Swim Deeper

by T. S. Joyce

  The woman twitched her long braid to her other shoulder and pulled Bre inside. “I don’t know about all the legends. I know about rumors, and those never served me no good.”

  Now that her eyes were adjusting to the light, she could see the woman’s face. She was striking and beautiful with skin a few shades darker than Holt’s. Her hair was thick and black, and her eyes were the color of warm whiskey. She was mixed race and the most striking woman Bre had ever seen.

  “Come on inside,” she said, her smile megawatt and bright white. “Been waiting a long time for Holt to bring a girl to meet me. You must be somethin’.”

  Bre’s cheeks heated with pleasure as she followed Holt’s gram inside.

  “This,” Holt murmured. “This is why I never wanted to bring a girl to meet you. There is no chill button with you. And I swear to God if you bring out one wedding magazine, we’re leaving and never coming back.”

  “No magazines,” the woman said, leading them to a table near a small kitchen. “Got it. Good thing I gotta vision board. Are you wanting to wear white or ivory?” Raina asked Bre, turning to her with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “That’s a joke. My grandson is a great many things, and one of those is easy-to-fuck-with. Where are you from, Bre?”

  “It’s interrogation time already?” she teased, taking the seat Raina pulled out for her at the table.

  “Oh, no, not yet. You ain’t drunk enough for that yet. What flavor moonshine do you like?”

  Raina made her way to the kitchen from where the delicious smells of seafood and spices were wafting.

  Holt pushed in the chair for Bre. “Gram, I have maybe an hour.”

  Bre looked up at him, and she could see it. The tension in the lines of his face, his too-bright eyes. “You need to Change soon?”

  He pushed a strand of hair from her face and nodded once.

  “That’s the first time you’ve talked about it,” she murmured. “Usually you make sure I’m settled in the guesthouse, and then your eyes turn bright, you say goodnight, and I’m not invited into that part of your life. That just made me feel good. You should know when you do something good, Holt,” she whispered. “I like when you let me in.”

  “Gram, do you mind if she stays here while I’m out?”

  “Not at all, so long as you eat somethin’ before you hit that water. And don’t you think I don’t know what you’re doin’ boy. I saw the gatah bait. Them poachers got poles up all over these parts right now. I see, boy. I don’t like it, but I see.”

  Holt made his way to the kitchen and took a huge, steaming pot from the stove, then poured it into an oversize colander in the sink. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Yeah, you’re Pap always handled it, too, and look where he is.”

  “Enough, Gram.”

  “No, you enough,” she snapped, rounding on him. “You bring me your girl to watch over—”

  “Bond with—”

  “Whatever. You think I don’t know? You think I can’t see? She’s special. You brought her here to get me to fall for her, too. That way, if something happens to you, and you know it will if you keep going like you’re goin’, she’ll have a safe place to land. Right?”

  Holt’s face twisted into something monstrous for a split second before he wiped the emotion from his face. “You were always too smart for your own good, and I’m too sober to be having conversations like this.”

  Raina marched right to a cabinet and pulled out three glasses and an old mason jar of something clear.

  “Shhhiiiiit,” Holt muttered as he poured the shrimp from the colander back into the pot. He shook his head as he poured seasoning over the food. Smelled spicy. “You still making that stuff?”

  “Sellin’ it for a fair penny, too. Your ungrateful ass just never wanted to learn my ways so this recipe will go to the grave with me.”

  Holt snorted. “Ornery.”

  Raina turned to Bre. “You hear the way this boy talks to me?” Raina asked. But she wore a smile and didn’t seem angry. “Maybe having you around will be good. Teach him some manners. Good Lord knows I tried and failed. Lachlan men are devils, but oh, they can be fun.” Raina winked at Bre. “Makes it almost worth hangin’ around for them.”

  She poured the sloshing liquor into the three glasses and handed one to Bre. She and Holt held up their glasses.

  Raina made a toast. “To this city girl and, oh, I can tell you’re city. We gonna make a swamper out of you yet, though. You just give me and Holt here a year. Toughen you up and prepare you to bear this gatah some young.”

  “Oh, no, we don’t want children,” Bre blurted out.

  “Nonsense and bullshit, child. Every human woman who ever met a Lachlan man said the same thing until they figured out they could handle it. What do you think I told your pap when I found out what he was?” she asked Holt.

  “I literally just want to drink this,” Holt muttered, frowning at his moonshine.

  “I told him hell no, and no way would I be surrounding myself with the likes of him. One gatah was enough for one woman to handle.” Her eyes softened. “And then I got tougher.” Her lips curved into a sweet smile. “And then he gave me your daddy, and I didn’t mind being surrounded.”

  “This is the weirdest toast, Gram,” Holt gritted out. “You’re gonna make Bre run away.”

  “Oh, boy, look at her smile. She ain’t runnin’ nowhere.” Raina arched her eyebrows high. “Are you, honey?”

  Bre lifted her glass a little higher. “To not being runners.”

  And there it was, the similarity between Holt and his grandmother. They had matching smiles when they were proud.

  Bre tossed the drink back, completely prepared for it to be some swamper rot gut that burned the whole way down, and it did burn, but it wasn’t so bad. “Is that apple pie moonshine?” she asked.

  “Mmmm hmmm, tastiest flavor I make.”

  “The rest taste like poison,” Holt assured Bre as he scooped a spoonful of butter into a pan of shell-on shrimp, and added more seasoning.

  “Boy, you never complained about a single flavor when you and your friends would come home lookin’ for trouble to get into.” Raina scooped what looked like gumbo out of a steaming bowl next to the stove. “Back when I lived at the Lachlan house, me and his pap were always getting on him for his wild ways.”

  “Why don’t you live in the Lachlan house anymore?” Bre asked, taking two bowls of delicious-smelling, spicy food from her hands.

  “Oh, after his pap passed, the house didn’t feel the same. He’s still in it. I don’t much like ghosts so I stay on the move now. Houseboat suits my needs better and, besides, Holt does a better job keeping up with that old house than I ever could.”

  “Wait! The Lachlan house is haunted?”

  “Every house in the swamp is haunted,” Holt said lightly. “You just learn to ignore the ghosts.”

  “Okay, but wait, wait, wait. I’m scared of ghosts. Is the guesthouse haunted, too?”

  “Oh, fuck yeah.” Holt poured them another round of moonshine. “You just got lucky to have the quiet ghosts.”

  “No, no, no, luck would be to have no ghosts at all!”

  “Look at her all scared,” Raina said with a chuckle. “One year, child, and you’ll be asking those ghosts if they like the clothes you’re wearing before you step out the door. Ain’t no ghost gonna hurt a Lachlan.”

  “But…but I’m not a Lachlan.”

  Raina dipped her chin to her chest and stared at Bre with something unreadable roiling in her eyes. “You sure about that?”

  Stunned, she sat there for a few beats, frozen. Holt put another drink in front of her and locked his arms on the table, stared her dead in the eyes. “You’re Lachlan enough. Ain’t no ghost or human or animal who will ever bring harm to you.” There was steely promise in his voice that lifted chills on her forearms.

  She’d never felt so claimed by a man. Holt had just said she was under his protection for always, right here in front of his grandmothe
r.

  Raina came to the table and sat beside Bre, set a stack of napkins at the edge and instructed her, “These are for after dinner. No point in cleaning yourself in the middle. You’ll only muck up again.”

  Bre had no idea what that meant until Holt spread out a piece of thick brown paper on the table and dumped the massive pot of shrimp onto the center of it.

  “Oh, my gosh, this all looks so good,” Bre whispered in awe at the steaming food.

  “Yeah, well make no mistake, you’re bein’ tested,” Holt informed her. “Gram’s gonna see if you like spice. Keep a poker face and don’t show her any weakness, hmmm? Swamp women can sense fear a mile away.”

  Bre snorted and cracked her knuckles. “I got this.”

  He sat on her other side at the square four-seater table and rubbed her leg under the table. “Atta girl,” he murmured with a wink.

  She ate a few bites of the hot gumbo and nearly had an orgasm in her mouth. “Holy shitake mushrooms. Can I have the recipe for this?”

  “Yes, you may.”

  “What?” Holt said around a bite. “Gram, you been denying me this recipe for years.”

  “She asked nicely, and she complimented my moonshine.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, you like her more than me already, don’t you?”

  Devoid of hesitation, Raina uttered, “Yes. Been waiting for a Lachlan woman for a long time. Now I have someone to do girl shit with in town.”

  “We can get our nails done this week if you want.”

  Raina gasped and arched her eyebrows at Holt. “You never offered to take me to get my nails done.”

  “Because you’d chip them in four seconds out here.”

  “Grandson, I’m gonna need you to start competing for my love,” she joked.

  Bre was laughing as she scooped a pile of hot shrimp her way. She began to peel the first one and said, “When was the last time you had another Lachlan woman around?”

  “The year was nineteen ninety-one.”

  “Oh, God,” Holt muttered. But the man was smiling.

  “Holt’s momma decided to move from these swamps and left a scrawny little eight-year-old, dirty-faced swamp weasel behind for me to raise.”

  “Your mom left you?” she asked, shocked.

  “I was better off,” he murmured. “It’s not some tragic thing. She wasn’t prepared to raise a shifter. She could barely take care of herself.”

  “Where was your dad?”

  Holt shook his head. “Nope! Pass, next conversation.”

  When Bre looked over at Raina, she was holding a half-peeled, spice-smeared shrimp between her fingers, elbows on the table, head cocked, staring at Holt. “Boy, you got communication problems.”

  “Says the woman who married Miller Lachlan, the quietest man in the entire world.”

  Raina shrugged. “True.” She grinned at Bre and then lowered her voice. “I always talked enough for the both of us.”

  Bre giggled and nodded. “I can take care of that part, too.”

  “She ain’t lyin’, Gram. This woman can talk your ear off about nothing at all. The other day, she held a five minute conversation about the size of the mosquitos out here without a single response from me.”

  Bre swatted him in the arm, and he laughed. “I’m serious. I thought if I didn’t talk back, she would get bored, but she didn’t even need me for that conversation.”

  “You would miss my chattering if I was gone, Holt Lachlan. You know you would.”

  “I would enjoy the silence,” he said. But then he got quiet for a few seconds and admitted, “Yeah, I would miss your chatter. I’m getting used to the noise now.” He nodded his head at Fargo, who was chewing on a big bone on a pillow near them. “He would miss you, too.”

  “Aw, my boys,” she crooned.

  And as she sat there, peeling shrimp and listening to Raina and Holt rib each other, something struck her. Family could be a lot of things. Growing up, her parents had worked so much she’d practically raised herself. And for a long time, her view of family was fractured. For most people, family was the two parents and two kids type of gig. For some, it was just finding a partner you wanted to tackle life with. For some, it was a mom and dad and siblings and aunts and uncles and reunions. For some, it was friends who turned into family.

  Bre had always thought family wasn’t really for her because of her loneliness as a kid, her job as an adult, and because of the decisions she’d made with her life.

  But here, in the Swamps of Uncertain, she’d stumbled onto something special. She had Fargo and now Raina. And she’d fallen in love with a man who’d promised to protect her. With a man who she was pretty sure would learn to love her back someday. It might not look like other people’s love stories. He was a shifter, and even now she could see the water calling him. There would be no normalcy in her life here, but that was okay.

  But this little family she’d found made everything worth it.

  For the first time in her life…Bre felt like she belonged.

  Chapter Twelve

  “You’re gonna have to roll me out of here,” Bre said, leaning back in her chair. “That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Ungrateful,” Holt teased. “Listen to her,” he said, pushing his chair back on two legs. “I been cookin’ for her all week, and she comes here once, and suddenly it’s the best food in the world.”

  Raina chuckled. “Oh, we’re competing now.”

  “Chhhh. I’m making Cajun-stuffed flounder for her tomorrow night, Gram. Compete with that.”

  “Boy, tuck that index finger in better if you’re gonna flip me off. You lost all your trainin’?”

  Bre snickered and started rolling up the messy parchment paper they’d been eating on. Holt and Raina were really funny together. “I like this competition. Feeeeed meeee.”

  A long, low rumble filled the room, and when Bre looked up at Holt, he was wincing with his eyes closed.

  “Does it hurt if you put off Changing for too long?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but I’m used to it.”

  “No, boy, tell her how it really is,” Raina demanded. “She should know it all.”

  Holt sighed and opened his eyes, now bright gold with long pupils. “The Change hurts. Putting off a Change hurts. Being in my human skin hurts.”

  “Oooh, Holt,” Bre murmured. She wished she could take some of that burden from him, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t share it anyway if given the choice.

  “Go on, boy,” Raina said softly. “Go do your gatah deeds. We’ll hold here. It’ll be like the old days, waiting on my Miller. I’ll teach your mate how to be patient.”

  Holt held Raina’s gaze for a moment and then nodded and stood. He gripped the back of Bre’s neck gently as he passed. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Bre watched him walk out the front door. She missed him already. Raina twitched her head and said, “You should see him. Then we’ll see if you aren’t a runner.”

  “The rumors…” Bre said, standing. “The ones where you could control the alligators in this swamp. The ones where people disappeared because you sicced your predators on them. Are those true?”

  “Next time you’re in town, ask about the type of men who disappeared. Were they poachers? Murderers? People who came after my family because of what they thought they knew about us? I never controlled the alligators. There were only two I cared about back then. My husband and my son. It’s a dangerous game, poking at an alligator nest. Especially when you have two males in the territory sick of people trying to kill them. Sick of people trying to kill the ones they love. No, I never controlled a gatah. You can’t control a force of nature. I loved them instead.”

  Bre’s heart ached for the sadness in Raina’s eyes.

  “What happened to Holt’s dad?”

  Raina dropped her gaze to the table where she was shredding the corner of the parchment paper. “Same thing that happened to my Miller. Same thing that happened to Miller’s dad,
and his dad, and his dad. Same thing that happens to every Lachlan male.” She dragged her raw gaze up to Bre. “Same thing that will take Holt. We call it the Lachlan Curse. Humans kill the things that scare them. It’s in their nature, and until there is a cure for that? Every Lachlan son will meet their end the same way. It is the burden of a Lachlan woman to accept their mate’s destiny and to protect them for as long as they possibly can. It’s our burden to watch them leave, knowing every night could be the last time we see them, kiss them, touch them. It’s our burden to become so strong that when they leave us, we remain unbreakable. Quiet queens of the swamp, carrying on our work to protect it as best as we can until the next generation is old enough to keep order again.” She looked at the door. “You earned Holt’s heart. I never seen him like this. He’s happy. I hoped…” Her lip trembled and her eyes filled. Thickly, she tried again, “I hoped he would find you before the end.”

  Bre slid her hand onto the woman’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll keep him safe,” she whispered.

  Raina patted her hand and nodded.

  As Bre walked outside, the screen door banging closed behind her, she wanted to cry. This wasn’t some simple story for a news station. This story was full of tragedy. It was full of bad things happening to generations of a family simply because of how they were born.

  And her Holt was next. She knew Raina was right; she’d already dragged his bleeding body out of the swamp and faced off with poachers. How many times could Holt endure that before he didn’t come back at all?

  In one of the plastic chairs by the edge of the houseboat porch, Holt sat, his elbows on his knees, his attention on the swamp. Their soundtrack was the frogs tonight. The murky water rippled, distorting the halos of light from the house.

  “I don’t want to go,” he murmured. “I was having fun tonight. I wish I could stay with you.” His voice sounded so raw. “I wish…”

  She approached him slow and then stood between his knees, cupped the back of his head and let him rest his forehead against her stomach. “You wish what?”

  “I wish I was like you.”