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Deanna tries to be still and small. Unnoticeable.
It’s usually easy in the peace and quiet of the yarn shop. There, the shelves full of colorful wool and fluffy raw fibers are more likely than Deanna to draw anyone’s eye. The loudest noises reliably come from her manager banging around in the back room. She’s either doing inventory or taking her aggression out on a packing crate — Deanna is never quite sure which. That leaves Deanna to mind the till and tidy the front of shop, humming to herself as she goes, at ease in a soft, safe little world.
Usually, that is. Right now, Deanna feels uncomfortably seen.
Since she stormed into the shop ten minutes ago, the tall human woman has been ranting about some fatal flaw in her latest project. Sneering at Deanna from beneath her blunt blonde bob, her nostrils flair like a predator scenting the air. Every so often, she waves an elegant, sharp-nailed hand through the air, cutting off Deanna’s responses before they’ve even formed. If Deanna doesn’t move, doesn’t make a noise, maybe she’ll complain herself out and move on to some other defenseless prey, like a barista.
A girl can dream.
The lady pauses to suck in a breath. Deanna seizes on her one defense, freezing a brittle customer service smile on her face and raising her voice several octaves. “I’m sure we can sort this out,” she chirps. “Can I take a look?”
The customer sniffs. “I don’t see how that will help.” But she whips something out of the satchel at her hip, slapping it down on the counter between them. It’s a snarl of blue-green yarn, twisted up like algae washed ashore.
“You see?” she says. “It’s obviously a defective product.”
Deanna goes up on tiptoe on her stool, leaning over the counter to pick the wooly lump up between thumb and forefinger.
“Hmm.” She nibbles at her full bottom lip. It’s a… dress? The fibers have matted together tightly. The sleeve looks like it might fit Deanna’s arm, but certainly not the form of the woman before her. In fact, it looks almost felted. Deanna flicks her eyes up to the customer. “Ma’am, did you wash this after you made it?”
The lady folds her arms, smiling like she’s just bested Deanna in a game of rollies. “Of course I did. Hot water, just like you always say.”
Deanna grabs a nearby bundle of wool, turning it over to display the same wash cold, lay flat to dry label that adorns all the yarn in the shop. “Right. Yup. So, about that—”
The rest of the explanation goes about as well as it ever does. The woman unleashes a torrent of complaint in her direction. Deanna holds tight and endures it until, finally, she utters the magic words: “I’d like to speak to your manager.”
Deanna winces. “Of course.” She turns toward the half-shut door of the back room and calls, in a wavering voice, “Glasha?”
The banging from the back room abruptly ceases. A few moments later a broad, curvaceous half-orc shoulders her way through the stockroom door. She holds a knitting needle like a dagger in one large hand.
Glasha’s eyes go from the woman to Deanna and back again, a furrow deepening between her brows. “Problem?”
“I should say so,” the customer begins, looking pleased. “Your employee here seems to think—”
Glasha catches Deanna’s eye and jerks her thumb back towards the door.
Deanna jumps to obey and skitters through. She only lets her breath out once the door shuts behind her and she’s ensconced in the solitude of their overstuffed stockroom. Out front, the customer is starting in on a (no doubt thorough) assessment of Deanna’s faults. She isn’t permitted to talk long before the boom of Glasha’s voice cuts across hers like a blow. Either brave or foolish, the customer climbs to an even shriller pitch, as if she will call for Glasha’s manager next.
It’s too bad for her, then, that Glasha owns the store. Behind the register, she’s hung a cross stitch that reads Do no harm, but take no shit. Actually, the first part is optional.
“Let me hear you say that one more time.” Glasha does sound not inviting in the slightest, and the woman’s voice wavers on her muffled response. Deanna winces, though no one could deny the lady was asking for it.
It’s like looking away from a carriage crash, but Deanna pulls her attention from the door. She makes her way to the workstation, where a pile of the newly dyed hanks are stacked, waiting to be put away. Scooting a stool up to the table’s edge and another one next to the shelf, she begins to work.
Deanna’s quick, like she always is, to lose herself in the to-and-fro between table and shelf, in the tint and texture of the fibers, in picking the right cubbyhole for each yarn weight and colorway. It’s probably only a few minutes before Glasha stomps back into the stockroom, wearing a full-body scowl. The customer must have given up—or more likely, been sent packing, with instructions never to return.
Deanna stretches to place one last skein atop the pile on the highest shelf. Looking over her shoulder, she flashes Glasha an expression that’s more of a grimace than a smile. “Sorry you had to deal with that, boss, I—”
In the corner of her vision, the skein wobbles.
Deanna casts a wary glance back up at the shelf, where the heap of yarn rumbles. One bundle teeters, and then another, and suddenly the whole pile is rushing toward her in a landslide.
She flings her arms wide, leaning backwards to catch as many as she can. It’s the wrong move, and she knows it as soon as her toes slip on the worn-smooth wood of the stool. The avalanche engulfs her in a torrent of reds and oranges, purples and blues, and Deanna is going down with it.
She meets the floor with a thump, buried in yarn like a fresh corpse in its grave. A final ball of worsted rolls to rest on top of her face, and the world goes black.
There’s yarn tickling her nose, her tailbone smarts, and suddenly Deanna is very, very tired. Maybe if she lies here for a little while, the day will move on and apply its humiliations to someone else.
She doesn’t get a chance to test that theory, because some jerk nudges the worsted aside and a shaft of light pierces her comfortable darkness. Deanna blinks and squints.
Glasha peers down at her, mouth creased with concern. “You okay?”
Deanna wheezes out a laugh, her already rosy cheeks coloring further. “Me? I’m peachy.”
Glasha raises her brows. “Sure seems like it.” She extends a palm down to Deanna and pulls her to her feet with one strong hand. “You know, you don’t have to let the customers treat you like that. I’ve told you a million times, just kick ‘em out. I don’t need the patronage of assholes.”
“I know,” Deanna sighs. “I’m just. Not good at conflict.” On days like today, it feels like she’s not good at much.
Glasha folds her arms and gives Deanna a hard look. “Girl. I’m going to ask one more time. You okay?”
Deanna looks down at her feet, where Glasha’s shadow has engulfed her own. How can she possibly explain it to Glasha? Tall, strong, beautiful Glasha. People listen to her. Deanna’s lucky if someone even looks her way.
Her silence must speak loudly enough, because Glasha says, “I see,” and turns away, tromping out of the stockroom and toward the front of the shop. There’s the scrape of the bolt turning shut in the door and the fwip fwip of the open sign as it’s flipped to the side that reads come back whenever, or not.
“You didn’t have to close the shop,” Deanna says, shuffling awkwardly on her feet, when Glasha returns.
“Yes, I did.” Glasha rights the stool that betrayed Deanna and sits down heavily on it. She drags a wicker basket between her legs. “We’re going to clean up this mess, and you’re going to decide what to do with your week off.”
Deanna’s brows knit together. “I don’t have a week off.”
“You do now.” Glasha starts scooping skeins off the floor and flinging them into the basket. “You haven’t taken a vacation since you started working for me. Or are you really going to try to tell me you don’t need a change?”
Deanna opens her mouth to deny this… and closes it again. For lack of anything better to do, she stoops and picks up a luminously blue-green skein that had rolled under a low shelf and holds it out to Glasha like an uncertain offering. “But… where would I even go?”
Glasha laughs. “I don’t know. Wherever the hell you want?” She takes the skein from Deanna, then turns it over to tap the label. The silhouette of a wind-swept palm tree sways against a red-orange sunset. The shade name scrawled beneath reads High Tide at Port Damali. “Why not hit the Menagerie Coast? It’s almost Highsummer. Should be pretty fun.”
Pretty fun is an understatement. The parties down the coast during Highsummer week are legendary. Every Sydenstar, the sleepy seaside towns are suddenly awash with a tide of travelers—partygoers and young students with their whole lives ahead of them, looking to make some bad decisions. Not yarn store clerks.
Deanna takes the yarn from Glasha and turns it over in her hands, worrying her lip between her teeth. “Should I? I’m not sure I’m that kind of girl.”
“The Deanna Leimert I know?” Glasha snorts. “Of course she isn’t. But Vacation Deanna? She could be. That’s the whole point of getting away, isn’t it? No one knows you. You can try being someone else on for size. Have a fling. Get out of your rut. Have fun.”
Deanna looks back down at the label, with its palm tree and sunset, and runs her thumb over its handwritten letters. A feeling that is something close to hope blossoms inside her chest like a tropical flower, like the unfurling of the person she could be.
“Someone else,” she muses. It sounds nice.
***
Deanna certainly feels different as she slips through the door of The Briny Deep, the beachside bar that is cradled like a pearl in the shell of Breakaway Bay.
The slinky, emerald green dress Glasha had talked her into packing hugs against her hips and waist in unaccustomed ways. She’d thrown a lighter green shawl over top, lacy like sea-foam, as protection from any chill that might come in off the ocean. Her braids had looked nice in the hotel mirror as she piled them high atop her head, letting a few spill down loose in a fringe to frame her face. They keep falling in front of her eyes now, and in the dark of the tavern, it’s like peering through a curtain of kelp at a murky sea beyond. The bar itself is made up like a luminous coral reef, studded with barnacles and shells, jellyfish lanterns offering little specks of light amid the loud, hot sea of nightlife. Shadowy figures press in alongside Deanna like dense shoals of fish, dancing and laughing and drinking.
Normally, Deanna would be out of her depth. But she’s not exactly herself tonight, is she? She takes a deep breath, smooths down the fabric of her dress, and wades into the crowd.
At the bar, she grasps the sticky edge of the counter and hauls herself up onto one of the few open stools. An ancient bartender behind the counter is wiping mugs with a threadbare cloth.
“Hi,” Deanna says. “I don’t really do this much. What would you recommend?”
The old man’s hand stills and he glances in her direction, but either he can’t see that well in the dim light, or he doesn’t look low enough, because he goes back to his task a moment later.
Deanna sags a little in her seat. A well-muscled young katari, with a good natured face untroubled by thoughts, chooses that moment to sidle up to the bar, leaning forward to capture the barkeep’s attention. “Yo, my guy! Can I get a Swavain Islands Iced Tea?”
“Sure thing, son.” The bartender slaps his rag down and reaches for a glass. “Five copper.”
The katari rustles around for his coin purse and Deanna resigns herself to waiting for him to get his order. It’s not the first time a member of the taller races has overlooked her, nor is it likely to be the last. She’s just not very noticeable. Some things you can’t change.
Deanna sits, fixing her gaze on her hands in her lap. The sparkly fabric of her dress just seems gaudy now.
Something whips through the air in front of Deanna, glinting like an arrow loosed from a bow. She jerks her head up, a squeak escaping her involuntarily, just in time to see something small and sharp pierce the katari’s coin purse, pinning it to the countertop.
A dagger. No, a chisel.
The katari and bartender both turn to gawp in the direction the it flew from. Deanna turns too, eyes wide.
A gnomish man sits a little way down the bar, hand at his hip, fingers dancing over the line of tools still hanging from his belt. He’s middle-aged, for a gnome, and handsome in a weathered way, with streaks of white beginning to shoot through his dark hair. He’s got a strong nose and unruly brows, beneath which two striking blue eyes glare out at the katari with disdain.
“Ladies first, bucko!” The gnome gestures in Deanna’s direction.
The katari and the bartender both blink down at her as if she just teleported in.
“Oh, uh.” The katari edges back from the bar, but not before unpinning his coin purse from the chisel. “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t see you there.”
Deanna winces. “It’s fine,” she says, but he’s already gone.
The bartender shifts on his feet, obviously wishing he could flee in a similar manner, but the gnome skewers that idea too, giving a gallant tip of his head toward Deanna. “What’re you having, miss?”
“Uhh.” Is this guy hitting on her? Despite her thudding pulse and the two pairs of eyes on her, Deanna throws her gaze up to the chalkboard above the bar where the specials are scrawled. “Can I have a… Plenty of Fish in the Sea?”
“You heard her!” The gnome smacks the counter.
The bartender hurries to appease the strange little man, slinging rum and some alarmingly blue liquid into a fat, round glass, like a cut-rate wizard over his cauldron. He sprinkles red gummy fish in to swim amongst the ice cubes, then stabs a bright paper parasol through a piece of pineapple on the rim, and slides the entire concoction over to Deanna.
“Wow,” Deanna says, eyes wide, before she remembers herself and gropes for the coin purse at her hip.
The gnome scoffs and slaps a gold piece down on the bar.
“Keep the change,” he tells the bartender, who whisks it away under his palm and disappears down the bar in search of less aggressive customers.
“Um, thank you,” Deanna says. She can feel her cheeks—already rosy to begin with—heat. Should she be thanking someone who just attacked another customer?
The gnome gives her a curt nod of acknowledgement. “Someone’s got to keep those assholes in their place. Do you mind?” He waves his hand at something beyond Deanna.
She follows the gesture to the chisel, lying lonely on the bar top.
“Oh, yeah, of course.” She plucks the little tool up and holds it out toward the man as if he might snap at her next.
Instead, he takes it back without comment and turns his attention to a knobbly chunk of wood cradled in his lap—returns his attention, more likely, given the soft snowfall of wood shavings that already encircle his stool. He glides the chisel smoothly over the rough surface, like a caress, and more curls of wood drift down to join the others on the floor. His expression is knifelike, like an artist at a block of marble, staring at something only he knows is there.
Deanna leans forward, trying to peer through the dark and shadow of the bar to see what he sees, watching until she can’t stand her curiosity a second longer. “What are you making?”
The man raises his head, eyes wide, as though he is surprised that she’s still there, or perhaps surprised that anyone is watching at all.
“This?” He points at the rough-hewn lump in his lap. Deanna nods.
He turns it round to face her, revealing the snarling muzzle and piercing eyes of a lone wolf that seems to be tearing itself from the wood with his help. It has the look of a wild, determined creature, powerful and defiant even when cornered or trapped.
Deanna feels her heart stumble in her chest. “Wow,” she breathes. “It’s beautiful.”
The gnome squints at her, expression guarded, as if weighing her sincerity. He must decide in her favor, because he sticks one weathered hand out a second later.
“Chetney Pock O’Pea,” says the man. “C-POP Industries. I’m going to be a master craftsman one day.”
The people Deanna knows back home don’t have grand plans like that. They want to pay their rent and have enough left over on Folsen for a pint at the pub. If a drunken dream bubbles out of them while they’re in their cups, they know enough to laugh it off the next morning with their friends. It’s odd to hear such naked ambition. It’s nice.
She takes Chetney’s hand, feeling the wood-calluses on his fingertips as they shake. Her skin sparks like a staticky blanket as they part.
“I’m Deanna,” she says. Just Deanna.
“You’ve got an eye for quality,” Chetney proclaims. “You an artisan yourself?”
Deanna pulls her shawl a little closer around her shoulders, suddenly feeling a little too revealed in her slinky dress. “No, I could never do anything like that. I just work in a yarn store.”
Chetney takes in her shawl with sharp eyes. “You make that?”
Deanna nods minutely. “I spun and dyed the wool myself,” she admits.
Chetney throws up his hands, spilling over with agitated animation. “That’s art if I’ve ever seen it! Look at that detail!”
He picks up a corner of the shawl, holding it tenderly in his rough hands to examine the lacework, giving it all the attention he’d turned toward his own craftsmanship a few minutes before.
Deanna can’t stop the blush that blooms across her face. “You think so?”
“Of course! You gotta believe in your work, or no one else will.” He releases her shawl and picks his wood up again, turning the statue around to reveal the sketched outline of another wolf, not yet carved. This one is thinner, meaner, hungrier than the first. “Look, it’s like this. Inside everyone, there are two big-ass wolves, fighting like hell. One of the wolves is a real shitbag, full of self-doubt and criticism. The other believes in itself, full of hope and stuff.” Chetney taps the first wolf carving with his chisel. “Somebody’s gotta win, right?”
A memory crackles to life in the recesses of Deanna’s brain. She sits up a little. “Oh, I know this! My grandmother used to tell me a gnomish legend like that. It’s the one you feed, right?”
Chetney frowns. “What? No. Of course not.” Holding his chisel like a dagger, he jabs the air between them. “You’ve got to overpower ‘em both with your bare hands. Then you’re the Alpha, and nobody fucks with you.”
For a moment, Deanna has no idea what to say to this strange, talented man, who is so confident that he can spew utter nonsense with a straight face. Without her permission, a small noise squeaks past her lips, then another. She can’t help it—she starts to giggle, harder than she’s laughed in months, hard enough it crescendos in a snort.
Deanna slaps a hand across her mouth in embarrassed horror. But when she raises her eyes to Chetney’s, ready to search for any sign of offense, there’s only a gentle amusement lighting them up from the inside. A broad smile curls over his lips, like all he wanted in the first place was to make her laugh.
There’s something behind the smile, though. One eye tooth glints in the low light of the bar with the sharpness—the hunger—of a wolf.
Deep between her legs, something dark and sweet pulses.
Deanna grabs for her drink, hiding her flushed face behind the enormous glass. She downs the rest of the sugary blue liquid in one go, gulping it like someone parched, and slams the empty cup down on the counter with a gasp.
Chetney creaks with laughter and slaps his knee. “That’s the spirit! Another?”
“I’d like that,” Deanna says. She really, really would.
They’re still talking and laughing, hours later. The bar is quieter now, people leaving gradually like the tide going out. Chetney’s been hard at work on his carving the entire time, the wolves emerging slowly from the wood, beneath the quiet shick-shick-shick of his blade.
Deanna talks, mostly. She tells Chetney about the shop, about the long hours and the customers that talk down to her. She tells him about the hats she makes each Duscar, handing them to friends and family on the Day of Heart and Hearth. She even tells him how good it feels to see others wearing her work, to know she’s playing a tiny part in keeping them safe and warm.
Chetney glances up now and then to reply to Deanna with a smile in his clear blue eyes, but mostly he carves and he listens. Deanna lets the fact that he isn’t looking loosen her lips, lets herself speak freely to this peculiar stranger.
“It’s just that I don’t think I even have two wolves inside of me.” She throws up her hands, letting the gesture encompass Chetney’s statuette. “Two pomeranians, maybe. Two bunnies.”
The bartender is hovering meaningfully behind the bar. He’s been wiping counters and turning chairs up onto tables since last call, half an hour ago. The ice in their empty drink glasses has long since melted.
Chetney ignores all that and peers at Deanna for a long time, the way he examined his wood to see the carving waiting within.
“Nah,” he decides. “You got it in you.” Jumping down off his stool, he holds a hand up to Deanna. “Come on.”
Deanna reaches out automatically, but pauses a hair’s breadth before their hands touch. Is Chetney trying to take her home? Does she want him to? But his expression is serious, intent, and he’s been nothing but respectful to her, in his odd way.
Deanna takes a deep breath, grips Chetney’s hand, and follows.
***
They reel down the quiet boardwalk, leaning on each other and laughing. The night feels expansive, open with possibility in the way that only comes when you’re young and drunk and alive.
Instead of some seedy motel, Chetney leads them down toward the beach. It’s dark, with Catha full and bright in the sky, its solemn reflection rippling off the water.
Deanna opens her mouth to shout over the crash of the surf. “What are we doing here?”
Chetney doesn’t answer. She’s not even sure he hears. His gaze is fixed on the bone-white moon, intense and wanting.
He takes a deep breath, tilts his head up to the sky, and howls. It’s sharp and fierce, lonely and lovely, but hopeful despite it all.
Something rouses itself behind Deanna’s ribs. For once not second guessing herself, she tips her chin up to Catha and lets her own howl sing out into the night. It’s higher than Chetney’s, gentler, but still they harmonize—two members of the same pack who’ve found each other at last.
When her howl dwindles down to nothing, Deanna meets Chetney’s eyes, panting. He stares back, eyes shining darkly in the low light, reflecting the broad face of the bewitching moon.
A sharp bolt of something—not fear, more like excitement—pierces through her gut. Deanna is alive, trembling on a precipice. A wolf poised as it sizes up another. What to do now? Fight? Flee? Surrender?
She finds the wolf in her is strong and sure of its answer.
Deanna doesn’t know if language would find her now, if she spoke. Instead, she gathers the hem of her dress in her hands and strips it off over her head. She lets it ripple down onto the sand like a shed skin.
Chetney blinks. “What are you—not that I’m complaining, but—”
Instead of answering, Deanna turns and walks into the waves. Water foams around her toes, ticklish, and she laughs, feeling like the fizzy drinks from the bar are bubbling up in her chest.
She turns back to Chetney, who is gazing wide-eyed at her as she sinks into the surf. “Come on!”
Chetney shakes himself as if waking from a dream. “Yes, ma’am!” He shimmies out of his trousers and tunic, hopping on one leg to free his foot from a stubborn boot.
Deanna smiles and wades deeper into the gentle waves, sure that Chetney is following her just as the tide follows the moons. When she is up to her chest in the cool water, she turns around to find him there, a careful distance away.
She beckons.
Chetney’s mouth meets hers in a kiss that’s like two animals at each other’s throats, all intensity and sharp teeth. It’s electrifying and good, but they’re equally matched, neither one gaining the upper hand.
That won’t do. Seized by some deep instinct, Deanna raises her hand to Chetney’s throat, resting it there to hold him at bay as she kisses him leisurely, indulgently, at her own pace.
When they finally break apart to breathe, Chetney’s eyes are wide and dark in the moonlight, almost awestruck.
Deanna can’t help but feel fond. She lets her hand move from his throat to his jaw to cup it gently.
“Good puppy,” she whispers.
Chetney honest-to-gods whimpers, a minute shiver running through his body. After that, it’s like all his bravado and tension bleeds out of him. As if he’s been holding himself taut and tense against the world, and for the first time in a very long while he can put his defenses down.
If she can create that feeling for him, then she wants to, the same way she wants to knit hats and scarves that protect her loved ones from a cold, harsh world.
There’s an outcropping of rock close by, one that the waves crash against, breaking apart harmlessly, again and again. Deanna takes Chetney’s hand and leads him to it. She hoists herself up, sitting so the water is just at her calves, and spreads her legs, inviting.
Chetney moves to stand between them. He meets her eyes. They look hungry, starving. He lets his hands come up to bracket the outside of her thick thighs, fingers twitching as if desperate to grab on.
Deanna runs one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and nods. “Go ahead.”
Chetney lowers his face and gets to work. The first touch of his tongue between her legs is a slick, electric intrusion. He’s as diligent about it as he was with his carving, nuzzling his nose between her folds and pulling back to suck on her clit with exquisite pressure. He has her hips twitching before long, wanting more.
“Fuck,” Deanna whispers. “Holy fuck.”
Chetney glances up at that to smile at her, smugly. His chin is a mess, slick and shining with her juices.
Deanna feels molten honey pool in her stomach. She buries her fingers in Chetney’s hair, gives it a tug to remind him who’s in charge before she lays back on the rock. “Put your fingers in me.”
Chetney hurries to obey, scrabbling up onto the rock to lie alongside her. He latches onto one of her nipples, tugging and pulling with his teeth as those clever, calloused fingers work their way inside her entrance.
It’s like being filled entirely — with Chetney, with pleasure, with the knowledge of her own power. Chetney’s own need is left neglected against her thigh as he devotes himself to this task, as if he wants nothing more for himself than her hands carding kindly through his hair.
Deanna lies there on that rock, entirely nude and unafraid, with her chest heaving in time to the strokes of Chetney’s fingers and the waves that crash around them. When orgasm surges up and crests over her too, she throws back her head and howls her pleasure to the moon.
When the tide of sensation recedes, Deanna finds that Chetney is still there, pressed to her side. His forehead rests against her collarbone, breath coming out against her chest in puffs.
“Do you want me to—” Deanna starts to ask, but before she can finish, Chetney takes his hardness in hand, working himself urgently in the warm, dark space between their bodies.
She lets it happen, lets Chetney bring himself off against her as she floats in the soft glow of the moon. All it takes is her fingers in his hair and a whispered word of encouragement or two.
That’s right. Good puppy. The best.
Afterward, they wash in the ocean, backs turned to give the other privacy. A sheepish silence descends over their patch of shoreline. The urgency over and the delicate bubble of intimacy burst, it’s easy to remember they’re still strangers.
At the water’s edge, Deanna shimmies back into the dress she’d abandoned, now sandy and damp. She’s trying to discreetly stop the clinging fabric from riding up between her asscheeks when Chetney sidles up.
“Walk you home?” He offers his elbow to her like a young man gone courting. His cheeks are faintly pink.
Deanna smiles and threads her arm through his. She tips her chin back toward the boardwalk, where buttery pools of arcane lamplight pierce the shadows at intervals. “My inn’s that way.”
The beachside motel is low and ramshackle, but the eaves are hung with strings of colorful shells that clack together gently in the night breeze. Deanna’s room is on the second floor. She takes one step up the rickety wooden stairs and turns to look back at Chetney.
At some point during the walk, her hand had slid from his elbow to his palm, lacing their fingers together. They’re still tangled together now, not quite ready to let go.
“This was fun,” Deanna says.
“It was.” Chetney blushes, going blotchy and red as a teenager. You’d scarcely believe this was a face that was buried between her legs half an hour ago, ravenously eating her out. He scratches the back of his neck, scuffing the sand with his toes. “I’d like to see you again sometime. That is, if you’d like.”
Deanna nibbles her lip. Would she? Can you really have a summer fling without things turning messy and sad by the end?
She must hesitate too long, because Chetney starts to turn away, pasting an easy smile on over his disappointment. “No worries. It was good to meet you, Deanna.”
“Wait!” Deanna reaches for Chetney’s face and turns him back to her with a gentle hand. His eyes are open and blue as the ocean. She thinks she can see the wolves fighting in them, fear and bravado both.
Maybe sometimes, you don’t need to fight all the wolves or bay the loudest to come out on top. Sometimes, Deanna thinks, a kind hand is all that’s needed to show them who’s in charge.
“You know where to find me,” she tells Chetney, with a smile. She turns away and walks to her room with a swing in her hips and strength in her core, knowing he’s watching all the way.