Page 71 of On Dry Land

“I know. But you don’t have to be fine, Roy. You could be happy. You could let Hailey bring you dinner every now and again, and grab a drink with Oliver at the pub, and you could pick up the phone and call Spencer. You could tell him how you feel instead of pretending you don’t feel anything at all. You could ask him to come back instead of forcing him away. You could have more, instead of just enough.”

“I can’t,” I reply quietly, leaning forward to carefully deposit my plate on the coffee table. Demon lifts her head and meows in protest before settling into a ball once more. After a few seconds of silence, the purring starts back up. Spencer told me it’s supposedly healing. Perhaps she’ll fix me.

I don’t believe there is any way I can explain myself in a way he’ll understand. Shiloh loves in a way so unfamiliar to me, it’s alien. He puts his whole being into it—a lifelong commitment that doesn’t have anything to do with rings or vows. If he loves you, he’ll do it until the day he dies. My inability to even imagine that depth of feeling makes me wonder if I’m capable of love at all. And it hardly matters. When I try, I fail.

Shiloh clears his throat, resting his own plate down on his leg. I look at him and wonder where that tiny spark of attraction I once felt came from. He doesn’t even have brown eyes.

“Listen, I know your life isn’t any of my business. But you and I were together for two years, and you spent that entire time waiting for it to fail. Neither one of us was in it fully, I know that—I’m not blaming you. But I know you better than anyone else in this town, and if they noticed how different you were around Spencer, then you can bet I did, too. Hell, you let him go out on the Maiden with you. It took me months to convince you to hire Cody. You wouldn’t let anyone near that damn boat.”

“I let you,” I remind him, making him snort.

“Yeah, because you needed me to show you how to run it.”

I look down at the sleeping kitten in my lap and breathe out slowly. Yes, that is exactly why I invited him in. I needed his expertise, and I needed someone to touch me after years of going without. I’d made do with what I had close at hand, which just so happened to be the only other man in Siren’s Point as broken and unloved as me.

“Sorry,” I apologize and manage a semi-genuine smile when he snorts again. It probably sounded as disingenuous as it felt to say.

“Call him, Roy. You don’t lose anything by doing it, but you’re losing a lot if you don’t even try.”

“It won’t work out. It can’t.”

Even if he did come back and agreed to stay, eventually things would deteriorate. Eventually, Spencer would tire of my taciturn nature, sarcasm, and dry humor. He’d lose interest in having sex with the same person and grow bored of standing still. Spencer is open roads and miles of sky overhead. He’s an adventurer, always looking for maiden seas.

“Maybe it won’t,” Shiloh agrees. “But as ready as you are for things to fail, I think you need to be open to the possibility that it will work out. Because what if things get better? Nothing will change if you don’t give it a chance.”

I shake my head but don’t reply, ignoring him in favor of staring at the kitten. I can’t live with that level of trust, of conviction in things just working out. It’s infinitely easier to expect everything to fail than to hope for the best and have to live with the disappointment of being wrong.

Having said what he came here to say, Shiloh allows me to move the conversation to less sensitive topics. He asks me about Demon and the construction on the house, tells me about Ewan—where he is and why he’s there. I ask after Oliver, and Shiloh can’t hide the pleased smile this elicits behind his short beard. I struggle through finishing my dinner, and he goes back for more. The sun is long down by the time he makes a move toward the door. I hadn’t asked him to leave, which is likely surprising for both of us.

Leaning against the doorframe, one socked foot crossed over the other, I watch his truck reverse and make a U-turn over the grass. He waves a goodbye at me through the windshield as though we didn’t just have a verbal one. I shake my head and retreat back inside, locking the door behind me and scooping up the kitten, who’d been on her way over to try and escape.

We settle into bed, me staring at the hockey game I have playing on the television but not really paying attention, and her chasing shadows only she can see over the comforter. I fiddle with my cell phone in one hand, flipping it over and over and over. Calling Spencer feels pushy. Clingy in a way I never am. It feels bothersome and unlikely to yield any results when his phone is probably powered down to conserve battery. But he hasn’t been heard from in days, apparently. Out of character for me though it is, reaching out will hopefully mean I’ll be able to ascertain that he’s okay, at the very least. Shiloh’s warning about him not posting for nearly two days feels louder than all the doubts screaming into my ear.

Taking a deep breath like I’m jumping out of an airplane and not making a phone call, I lift the phone and click until I reach Spencer’s name. I stare at it, feeling as though the wisest thing to do might be to delete it. Demon walks over to sniff my ear, tickling my face with her whiskers. I click his contact.

“The number you have dialed has been disconnected. If you feel as though you’ve received this message in error, please check the number and try again.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

SPENCER

Iclose my eyes and tilt my face away from the light. Holding a hand up to block the worst of the glare, I squint at the shape of the man shining a flashlight in my face. My muscles are stiff, joints locked into place after sitting in the same position all night. The air around my mouth fogs in the cold air, my lips painfully dry and cracked. I lick them, trying to generate a little moisture.

I snuck into the construction zone last night, hoping for a little shelter and respite from the wind. I wasn’t the only one who’d had the idea, but I managed to find a back corner far away from the others. I must also have managed to fall asleep, somehow, and was able to stay that way despite the early morning light filtering through the holes in the wall where a window will sit eventually.

“You gotta vacate,” a gruff male voice tells me, waving the flashlight toward the door and sparing my retinas a moment of blindness. “You can’t be here.”

He’s absolutely right. I cannot be here. Sleeping on construction sites is common, but it’s not legal, and it’s definitely not advisable to be caught doing so. I nod as he backs up, giving me space to push awkwardly to my feet. My head pounds, jaw throbbing and eyes aching in a way that makes moisture gather at the corners; my body is sore enough to protest even the slightest movement. I desperately want to curl up and go back to sleep.

“Sorry,” I apologize to the man and get my first real look at him as I do. He’s wearing standard workman’s gear, a reflective vest over his Carhartt jacket and hard hat already in place atop his head.

“Go on,” he cajoles, arcing the flashlight beam in the direction of the door once more. I half expect him to add a “get” after the go on, like I’m a feral raccoon he’s shooing away. I nod and, making sure to keep myself angled enough to always have an eye on him, move quickly toward the exit. He could have called the police; it’s best not to test whatever patience he might possess this early in the morning.

The chilly spring air feels like a slap in the face as I exit the building and walk a ways down the sidewalk. It’s not that cold, I know, technically speaking. Certainly not as bad as it was just a month ago. But ice has a way of layering itself on you if you never get a chance to thaw. With nothing but the clothes on my back, last night was brutal. Stopping, I flex my toes inside my boots, feeling the slide of my wool socks over the sandwich bag I use as a wallet. Cold and miserable as I am, I make myself consider how much worse off I’d be if the guys who robbed me had possessed any street sense at all. Nobody but an idiot keeps their money in a bag where anyone can take it.

Taking a deep breath, I push through the gloom. Things aren’t as bad as they could be. Hands in my pockets, fingers curling and uncurling in an effort to generate warmth, I hunch my shoulders and walk in the direction of the police station I’d been so hoping I could avoid.

In an alleyway four blocks from where I was robbed, I’d found some of my belongings. Not the monetarily valuable things, but the bits that have worth to me alone. My favorite book—a luxury in paperback form that I allowed myself to own as a treat and that I’d read hundreds, possibly thousands of times, the pages worn and curled with love—was tossed carelessly to the ground. By the time I found it, the book was ruined, soggy with water. The scarf Dryden had given me was also on the ground, caked with mud and wet. There was a boot print smeared across the middle like someone had stepped on it while they rifled through my backpack, looking for valuables.