by T. S. Joyce
“Were you really scared?” he asked.
Her lip trembled, and she bit it. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” It felt like a huge admission. Her pretty blues searched his for understanding, but he wasn’t a creature who understood emotions.
“Come here,” he demanded.
She shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest, her gaze to the floor.
“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. “Come here. Please.”
It was her little sniffle that did him in. This little helpless noise that made him ignore the ripping pain in his body and pull her onto the bed, drag her onto his lap. And he held her right there in his lap, sideways to his chest, her knees bent and her feet resting on his mattress. He held her tight, gripping her arm and her waist. He rested his chin on top of her head, and a little dam in his heart broke when he felt the warm splat of her tear.
“You did really good.”
“I did?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah. Stripping down like we’d just had sex, telling them in a roundabout way that I wasn’t out in the swamp, that I’d been with you. Cussin’ ’em out and making them change the course of their mob mentality focus. You’re a total badass under fire, Bre. I never met anyone like you.”
“I think I know what you are.”
Her admission drew him up short. “Yeah?” he asked carefully.
“Lots of teeth.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Long tail and scales like armor.”
He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. She’d guessed.
“How big are you?”
“It’s…it’s too many questions. I don’t talk about this stuff, Bre, and that’s why I’m still here. Why I’m still alive.”
“You wouldn’t be alive right now without me, so you owe me.”
His sigh tapered into a rumbling growl. He didn’t like negotiating. “Eighteen feet.”
“Oh. My. Gooooooooosh.”
“I don’t want you in the swamps at night. When you go down for bed, that’s when I Change. We keep that life separate from ours, do you understand?”
“Would you hurt me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never paired up. Never tried to have something that’s mine to protect other than this territory.”
“You protect Fargo.”
“But the animal wouldn’t. Fargo is smart. He stays up near the house when the animal comes out. Otherwise, he would be eaten.”
“Are you a killer?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
She tensed up in his arms, and he dragged his chin back and forth over the top of her head. “Of animals. But I would kill people, too, if they threaten the territory. Or threaten you. The animal doesn’t have a strong moral compass. He survives on instinct, and above all else, he defends territory, and hopefully someday a mate. Hopefully he will become protective of you. Until I’m sure of that, though, you should treat the animal like the monster he is. You should never forget what I am.”
“Fine,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around his back. “But I’m also not going to forget who you are.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not around here.”
“It matters to me. Until you prove to me otherwise, I’m going to keep on thinking you’re a good man.”
A good man? No. Not him. He was many things. A hunter, predator, good old boy, shit-starter, fighter, stubborn in his ways, a loner. But a good man? He was going to have to think on that, later when he was alone. She was making him feel things he’d never encountered before. Making him question himself, both good and bad. He didn’t know if he liked it, but a part of him wanted it to continue until he figured himself out. He’d always seen himself the same way, but Bre had come in holding one of those carnival mirrors that distorted his image, and she was challenging him to decipher what was real and what wasn’t.
He’d never done this before, never showed affection like this, but he wanted to see what it felt like with her. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and kissed her gently, so soft she wouldn’t feel it. But maybe he’d done it wrong because she responded, hugged him tighter and kissed his chest, right over where he’d been shot. And something happened. He felt better. Not so gnarly inside. The bundle of knotted roots that made up his ugly insides loosened just a little.
She said his healing was magic, but maybe she was magic, too.
Chapter Eight
Hello?
Check in please like I’ve asked you to do thirty times already.
Bre?
Bre, Bre, Bre, Bre, BRE?!!!!
Dan has called me four times this morning asking where we are on the story and I can’t keep covering for you forever! You’re going to get us both fired. Fired. You get that, right? I have a cat to take care of. And bills and an apartment and this is the job I love. You’re going to snatch that away from me if you don’t start checking in! They’re thinking about sending someone else in! Some hot chick from channel eighteen. She’s gonna scoop this story because you don’t want to play like you have a crush on a guy? Get it together, Bre, you’re a reporter. Do your job.
Bre gritted her teeth, and did a quick glance around Holt’s tour shop, and then typed out, I’m working on it. Send.
Meet me in town tonight. Make an excuse and get away. I need to check your microphones. I think they’re malfunctioning.
I’ll see what I can do. Send.
The microphones were fine. She just hadn’t been wearing them as much the last few days. She’d been busy learning the ins and outs of Holt’s swamp boat tours. He had the tour business set up one property lot over from the big house, with a souvenir shop and everything. That’s where she worked. She had learned how to take reservations, how to do sales in the shop, process payments and tickets, and re-stock the swamp boat with snacks and waters for each tour. She’d even learned how to gas up the boats before each run. And she’d seen a real wild alligator this morning on the edge of the water while she and Holt had been having morning coffee. Which was part of their morning routine. They were those people with routines. She smiled to herself as she counted the cash in the drawer of the shop. This morning had been like the two before it.
Wake up, shower, get dressed in something she thought Holt would find cute—so booty shorts and a tank top and hiking boots and about a pound of insect repellent because, seriously, the mosquitos and gnats were no joke here. Then she would make her way to the big house where Holt was usually already up and showered and making breakfast and, holy hell, could that man cook! He’d already made her shrimp and grits, potato pancakes, and some pastry with powdered sugar all over the top that a girl like her valued way above fancy jewelry and fast cars. “Bake me a pastry and my panties are yours,” she murmured to herself, imagining breakfast this morning.
Would Brian ever figure it out if she just dropped the microphone accidentally into the swamp? She hated the little pin that fed him information. Hated the guilt, hated trying to decide when was the appropriate time to wear them so she could balance keeping Brian off her back and Holt’s secrets safe.
Okay, she would meet up with Brian. “Those are buy-one-get-one free today,” she told the man shopping a rack of Got Gator shirts.
Out the window of the shop, she had a perfect view of Holt preparing the boat. There was a dock outside with a pair of boats—a pontoon boat and an airboat, for two different types of tours. There was a large aquarium up next to the shop that housed a five-pound baby alligator that tourists could hold and take pictures with, and a pair of bathrooms a short walk away.
It was hot as hades today, and Holt was wearing a hat on backward and a tank top that was cut down far enough to show his rib muscles. She wanted to do dirty things to that man.
The girls on this tour were definitely going to fall in love with him. Bre had seen it twice already. Any red-blooded female came back from the tour blushing and giggling and flirting. Now, this was the part where she was supposed to get jealous or somethin
g, but that wasn’t really her style. And Holt was completely oblivious to the flirtations of the fairer sex. When he told her, “I don’t understand human women at all,” he was telling the God’s honest truth. So, she got to watch the girls get all frazzled around him, and she understood. With each passing day, she thought he was more attractive, too. Now he was somewhere in the territory of Zeus and Jax from Sons of Anarchy and Tom Hardy-level hotness.
Currently, she was resting her chin on her hand, staring shamelessly out the window at him as he hauled the cooler she’d filled onto the bigger of his two boats—the pontoon.
Lachlan Tours was booming. Whatever the townspeople thought of him, that didn’t seem to affect his business. All the tourists saw were all those five-star reviews and, secretly, who would be more knowledgeable about American alligator behavior if not an alligator himself?
She would put on the microphone after he left for the tour and tell Brian they just didn’t spend very much time together and that’s why he didn’t get much off them. Which was a total lie. She spent as much time with Holt as possible.
He turned and locked eyes on her through the window as if he knew she’d been watching. His grin was so bright it made her heart beat a little harder and the butterflies in her tummy flap their wings a little faster.
“Hi,” he mouthed.
She waved.
He twitched his head to come outside, but she held up her finger. The gentleman with the daughters looked like he was ready to pay out. She rang him up and told him, “I think Holt has something to show you guys outside before the tour.”
“Appreciate it. Will you be on the tour?”
“Oh, no, not me. I just kinda hang around here and take reservation calls when he’s out there. You will have a blast. Holt is the best tour guide on this side of the Mississippi!”
“Well, how do you know it’s any good if you’ve never gone on one of his tours?” the man said with a wink.
“He’s right, you know,” Holt said through the open window.
Bre shooed a fly away from her face. “Are you asking me on a swamp boat date?”
Holt chuckled and tracked the man leaving the shop before he landed those green-gold eyes on her. And then he did something that stunned her into stillness. He leaned through the window and pressed his lips against hers. A kiss? A kiss! And not just one on the top of her head like the other day. This was a soft one, heads angled, a little bite at the end, and that sexy little smack sound!
“Grab your sunscreen, Hollywood. Meet me out in the boat in five.” He frowned and dipped his attention to the drawer where she kept her cell. “Your phone is buzzing.”
“Oh.” Stage-five clinger Brian. “Probably a telemarketer or something.”
He frowned at her lips, turning his face away from her slightly. “You okay?” he asked.
“Of course, I’m okay!” If Brian would quit blowin’ up her phone. “Why?”
“Because you just lied.”
She froze. “You can tell when someone lies?”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Lucky me.”
He turned and walked away, but Bre felt horrible.
“Holt?”
“Yeah?” he asked shortly. He turned, but his eyes had cooled.
“It’s someone from my old life. A friend and a co-worker. I want to move on from him. Honestly, I want to move on from everything in my old life.” She hadn’t meant to admit so much. The words had just tumbled out. “The longer I’m here, the more I don’t miss the way things used to be.”
Over the sound of waves lapping against the dock, he asked, “Are you happy here?”
Bre nodded.
There was a loaded few seconds where they just stared at each other, and then he nodded and said, “Good. Your happiness is important to me now.”
And then like in the movies when the cool boy walks away from the explosion, he turned and walked away from her. Her heart was full of fireworks right now. Her happiness was important? What? What had happened to distance being important?
The phone was ringing again, vibrating against the side of the drawer. And here she was at a fork in the road. Keep walking up the middle, spying, feeding information, playing both sides. Or she could drift to the right. It was safe there. She had job security, and the path was even. She could keep walking along just like she had been doing for years on the even surface of her steady life.
Or there was the left fork. The left fork was riddled with danger and adventure, poachers, swamp life, and bayou accents that were a little hard to understand sometimes. The ground was littered with knotty cypress roots and surrounded by mosquitos and dark swamp forest. But there was a light at the end of it, and in that light stood Holt. There was such a feeling of safety to the left, but it made no sense. She’d almost lost him to poachers the other night. She could’ve been hurt, too. But he was standing there with his hand out, offering her something she didn’t fully understand yet but knew down to her bones that it was huge and life-changing. He was perhaps offering something she’d never imagined could belong to her.
Love.
Her happiness was important? That was love, wasn’t it? He hadn’t done the male dominant thing and demanded names and locations and relationship statuses when she admitted a man, even a co-worker, was calling. He’d told her something kind and left the choice up to her. Stay or go, the choice was always hers.
And to a woman like her—one who had learned to close her heart to relationships long ago—it was the only way a person could make her want to stay.
The left path, the dangerous one, the exciting one, the Uncertain one…the one with Holt…that one felt important, and she knew exactly why.
His happiness was important to her, too, and as she had watched the changes in him over the past few days, a deep feeling had grown in her soul that she could help him find it.
So she opened the drawer and glanced at the missed calls from Brian, and then she texted him.
I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ll call the station and take the blame as soon as I’m able. Holt is a good man who likes his privacy, and the more time I spend with him, the more I respect him. I can’t be the one to put him in the spotlight just because he was born a certain way. I would never be able to live with myself. If you met him even one time, you would understand. He’s amazing. I’m sorry, B. I’ll fix everything. Just stay busy today and I’ll explain everything as soon as I can get away.
And then she blocked Brian’s number temporarily and shoved her phone in the back pocket of her shorts. She would’ve left it in the drawer, but today was special. She could feel it. Holt was letting her in, and she was getting to go on her first swamp tour, so she wanted to take pictures like a tourist and forget about the shit-storm her career was about to turn into. All those years of working toward a story like this one, and she was throwing it away.
But the second she rounded the corner and saw Holt holding up a baby alligator named Bartholomew that he always let the tourists hold and take pics with before the tour, all her worries floated away on the hot Texas breeze.
He was smiling at the youngest daughter, trying to ease her into holding Bart. “Sadey, I’m tellin’ ya, hold him for five seconds, just long enough to snap a pic, and you’ll have that memory forever. Be tough, girl, go on.”
“Come on, Sadey, five seconds,” her sister Mariah encouraged her.
“I’ll snap the picture fast,” her dad promised, holding up one of those expensive-as-hell cameras with the big lenses.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Sadey squealed, holding out her hands.
“Don’t drop him. He’s just a baby,” Holt said. “He’s already had his breakfast and is the most chill little gatah I’ve ever had as a holder. All you have to do is let him rest in your hands.”
Sadey, with her pale cheeks and shaking hands, nodded once and clamped her teeth on her bottom lip as though mentally preparing herself. She shoved her hands out, palms up, as far away from her body as she could.
Holt chuckled as he settled Bart into them, and then he stood back so Sadey’s dad could snap the picture.
Everything went smooth-as-you-like until Bart moved his tail a millimeter. Sadey screamed, Bart went pummeling toward the earth, and fast as an actual lightning strike, Holt snatched the little gator from midair before he touched the ground.
And then everyone froze.
“Whoa,” Mariah murmured, her eyes on Holt. “You’re really fast.”
Way faster than anyone Bre had ever seen. He had blurred, he was so quick.
Save this. “Uh, he’s done that move about a hundred times,” Bre said with a giggle. “You would be surprised how many people let go of Bart. Holt is always ready like that.”
Holt stood and cradled Bart, kissed him on top of his scaly head like he was a cute puppy, lifted his too-bright eyes up to Bre for a second, just long enough for her to see the long pupils and the gratefulness there, and then turned to put Bart back into his terrarium.
“Baby American alligators are somewhat fragile in their first year of life,” Bre said, trying to hold the family’s attention. “A lot of times when you see gators that are missing a tail or a leg, it came from when they were little and just couldn’t escape a predator fast enough. Life for an alligator, or a ‘gatah,’ as the locals call them,” she said with a wink, “is actually kind of brutal. You think we’re scared of alligators? Try being a gator Bart’s size and living out in that water with the big guys.” She pointed to the muddy river where the boat was rocking, waiting to be taken out. “It’s a big reason the momma gators have evolved to be so protective. Only about three to four percent of hatchings actually make it to adulthood, so our lil baby Bart over there is actually one of the lucky ones. It’s part of why Holt has learned to keep him from hitting that ground during picture time. Does anyone need to use the restroom before we head out? You booked the best and most informative tour, but three hours in the swamp is a long time to go with no breaks.”
She could tell she’d fixed it. The look of uncertainty and shock had worn off of their faces as she’d blabbed. All three of them made their way to the restrooms off to the side of the shop.
