Page 33 of Ensnared
Ty waves dismissively. “Did that already. I took her for a lap, then gave her fresh water and a stuffed chew toy. She’ll be fine for a while.”
Oh. “That was nice of you.”
He sits on the bed and puts his hands between his knees. “Yeah, well, I was an asshole, so I figured I needed to make up for it.”
I sit next to him and tug at his hand until he relents and lets me squeeze it. “I’m sorry for not telling you I was a witch. I never wanted to lie to you, but there’s really no good way to begin a conversation like that.”
He offers me a small smile. “Uh, ditto. But I reacted badly for a completely different reason.”
Jack hums from behind us. “You got that right.”
“Hey, leave some for Skye.” Ty swipes the half-empty pan from Jack’s hands and offers me a cinnamon roll. “You’re a savage.”
I take a sticky roll and bite into it. “Mm, perfection.”
“Thank you,” Ty replies. “At leastsomeoneappreciates my effort.”
“Hey, I appreciate your effort,” Jack mumbles around a bite of pastry. “I’m showing my appreciation by eating what you make.”
They’re such guys. Deflecting the serious stuff by bantering and avoiding the difficult conversation.
“So, Ty, want to tell me about that reason of yours?” I lick my fingers and take another bite. “You know, so we can avoid a repeat of this situation?”
Ty glances swiftly at Jack then sighs. “Yeah, all right.” He scoots higher up the bed to lean against the headboard. “It’s weird, because everyone here knows the story.”
“You never talk about it,” I guess.
He nods. “Exactly. So—my mom and dad met in college. In Vancouver, of all places. They were both foreign exchange students, studying marine biology. Dad had some family there from China, and Mom arrived fresh from Iceland to study in the US for a year. They fell in love, and nine months later, they had me.”
I climb up next to him and swipe another cinnamon roll from Jack. “That’s romantic.”
“Yeah.” Ty laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. “They realized that they couldn’t continue living in Vancouver with a baby dragon, of course, because I would shift the moment I dipped my feet in the ocean. So they came here.”
“Why here? Why not China or Iceland?” I ask.
He clenches his hands in his lap. “I don’t know. I guess they thought living next to the ocean was cool.”
He falls silent, so I glance at Jack. He’s looking at Ty with a mixture of concern and affection. Then he clasps Ty’s shoulder and gives him a squeeze as if to show him he’s there for him.
Seriously, these two keep making me cry.
Ty takes another deep breath and blurts, “My dad would go on these ‘research trips’ and he’d be gone for months on end. He was researching sea turtles, or eel migration patterns or whatever, and he’d go to Hawaii or the Aegean and send us postcards that sometimes arrived after his return. Then, when I was about eight, my mom started suggesting we could go with him.” He rubs his chest. “You know, she’d always tell me I was too young to go, and she was stuck in Amber Bay with me. She’d leave for her own trips sometimes, leaving me with Aunt Georgia.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, not liking where this is going. “Did you then travel with them?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “Long story short, it turned out that my father wasn’t traveling the world but travelinghome. To his other family. Or”—he grimaces and turns his head away from me—“I guesswewere the other family. My oldest half-sister is four years older than me. The youngest is now twenty-one.”
I cover my mouth with my hand, and my eyes well with tears. “I’m so sorry.”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug, but his grimace betrays his emotions. “Yeah, it is what it is.”
“I could never figure out where the postcards came from,” Jack says quietly. “I used to think it was so cool that your dad traveled to all these places. My old man only ever stayed here and fished for herring, you know? But after we learned everything…”
Ty twists to look at him. “And I’d have switched places with you in a moment. Your dad was always there. For everything.” Then he glances down at me. “Jack’s dad sort of…took me under his wing after mine left. He even tried to make a fisherman out of me.”
Jack snorts. “That didn’t go over well.”
I could ask about the anecdote, lighten the mood, and consider myself lucky that Ty had shared even this much with me. But I need to know what happened with his family. I want to know all of him, because I care about him too much to just accept the mask he chooses to show the world.
