Page 44 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
He’d been cold for so long. Too long.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he let himself feel.
Her fingers clutched his shirt, holding him like she was afraid the moment might break if she let go. He deepened the kiss—not rough, not rushed, but certain, a claiming of something neither of them had any right to want.
But then the boat rolled, a slow, lazy tilt as the tide shifted beneath them.
The motion broke through the haze. The scent of salt and oil hit him, grounding him in the truth of where they were and what waited outside these thin walls. The danger. The lies. The past.
He tore his mouth from hers, breathing hard, his forehead pressed to hers. “This—” His voice rasped low, broken. “This isn’t right.”
Her breath hitched, her hand still fisted in his shirt. “Rone?—”
He pulled back farther, enough to see her eyes. They were wide, confused, glimmering in the dim light like the reflection of a storm. “You’re scared,” he said. “Tired. We both are. That’s what this is. Just two people trying to find something steady in the middle of a hurricane.”
“That’s not what it felt like,” she whispered.
His chest clenched. “I know.”
Silence stretched, full of things they’d never be able to take back.
He pushed to sit up, dragging a hand over his face as if he could scrub away the heat still lingering there. “When this is over,” he said, keeping his voice even though every word scraped his throat raw, “I don’t want you looking back and regretting me.”
She flinched as if the words had been a blow. “Regret you? You think that’s what this is?”
“You say you want honesty, well, here it is. I think we’re both running on fumes and fear. And when people do that, they grab for the nearest warmth. Doesn’t mean it’s real.”
Her eyes hardened, hurt slipping behind something sharper. “Maybe not to you.”
The words cut deep, and he didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t make it worse. He turned away, bracing a hand on the bulkhead, staring out the small, salt-streaked porthole.
He settled in the bed facing the opposite direction, hands clasped tight to avoid temptation. She shifted on the bed, then silence again—except for the creak of the boat and the uneven rhythm of two hearts caught between truth and temptation.
He exhaled slowly. “Get some sleep, Isobel,” he said, without turning. “We move with the tide.”
She didn’t answer. But when he finally risked a glance back, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the floor as if the ocean itself had just betrayed her.
The sight gutted him.
He wanted to go to her. To take back what he’d said. To tell her itwasreal, that maybe that was what scared him most.
Instead, he turned back to his side of the bed and left the distance between them, because that was safer.
Sometime in the night, Rone stirred on the berth, caughtbetween the edge of dream and the echo of everything he’d tried to bury.
He turned without meaning to. Isobel was curled tight beside him, the blanket twisted around her waist. Even in sleep, her body trembled faintly, a shiver running through her as the wind knifed through a loose seal in the hatch.
Before he thought better of it, he reached for her.
His arm slipped around her waist, pulling her gently back against him. She made a small sound—half protest, half surrender—and then stilled. The tension eased from her spine as her body warmed beneath his touch.
He told himself it was just comfort. Just keeping her warm.
But the truth was simpler.
Her hair brushed his chin, soft as sea grass, and he inhaled the faint floral scent that clung to her, some stubborn trace of a life that had nothing to do with guns and shadows. His hand flexed once against her hip, the reality of her—alive, real, breakable—sliding through the cracks of his defenses.
He closed his eyes and let the rhythm of her breathing anchor him. For a while, the world outside didn’t exist. There was only the quiet, the salt air, and the impossible fact that for the first time in years, he wasn’t completely alone.
