
“It’s okay,” Rone said. He stepped in, caught the handle near her hands, and felt the tremor there roll through the wood into his palms. “I’ve got it.”
“I’m not scared,” she said. The sentence came out level. The muscles in her forearms told the truth.
“I know.”
He eased the broom out of her grip. Her fingers let go like a clutch letting out in first gear, uneven, reluctant, not convinced. He set the broom aside, then reached for her wrist because there wasn’t any other part of her that seemed like it belonged to this room yet.
Her pulse jumped under his thumb. He found her other wrist and brought her hands together between them, his larger hands closing around hers the way you cup a bird you don’t want to startle. Her skin was cold, sweat-damp. He could feel the fine bones. He could feel the stubbornness in the set of her shoulders and how it was holding a door closed against a flood.
“You’re in shock,” he said, and the truth wasn’t an accusation. It was a rope thrown for her to grab.
“I’m fine,” she said, and her chin lifted the half inch that meant she was daring herself, not him.
“I know that, too.” He didn’t let go. “Breathe.”
Her breath had been running; it tripped, caught, tried to catch up. He breathed with her—not the ridiculous in-two-three, out-two-three of people who’d never been shot at, but something deeper, quieter. He matched the hum of the generator and the lap of the water against the hull. He gave her a beat that would meet her wherever she was. Her chest hitched again, lowered. Echo pressed his flank to her shin and leaned, a warm, insistent brace.
Time moved strangely for a while. Outside, a neighbor shouted at someone speeding through the no-wake zone. A second later, the boat under them rocked like they’d been entrenched in a storm. The sun shifted and dragged the light a foot to the left. A bead of sweat ran behind Rone’s ear, and he didn’t lift a hand to chase it. He held her hands and the steadiness he’d been practicing since the first time everything went wrong.
When the tremor finally began to leave her fingers, her shoulders dropped a notch. Her jaw unclenched. She exhaled, and some sound came with it, a thin scrap of a laugh, disbelieving and angry and grateful all at once.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I hate needing anyone.”
He let the words land and didn’t dodge. “I know. Because no one’s ever been there for you since your father left. And I’m sorry for that.” He brushed his hand to her soft cheek; a little heat returned. Her delicate features didn’t match the fire of determination in her eyes. She fought a war inside herself; she was brave, but her body betrayed her courage with its fright response.
She swallowed, eyes bright now for a reason that wasn’t shock. “You saved my life.”
He tightened his hand over hers, careful of her delicatebones. Didn’t say the first thing in his throat—you saved your own. Didn’t say the second—next time I might not be fast enough. The thought was salt and glass in his mouth. He set it down somewhere he’d deal with later.
He cupped her cheek and studied her gaze, but when his attention drifted to her lips, he released her slowly, one hand, then the other, and took a step back. She didn’t shake anymore. “Sit,” he said. “Please.”
She sat on the couch like she was conceding something to someone who’d earned it. Echo moved a foot forward and placed his head on her knee, making it impossible for her to slide back into movement without lifting him. It was either accidental genius or training so old it looked like instinct.
Rone got a dustpan, the heavy kind with a rubber lip, and started a rhythm: push, gather, lift, dump.
When the floor was safe enough to stand barefoot without being a fool, he washed his hands at the tiny sink, let the water run pink with micro-cuts he hadn’t noticed. He dried them on a towel, then looked at her.
She’d gone from white to mortally pale to the chalky color of someone who had finished shaking and hadn’t yet decided what to do with the space that left. She saw him looking and lifted her chin again. It hit him in a place he didn’t have a name for, that fight.
“You’re in,” he said.
