Swim Deeper

by T. S. Joyce

  “Gumbo,” Holt answered.

  “W-what?”

  He dragged his gaze away from the men and looked at her with a plastered smile. “You’ve got to try the gumbo.”

  Another shut-down. Holt was going to be hard to get information from. Maybe he would get up and go to the bathroom and she could interview Joe. Or literally any one of the men staring holes through the back of Holt’s head right now.

  “I’m Bre,” she called loudly since they had everyone’s attention apparently.

  “No one cares,” said someone from the crowd. Lovely.

  “Okay,” she murmured as she turned her attention to the menu. “Boiled crawfish, shrimp and grits, etouffee, bayou catfish, dirty rice…” She asked Holt, “What’s good here?”

  “All of that. We’ll have one of each of what she just said,” he told Joe without missing a beat. “And Mac’s gumbo.”

  “Maybe get two bowls,” a lady said from beside Bre. “Don’t share in case what he gots is catching.”

  Holt shut down, ignored her, took the shot of whiskey that Joe handed him, and then slid Bre’s margarita over to her. He might be really good at ignoring people who were rude, but Bre wasn’t accustomed to it.

  “Don’t be a skank,” Bre advised the short-haired woman.

  “Excuse me?” the woman said, standing. She was wearing a blue halter top, shorts even shorter than Bre’s, and tall wedge sandals.

  “You heard me.”

  “Bre,” Holt warned.

  “She doesn’t get to talk about you like that. Like you’re diseased.”

  “Well, he is,” the woman said, looking mighty furious.

  “Cool, well, you just said that around, like, four cold sores on your mouth, so why don’t you take your own diseases and go sit outside and eat.” Bre offered her an empty smile and used her words. “Just in case he’s catching.”

  Holt snorted.

  “I’ve never seen you before, you come waltzing in here with him like you two own the place, and now you’re trash talkin’ me?”

  Bre took a long sip of her margarita. “Accurate. Joe, can we get two bowls of the gumbo. Not because I’m afraid of Holt’s diseases, but because all this lady’s blabbering has made me extra hungry.”

  Joe’s lips were pursed into a hard line, but his eyes were dancing. “You brought in a feisty one,” he said to Holt as he jotted her order onto a notepad.

  “Yeah, she’s a handful.” Holt was smiling down at his empty shot glass as the woman’s wedges echoed across the wooden floor toward the door.

  “Geez, Holt, Meredith is a regular. You always come in here and chase away good paying customers.” Joe’s smile was getting bigger.

  “I’ll tip you an extra dollar to make up for it, man,” Holt said.

  “Chhhh. Thanks a lot.” Joe turned and handed the food order to a passing waitress and asked her to turn it in to the kitchen.

  Bre couldn’t stop looking around, though. All the whispers. “Why is everyone staring?” she asked.

  “Look,” he said, turning to her, “I brought you here for a reason. Not because I enjoy coming out in public. Not because it’s fun for me or I get something out of social interaction. I don’t. I’m good alone. But you should see what life would be like if you stayed. This attention? It’ll be on you by association, and it’ll never stop.”

  “It’s been like this your whole life?”

  He sighed and took a long drink of his beer, then stood suddenly and muttered, “I’m gonna take a piss,” as he walked past her toward a restroom sign.

  She watched him until he disappeared and then took another drink of her margarita. “Good drink,” she complimented Joe. This was her move. Compliment then question. “Why do they call him a killer?”

  Joe leaned toward her, elbows on the counter. He studied her face with a slight frown furrowing his blond brows. “He told me he was bringing in a girl. Told me he was gonna try to make one stick. He’s a Lachlan. His family has a long history in this town. They’re legend, but not always in a good way, if you know what I mean. Anything bad in this town has circled back to his family for the last hundred years since they moved to the territory. A year ago, people started whispering about him being one of those…you know.”

  “Shifters,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Now when a person disappears, or animals disappear, all fingers point to Holt. He’s right, you know,” Joe said, leaning back and locking his arms on the bar top. “This attention will never go away.”

  “Do you think he’s a killer?”

  Joe shrugged up his shoulders. “Maybe. I know one thing. No locals go to his part of the swamp without good reason. The tourists don’t know any better.”

  Chills blasted up her arms. She wanted to ask more, but Holt was walking back toward them, his eyes bright, seeming to miss nothing as he shoved his phone in his back pocket.

  “I think we should come here every Friday,” she blurted out as he sat down next to her.

  “Sure. We can get the food to go.”

  “No! We should come in here and try to socialize every week, and then people will get used to being around you and—"

  “Okay, who roofied her?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “Oh, my gosh,” she whisper-screamed. “That is not funny to joke about.”

  “Relax, Hollywood.”

  “You relax,” she mumbled.

  While she took a long sip of her margarita, he glared at her, his striking eyes narrowed. “You chuggin’ it?”

  She nodded and sucked harder until it made the slurping sound that signified drinky-drink time was up. She let off a long “aaaaaaaaaah,” then primly offered her hand, palm up.

  He looked at her hand as if she was holding a bag of cat poop.

  She wiggled her fingers. “This song is pretty damn good. It’s now my jam. Let’s dance.”

  “Lady, are you drunk off one margarita?”

  “Are you scared of what these people think?”

  “I’m not scared of anything.” He twisted in his chair and looked at the two couples on a small dance floor near the wall. “I don’t dance.”

  Bre rolled her eyes. “Another rule? No dancing?”

  Joe chimed in. “You have one, maybe two, songs before your food is here.”

  “Thanks for nothing, man,” Holt muttered to a beaming Joe. “I can’t dance.”

  “Me, either!” Bre said. “We can look bad together.”

  He sighed, looking really mad. “Aw, for fuck’s sake, if I do one song, will you let us eat in peace?”

  “Probably.” She was already tugging him toward the tiny dance floor.

  He was letting her hold his hand! His fingers were strong and firm around hers, his palm warm. The second they reached the edge, she twirled like a ballerina, and there it was. A smile curved his lips. Yeah, he rolled his eyes heavenward, but that smile counted.

  It was a fast beat rock song, so she did her favorite move, the Running man. That one used to get her teased by all her friends. He stood there for a minute and let her do her thing around him, beer still in his hand. But as she beamed up at him and looked him in the eyes, then wiggled her butt and laughed at herself, that smile grew a little more.

  And then it happened. He let a laugh slip and went into this hot-boy move, shoulders moving smooth to the beat with his hips. Just a little move that said he probably could dance well. Way better than her.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, doing a back-it-up move that looked really good on other girls, but she looked more like a landed tuna fish.

  He took her hand and twirled her with a confidence that made her draw up. Whoa, he was good. He kept a hold on one of her hands while he danced all smooth, beer in the other hand. She was making them look bad, but that was okay! He didn’t seem to mind.

  Everyone was watching, but who cared? These people saw him one way. He was more than just some dark legend, though. He was a man. Animal. Animal person. Whoever he was, he was more.

/>   The other two couples on the dancefloor had scattered into the crowd like buckshot, so the space was all theirs. Fine with Bre. Some of her moves were rather large.

  A nagging voice in the back of her mind reminded her what her boss always said: Remember you can be on camera anytime, act accordingly! But she hadn’t really danced in a long time, and that margarita had been a strong one. Liquid courage had her dancing like a wildling with a super sexy man who would’ve never paid attention to a nerd like her in high school. This was awesome.

  The song on the old jukebox in the corner switched over to a country song with a good beat. Uh-oh, mayday. She and Holt stopped moving completely, and she looked around at all the eyes on them. “That was fun,” she told him. “You surprised me in a good way.”

  She was making her way toward the edge of the dancefloor when he grabbed her hand. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know how to country dance.”

  Holt switched his baseball cap to backward and pulled her into him. He lifted one of her hands in the air, and with his beer hand, he rested it on the curve of her waist. More chills rippled up her forearms, but this time it wasn’t because she was scared. He was making her body do strange things.

  “I’m gonna walk you backward,” he murmured. “Left foot goes back first. Follow my lead.”

  “I’m not good at following, and how can I go backward? I can’t see.”

  “You’ll have to trust me.” He searched her face with those stunning eyes that held so much more than she could ever understand. Trust him? He pushed her back gently with his hand against her waist and followed, keeping the same amount of space between them. “Quick quick, slow…slow,” he murmured.

  She kept stepping on his toes, but when she looked up to apologize, he told her, “Good, keep your eyes up here, not on your feet. Feel the rhythm. Your eyes won’t help what your feet are learning.”

  So she tried. She pursed her lips and forced her eyes to stay on him and not her feet, even when she messed up.

  “Relax your hand,” he instructed. “This is fun, not stressful. You’re doing good.”

  She was? His positive reinforcement made her want to catch on even faster.

  A few rounds of counts more, and he pulled her against him…right against him, held her firmly and moved his legs right along with her, spinning them around the dancefloor easily. Her heart was pounding against his chest. Could he feel it?

  She was totally lost in his eyes. They looked like gold flames right now, glowing from within. Chiseled cheek bones with the perfect amount of scruff, a backward baseball cap and thin white T-shirt. All those muscles.

  He stopped their dance and leaned down. This was it. He was going to kiss her, and she wanted him to. Right now, he wasn’t a story and she wasn’t a reporter. She was a girl who was seeing something special in a boy. And he was really going to kiss her. The butterflies started as his lips came for hers.

  “Gentle reminder,” he whispered. When he blinked hard and opened his eyes, they’d changed. They were glowing bright yellow, and the pupils were elongated like a terrifying snake. “Don’t look at me like you’re catching feelings. That’s not why you’re here.”

  He blinked again, and his eyes were back to normal.

  Bre couldn’t breathe as she watched him walk off the dance floor and back to the bar without looking back. Couldn’t drag a single breath into her lungs. She’d seen it. Seen the animal, and there was something so scary inside of that man. Something monstrous.

  Her hands were shaking, so she clenched them at her side, tried to smile at the people she passed as she followed him.

  She knocked into three bodies with her shoulders on the way back to where Joe was setting the plates of their food on the bar top. She was swaying this way and that, but not from the effects of the margarita. She couldn’t get the vision of those animal eyes out of her head, which made it so hard to focus on the here and now.

  She only hesitated for a few heartbeats before she sat on the barstool next to Holt again.

  “You feel like runnin’?” he asked her, the smile gone from his face as though it had never existed at all.

  “A little.”

  Holt slid a bowl of gumbo in front of her and murmured, “Good.”

  Chapter Five

  Holt felt bad. He felt bad, and that made him angry at Bre. He shouldn’t feel anything at all. This was how it had to be. She needed to be wary of him, stop digging into his heart to see if it worked. It didn’t. He didn’t feel things like other people. Didn’t feel things at all.

  Liar, the animal rumbled.

  His growl filled the truck, but when he glanced over at Bre, she didn’t respond. She was just staring out the window, watching the night woods blur by. He’d offered to drive home. To his home. Not her home. His home.

  He’d offered to do that as a secret apology for taking her smile away. He was really good at fucking up smiles.

  God, what was he doing?

  “Did you like the food?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she murmured without feeling.

  “Too spicy?”

  “Just right.” She ghosted him an empty smile. “I told you I like spice.”

  The woman could hold her own.

  He cleared his throat and frowned at the bumpy road passing under the headlights. “I’m not good at small talk.”

  “We don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to,” she said. “You said you don’t like talking. I’m not here to make you uncomfortable. You keep putting me in my place.” She sighed. “It’s been a long day.”

  These feelings, these feelings, these stupid feelings. “You know, I wanted a mate so I could feel less. It’s not working.”

  She didn’t say anything, just stared out the window, so he tried again.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Liar. “Shhhit. Look, I need a woman. I don’t want a woman. You understand?”

  “No.”

  He blew out a breath and turned left onto his dirt driveway. “I’m not good at talking about feelings.”

  “Then don’t.” More monotone.

  He growled again. He was used to being good at work. Good at building, good at boating, good at business, good at hunting, good at being an animal. He was good at anything he wanted to be. Except for this. “I don’t understand human feelings or interactions. You confuse me.”

  “I’m confused, too,” she said, rolling her pretty face toward him. Her eyes were so full of an emotion he didn’t understand. “Ask me what my favorite part of the night was.”

  He pulled to a stop next to his Bronco and put the truck into park. Okay. He could do this. He could do small talk if she led the conversation. “What was your favorite part of the night?”

  “The field of fireflies. Now ask me why.”

  Holt searched those pretty blue eyes, but he couldn’t read what she was thinking. Not even a little. “Why?”

  “Because you’d been nice, bought me shorts, and you were going to take me out in public, like you were proud to have me with you, and you showed me a place that was special to you. Hope existed there.”

  “What do you mean by hope?”

  “I mean, I thought because you were opening up that you would let me in someday, but you won’t, will you? I could be here a day or three hundred days, and you will keep reminding me that we are different. I don’t want to be put in my place all the time, Holt. I don’t want to be shoved away at arm’s length every time you let me in a little. Don’t want that whiplash. You said you need a mate, but you don’t want one. Well for me? I want a man. But I don’t need one.” Her full lips turned up at the corners in a sad smile, and she pushed open the door. “Goodnight, Holt.”

  “Hey, Bre?” He had a question, and the answer was very important.

  “Yeah?” she asked solemnly.

  “Why did you stick up for me when Meredith was mouthing off at the bar?”

  “Because Holt Lachlan, shifter, maybe-killer, tough guy, confusi
ng man…you showed me the fireflies. I think you’re good, and I don’t much like how people treat you in this town. Until I leave, we’re a team. Doesn’t matter how hard you push me away, I’m gonna have your back.”

  And as she walked away, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to blurt the number out loud, the number of girls he’d taken to the firefly field.

  He wanted to bring the smile back.

  But he couldn’t force the word past his lips. He wanted to tell her it was just one.

  Just her.

  When she closed the door to the little guest cabin behind her, the clicking of the screen did something strange to his chest. It hurt. It was as if someone had taken an air gun, aimed it, and then pulled the trigger. It was a fast pain. What was it, this awful sensation? This hole that had started out small but grew with each second she didn’t come back outside?

  Loneliness? Regret? Disappointment?

  He didn’t know yet, but he was going to figure it out.

  He’d never met a shifter who was paired up with a mate, so he had no map on how this was supposed to work. Did he like this? Did he like checking himself and wanting to improve for her? To make her happier? To care about someone else’s feelings?

  This was terrifying, but there was something else burning inside of him just below that empty space.

  That hope she’d talked about.

  That sure sounded nice.

  His skin was tingling. It was the smell of the swamp at night that did it. The night creatures and the air and the earth all smelled different in the dark. He didn’t know why, couldn’t explain it. All he knew was this was the animal’s time. Maybe it would be better to slip into the swamp and let his instincts take over and not think about Bre and all these confusing emotions for a little while. Go back to being him again.

  Like he had a choice.

  The animal inside of him chuckled.

  When Holt looked down at his arms, scales were rippling across his skin. In the guesthouse, Bre turned off the living room light. Then he could make out her silhouette in the bedroom window, pulling a big T-shirt over her head. Oh, fuck, he could make out the curves of her tits. He adjusted his hardening dick and ripped his gaze away from the house. She deserved better than for him to be watchin’ her like this. He really was an animal.