“I think I could go without it for a little while,” Morgan said, but Ty shook his head.
“The boat rocks too much, you’ll be uncomfortable.”
Ugh. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, but it kind of sucked to be managed so thoroughly. “I’m feeling a lot better,” Morgan insisted.
Ty nodded. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
“I think I’d be all right.”
“Mmm.” They stared at each other for a moment, and Morgan blinked first. He always blinked first for some reason. It didn’t matter how hard he tried not to, or how long he lasted, Ty always lasted just a few seconds longer.
“Fine, I’ll get the sling.”
The sling was only the first line of preparation for a trip out—there was a jacket to wrangle as well, now that the weather was cold enough that he couldn’t go out in just a sweater over a T-shirt. Then a hat, and gloves, and finally a life jacket because he didn’t want to fall out of the boat and put the responsibility for saving him on Ty again. Not thatTywore a life jacket, and that honestly seemed like a bad idea to Morgan, but he didn’t want to bug the guy about it.
Finally, they were on the water. The ocean was choppy, and the skies overhead were completely gray, clouds coming in close like they were considering just being a fogbank instead. Ty handled the boat with perfect ease, though, sending them around the rocky edge of Parrish Island and toward the cove where Morgan had so briefly caught sight of sea lions before. Itwouldbe fun to see the ones that had been lounging there before, and—
“Holy shit!”
That wasn’t a few random sea lions. There had to be at least fifty of them packed into that little stretch of gravel, some of them lying on top of each other, many of them barking and splashing around, making such a ruckus he was surprised he hadn’t heard it from the lighthouse. “What are they all doing here?” Morgan shouted over the noise.
“California sea lion males migrate north after the breeding season,” Ty replied, a little smile on his face as he stared at them. “They come up to find richer feeding grounds. We didn’t use to get them this far north, but their migration patterns are evolving, thanks to climate change.”
“Wow.” They were big—some of those animals had to be over seven feet long. “What do they eat?”
The smile faded from Ty’s face. “They prefer cephalopods.”
“What, like squid and octopuses?”
“Yes.” Ty seemed to clam up, and Morgan decided not to push him. They sat in silence together and admired the enormous animals for a while—until one of them, big even for one of these sea lions, pushed off the shore and began a leisurely swim straight toward their boat.
Morgan turned to look at Ty, who was so pale now he almost appeared blue. “Can it tip the boat over?” he asked.
“No,” Ty said almost soundlessly, then cleared his throat. “Mmm, no, but we shouldn’t stay and disrupt them much longer.”
“Let’s go back, then.”
Ty turned the boat back the way they’d come, but to Morgan’s surprise, the sea lion didn’t turn around. It kept pace with them instead, ducking fully under the water and coming up again to stare at them with dark, liquid eyes that glinted hungrily in the gray afternoon light. It didn’t turn around until the lighthouse was in sight, and even then it seemed reluctant to leave them alone, turning back several times to stare at them as Ty carefully guided the boat up against the dock.
Ty tied the boat up in silence, his face blank in a way that Morgan was learning to associate with strong emotions. But what emotions this time? Not … not fear. Or could it be? Maybe he’d had a close call once with a sea lion—if that many of them came and lived basically right outside his cabin for severalmonths of the year, Morgan could see how they might go from being noisy neighbors to a potential threat, especially if Ty was fishing where they wanted to be eating.
They arrived back to the lighthouse in silence, and as Ty helped Morgan take off his jacket, he considered how best to break the tension that had developed between them. He was surprised when Ty took the initiative. “In the spring, gray whales migrate down the coast,” he said. “They’re more fun to watch.”
“That was plenty fun,” Morgan promised him. “Do scientists come to study the sea lions as well as the birds?”
Ty shook his head briskly. “They’ve asked, but so far I’ve been able to persuade them to find other colonies to monitor. I’m not … comfortable with getting too involved in yet another wildlife research endeavor.” He looked at Morgan. “They might approach you, actually. The beach is approximately equidistant between our homes, and if you gave them permission to use your land as a base of operations, they wouldn’t need to bother with my involvement.”
Morgan thought for a second about how to respond. “Do you think they could learn something useful from it?” he asked at last.
Ty seemed to deflate a little. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Perhaps.”
Morgan decided to shelve the question until he was actually asked about it.It might be out of your control soon enough anyway.If he gave up his residency rights here, they would revert to the state. Then researchers wouldn’t have to take Ty’s preferences into consideration.
“I’ll start dinner.”
Morgan was struck with the urge to take Ty by the arm and tell him everything—that he was going to be leaving for his sister’s place soon, that he might not come back at all. Maybe, if he was blunt enough, Ty would be upfront as well and simply ask him tostay.Just ask me to stay, and I will. But that, of course, wasn’t a promise he could make right now either.
In the end he let him go, but instead of reading a book like he usually did while Ty was cooking, he checked the messages on his phone. There were several from his sister, one asking how his shoulder was recovering—because of course he had to keep her in the loop—and another about their parents being annoying. More surprising was the message from his lawyer.
