Page 66 of Born for Lace

I sense Lagos before I see him. He is a warm lick of energy moving through my body but also an unwelcome stir low in my belly.

“No one will hurt you again, little flower,” he states, and I almost believe the fierce conviction in his depthless timbre.

He won’t let anyone hurt me.

Not physically...I almost say it aloud but instead move to the net, eager to prove the giant brute wrong. Dragging the webbing over the edge, I find it full of… of trash.

I slump down, my nose scrunching up. Sulking, I stare at it and then at Tomar. “Nothing.”

“Next time,” Tomar offers, trying to lift a large tackle box.

I watch him attempt it, taking hold, but he strains and growls before dropping it with a thud.

Then I see fragile pride furrow Tomar’s brows as Lagos lifts the bulky tackle box with ease.

“Leave it with me, brother.”

Lagos stops beside me with the hefty trunk in his arms. He’s so strong… My pulse leaps. I gaze up at the long, thick length of him. My mouth parts when I meet his steel-coloured eyes staring down at me through his lower lashes. “Check the net again, little flower.”

I blink up at him.

Why would he say that? To taunt me? I am not going to allow him to mock me further. The net was full of rubbish.

Diverting my gaze, I focus on Tomar instead as he packs and stacks, emptying the boat, fastening crates and preparing to vacate the catamaran.

The silence extends and lingers, and I want to say something to distract my silly curiosities, but instead, I grumble. Reaching for the net, I pull it over and…

There it is. A little fish struggling for breath on top.

It wasn’t there before. Maybe it was buried underneath? Perhaps it flopped its way to the very top of the discarded collection of goods.

No. It wasn’t there.

“You did get one,” Tomar says, glancing over his shoulder. “Youcantake care of yourself.”

We both know I can’t.

He isn’t patronising me. There is a difference between encouragement through optimism, and appeasement through praise. So, I nod in agreement with a light smile touching my lips.

But no, I can’t fish.

I reach out and brush my finger over the silvery head, stopping at a small bloody hole in the left cheek. A hole from a hook.

A spark of deep affection shoots through my body.

It would have been nice to have caught the fish in the net, butthisfish has a message for me. One I do not wish to ignore. A meaningful message—I think it is a peace offering from Lagos.

ChapterTwenty

Dahlia

Sad melancholy sits quietly in my lower belly. Leaving the catamaran is strangely emotional, knowing I will never see it again, nor The Bite.

Maple told me once that we have three deaths. The first is when your mind is void, the second is when your body decays, becoming The Crust, and the third is the last time someone speaks your name.

Maybe… just maybe… we have hundreds. Like Tide said to me the day he died. We are bits of every place we have been and every person we have spoken to. So, every time we say goodbye to a bit, we have one little death.

Goodbye, Tide.

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