Page 62 of Love Bound

Claire comes over and rubs my shoulder. "Who are you?"

With a shake of my head, I rise and stroll over to the sink with the salad bowl in my hand. "I just don’t understand what that's supposed to mean. Usually, an ‘overreaction’ just means the person handing out that label didn’t like the other person's reaction."

Laurel glances at Cody and she's processing this, trying to find applications for the soft truth.

Devon, sitting back down, looks hard at me. "What exactly are you two doing?"

Laurel tosses back her curly hair and even Claire—with one hand deep in a container of brown sugar—glances my way, though her eyes are hooded in fear.

I, too, fear thinking about the past.

I sigh, a long big sigh that signals Laurel to offer, "Oh, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to. Echo Bay is called Echo Bay 'cause of all the gossip."

I grin. "I thought it was because of the caves."

But Claire seems expectant, like she's waiting for something, and I realize that if I want to know more about her she must want to know more about me. More than just my life with Allison.

So, I lay out a thumbnail while Devon and Claire make fried bananas and caramel sauce and Devon pulls out ice-cream and bowls. That Colton Security Systems was founded a decade ago, handles elite clients and businesses from cybersecurity to personal safety. And that I sold my half to my partner to move up here and try something different.

Only the last two points are not entirely true. But I’m not in the mood to tell them how I gave away my half. How Nic still has not signed the paperwork. How I walked away with a fraction of the money and how this was a poor penance for not seeing what I should have seen right away. That the man who’d been working up the road—paying attention to my wife, stopping by even the day before with a cherry pie, which I ate—had then murdered her and my son and I never connected the dots. I never saw what I’d been trained to see. I should have picked up something in Allison's face, some guilelessness that monster saw and abused.

Walking away had been easy.

Finding a different path seemed impossible—until Claire.

***

After dessert and some hasty goodbyes, peppered with several quick glances between the sisters when I put my hand on the small of Claire's back and then helped her on with her coat, she and I walk back down to the pier.

The night is cold and clear, and the stars, not having to compete with city lights, are bright and vast in number. The Milky Way undulates above our heads and our breath comes out thick and cottony in the cold air. Her ungloved hand rests inside the pocket of my jacket, our fingers entwined.

It makes me happy.

I’m not used to feeling happy.

"You know, you aren't supposed to get over her," Claire says suddenly, watching my face.

I keep my head tilted up at the sky.

"She is a part of who you are. Allison is one of the reasons you are standing here right now," she says, elaborating.

Now I look down at her. Her hood is pulled back and even in the fading light of the pier I can see that her ears are red with cold. Bending down, I press my face to hers, pull my hand from hers, wrap my arms around her, and kiss her. Her breath is warm, her taste sweet, and I feel her tremble slightly, but not from the cold. Deepening the kiss, my cock starts stiffening and I press against her, this time so she can feel me, all of me, and I grab her ass with one hand and pull her tight.

"Finn," she whispers, breaking away, and then she opens her mouth to mine once more.

A tern calls out and somewhere, across the bay, a bagpipe wails in the night.

I take her by the hand and lead her up the narrow trail through sand and rock and gnarly knots of old sea petunias to the back porch of The Inn. My Inn, though it still doesn’t feel like mine.

"Wait here," I tell her as she blows on her hands in the empty dining room. The place is warm, the furnace fan creating ambient noise in the background. I take off my jacket and leave it on a table. Grabbing a bottle of wine and two juice glasses, I lead her upstairs. Lighting a hurricane lantern, I set it on the mantle and watch her face.

She smiles as I set down the glasses on the nightstand. "Really? Juice glasses?"

"Think of them as tumblers."

I pour and she swirls the dark liquid for a moment. "I grew up with these, you know. They've been here forever. I think they used to be jam jars."

"Jam?"