Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal's Match

She loosened her grip, falling back. “Well. At least you’re not still tense.”

He wasn’t. Wooow . When her hands lowered from him, he very nearly grabbed hold to bring them back.

Placing a palm to his sternum, she backed herself off so the length of her arm stretched in the marked space between them. “You’ll get better,” she told him. “It’ll get better.”

The certainty caught him. Not only because it went up against his own, but also because she believed it. “How do you know?” he found himself asking.

“You’re a survivor.”

“I used to be,” he replied. He no longer felt like one. More like something tattered and unrecognizable that washed ashore after being picked over by birds and fish.

“It’s not just the SEAL in you. It’s who you were before all that, too. A survivor.” When he said nothing to that, she went on. “Despite all you’ve been through...your heart’s still beating.”

If only she knew. Sometimes, he wondered if this was it—that, after everything, he’d be defeated by the mind-fuck he couldn’t seem to get a handle on. Mavis’s hand was still on his sternum, and he tuned his awareness to it. “It doesn’t beat evenly,” he admitted. He wet his throat. “What about the dog?”

She looked around at the reminder. Her hand moved off so that she could shield her eyes from the glare off the distant bay. “He’s somewhere around.”

“Will he come back on his own?” he asked, falling into step with her as her slow gait brought them back into the sunshine.

“Yes, always,” she said. “Growing boys never miss a meal. Not to mention, not all who wander...”

Are lost , he finished silently. Not all, Gavin agreed.

Maybe just him.

He let her walk ahead and her pace quickened. He wrapped the fingers of one hand around the other fist, coming to a halt. “You wear black, but you like red.”

She stopped. Doubling back, she faced him fully.

He went on. “You have a tattoo...somewhere. I don’t remember. But you got in trouble for it when your mom found out. You rode a horse named Neptune. You liked to ride English because, even though you were weird, you were a cut and a half above the rest of us.”

Still, she was silent. She was too far away for him to read. He was beginning to sweat nonetheless. “And when your family would have their Saturday music round, you wouldn’t play. You’d sing. You could turn an acoustic version of ‘Come Together’ or ‘Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’’ into something classy and unexpected.”

“Oh, God...” she said.

“Don’t laugh, Freckles. You killed the Loretta.”

She did laugh. It was a low noise, like the drone of a hummingbird’s wings. It didn’t last long enough. “I hated when you called me that.”

“I knew it,” he returned. “Anyway, you were...different. I thought it was kind of badass that you didn’t care.”

“Just like you didn’t?”

Gavin lifted a shoulder in answer. Yes—they had more in common than it seemed either of them had anticipated.

Quiet fell. The gulls droned from the shore. Tires moved over gravel in the parking lot beyond Briar’s garden. The world moved, lively and fierce. But there was a measure of quiet in Gavin’s head. He’d forgotten what quiet, in its purest form, was. Damned if he wasn’t grateful—and a little spellbound.

Mavis spoke again in a sober light. “Look. I might’ve overheard what went on upstairs with the vase.”

Gavin’s frown returned. He sought the inn, the place he’d known he shouldn’t come back to. He hadn’t fit in before the RPG. What had made him think he could fade into the wallpaper now with his face a veritable grid of violence?

“Before you think about disappearing again,” Mavis continued, “you don’t have to leave Fairhope entirely.”

He moved his shoulders in a brusque motion, the tension climbing up the back of his neck again. “You know a good bait bucket I can crawl into?”

“You’ll break their hearts if you skip town like all the times before,” she said.

“Yeah, but think of the antiques,” Gavin said, gesturing to the pristine white building and the treasures it held. “At least they’ll live long and happy lives.”

“If you knew your parents at all, you’d know that when it comes to your well-being, they’d burn every single one of their antiques if it meant having you here.”

Judgment had a bite to it, he found. He didn’t much like it. Remembering the tone he’d struck with his father and Briar upstairs, he scowled. Okay, maybe he deserved it. But in spite of the steadier ground he found himself walking on after the detour with Mavis under the bougainvillea, the coals still burned, low and blue.

“I might know a place you can stay,” she continued. “While you take the time you need to decide what the future holds. It’s close enough to town to keep your parents happy, but far enough and quiet enough to give you the freedom to piece your thoughts together.”

“Where is this place?” he wondered.

“On the river,” she told him. “Fish River.”

“You live on Fish River,” he remembered.

“Along with a slew of other folks,” she pointed out. “The place is at the end of my road. There’s a catch, though. You’ll have to put up with a roommate.”

“I think we all know I’m no good at sharing,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but this is just temporary,” she said. “And your potential roomie is very into feng shui. No antiques, few breakables. Plus, she’s likely to stay out of your personal space.”

She rounded out the last words nicely. “Huh.” Gavin considered. “Is she hot?”

Mavis’s laugh was full-throated. When it didn’t end quickly this time, Gavin asked, “What’s funny?”

“You like a good joke, right?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and backtracking to the inn.

“Normally,” he replied. “Don’t leave me hanging on the punch line.”

“Her name is Zelda Townes.”

“And?”

“And you can find the rest out for yourself,” she tossed back, intriguing in all her unsolved mystery.

Gavin frowned at her back. “Is this because I can’t stop calling you Freckles?”

“No,” she said. “It’s because you won’t.”

CHAPTER TWO

PEOPLE NORMALLY PERFORMED hot yoga in a studio. Thanks to the heat and humidity July had to offer the Gulf Coast, Zelda Townes’s Bikram classes were held on the wide veranda of her old river house. The sun fell through the square slats of the pergola, fighting through a canopy of hanging ferns and fuchsia. If the screens didn’t keep the wolfish mosquitoes at bay, the plantings of lavender, mint and thyme would have made the pests turn tail.

Not only did Miss Zelda’s porch offer the perfect environment for hot yoga. It smelled like the inside of an apothecary. With the backdrop of the river and the grand weeping willow in the yard that spilled down to its fishy shores, achieving peace of mind wasn’t difficult here. The happy burble of shallow fountains, the hollow knock of bamboo chimes, and the light refrain of kirtan devotional music brought the morning class to its culmination.

Despite this and the stalwart nature of each of Miss Zelda’s advanced students, nearly all of them shrieked and fell out of their standing bow when a loud bang rent the quiet river air.

“What in the holy name of Babylon...?” Zelda scowled, her svelte spandex-clad form straightening from her mat. “That sounded like a Desert Eagle .50.”

Mavis felt the frisson of alarm go through her fellow classmates and injected a note of sardonic cool into the scene. “Yes, because Desert Eagles are a dime a dozen.” A chorus of barks reached her ears. “Damn it,” she said, already up. “That’s my dog.”