“Bloody hell.” His face softened, as did his body.
We melted together, forehead to forehead, palms holding cheeks, and let our mingling breaths seal my vow.
I perched between Roark and Michio against the starboard bow. Cliff monitored port side. Tallis stretched behind the wheel. A cigarette sagged from his brazen lips as he steered us into Genoa’s harbor.
Pale-breasted gulls screeched into the early morning twilight. Piers fingered from the shoreline, buried under concrete and metal. Disemboweled ships leeched the decrepit docks.
My grip on the railing clenched. In that moment, with the defensive walls of a dead city collapsing around us and the jaws of death echoing through the devoured streets, I felt so very far away from home. My breath caught in my throat, clinging to a lost hope.
One little girl.
My past followed me to every city, weighing me down. Surrounded by a foreign horizon, I lost the fight to keep all things familiar buried. Maybe it was the countdown to docking, the dread that came with the dangers waiting on land. Maybe it was the empty wharf, the sickening feeling that Jesse didn’t make it. When I released a long-held breath, it escaped with an unobtainable wish.
One little boy.
I longed for wings. To let the wind carry my feet. To fly home, to the brick and boarded husk of the life I once had, to the woman I used to be. I ducked my head, didn’t want them to see me, crumbling like the ships in the harbor.
A hand settled over mine on the railing. Sandalwood breaths stirred my hair. “Let it go.”
“As if it were that easy.” My voice wobbled. I swallowed the weakness, hardened it. “Did you let…someone go?”
“Parents. Brother.” Michio’s fingers curled, straightened, stroking between mine. “My girlfriend.”
I cleared my throat. “What was her name?”
“Isabella.”
Beside me, Roark closed his eyes and hooked his pinkie around my free one. Words didn’t comfort, didn’t undo what was done. So I said nothing.
Michio dropped his forehead to my temple. “Everything sad, everything dead, the past brought us here, alive.”
The blades on my arms glinted against the sparkling ebb of the sea. “It’s unforgiving.”
His lips feathered my earlobe. “It’s living.”
“Living is relative. And not always ideal.” I steeled my shoulders against the glaring empty wharf. But where would I be without Roark’s faith in me, Jesse’s loyalty, and Michio’s strength. Things would be much, much worse.
Distant barking fluttered across the harbor. I jumped.
Cliff’s voice ripped through the tension. “The dog’s our green light to berth.”
My heart panted as I leaned over the railing and squinted. A blur of black and tan streaked across the pier. I shoved my way to the port side. Darwin squatted on the edge of the dock, tongue lolling, tail whipping.
A man loomed on the shore, his back to us. He glanced over his shoulder and the first rays of sun caught the copper in his eyes. Then he returned to his watch, bow and arrow at his side. A position that would allow lift and release in one breath. My pulse sped up.
The yacht docked. I scrambled down the ramp and dropped to my knees in a furry reunion. Lathered in puppy kisses and dog hair, I caught the amusement cartwheeling across Roark’s face. “What?”
He shook his head and gestured up the dock with his chin. “Ye gonna give your Lakota the same greeting?”
Tallis and Cliff walked the perimeter, rifles raised. Jesse leaned against a pier support, hands stuffed in the pockets of jeans hung low on his narrow hips. He didn’t have Roark’s height or Michio’s bulk, but his trim physique was solid and intimidating all the same. He watched me with his usual bored expression.
Roark’s hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. I loped up the pier with Darwin bouncing at my heels and stopped an arm’s length away.
Last time I saw him, he was saving my ass on Dover pier. And there we were, another pier, another ass saving. There was so much to say, yet the only thing my mouth could produce was a weak smile. Definitely not a high-confidence moment.
“The doctor give you my message?”
I missed that smooth Texan accent. His gaze floated to my shirt where my scar curved above the low neckline. His copper eyes darkened under furrowed brows and his mouth dipped in a scowl.
“You weren’t responsible for what happened in Dover. Or River Tweed.”
His jaw clenched, and his fists went to his hips. “Fuck if I wasn’t. I was there.” Such pain in his voice.
We stared at one other, paralyzed in time, gazes fused in a war of emotions. I wasn’t sure who moved first, but when we did, we collided, entangled, hugging as if it were our last. Standing there, wrapped in Jesse, invoked a sensation so long anticipated, I felt it from my crown to my toes. I felt safe.