“Fuck normal.You’re dressed for an epic adventure, and I’m at your side with a sword in my…” He looks down.
“Don’t say it.”
“Boot?”He lifts a pant leg, revealing the handle of a knife, before kicking the hem back in place.“Our fairy tale has already begun.”
He leans on the railing beside me, cigarette dangling from his lips and a smirk ghosting his mouth like it’s his default setting.
What a weirdo.
Possibly insane.
But no.
No, that’s not it at all.
There’s too much calculation in his sarcasm, too much intelligence in those ice-blue eyes.Maybe the whole nice-with-a-knife thing works on other people, but I’m well-versed in sugar-coated hostility.He’s hiding something.
If what he said is true, if he spent his life in a psychopath’s prison, then whatever he’s showing me is only the surface.
A performance.
A deflection.
Under the cocky grin and flippant remarks, there’s depth.Pain.Maybe rage.I don’t know why that realization disturbs me more than his violence earlier.Maybe because it makes me want to understand him.To see what’s behind that chaos-colored mask.
That’s a problem.
I don’t need more trouble in my life.I’m already neck-deep in it.I don’t need a wild, beautiful, emotionally unstable man with a tragic past and a dangerous smile.
Too late now.
I’m on his yacht, moving through dark water toward an island I’ve never seen, with a stranger I should’ve refused.
The lights of Sitka grow dim behind us, swallowed by fog and sea.The island waits somewhere ahead, shadowed and ominous.Whatever’s coming, I’ve already made my choice.
“You scare me,” I admit, staring across the water.“But not for the reasons you probably think.Not in a bad way.More like…”
“Like?”
“Like someone who learned to survive by pretending they’re bulletproof.”
“Hm.”He draws on the cigarette and sighs through the exhale.“What gave me away?”
“Smiling through your teeth.Grudges dressed as jokes.Acting like you know what you’re doing, even when you don’t.Rehearsed confidence.You carry yourself like someone who’s been shot too many times to worry about the next bullet.”
The haunted look in his eyes doesn’t match the smile he gives me.“When I saw you run down the street like you fled a castle, I thought… Holy hellfire and heartbreak, I’ve stepped into a dark fairy tale.Your dress moved as if caught in a dream, flowing behind you as you ran.But it wasn’t marital bliss that trailed you.It was sorrow.You looked like you were halfway to forever before the world yanked it out from under you.Doesn’t help that you’re insanely beautiful.Makes it that much harder to look away.”
He should talk.The man oozes perfect genes from every pore.
“All I could think was…” He rests his forearms on the railing, shaking his head.“She shouldn’t be real.Fairy tales aren’t real.Not for people like me.But here you are.You’re real.And being part of your story, even if just a small, insignificant part, has sent me to a dimension of utter joy.”He straightens.“We’re here.”
My breath hitches at his declaration.Then it hitches again as I take in the view.
The island rises out of the water, silent, hidden, and entirely otherworldly.Soaring evergreens blanket every inch, their canopies so thick they knit the sky shut.
In Anaheim, everything is sun-bleached and buzzing, with an overabundance of strip malls, traffic, and baking concrete.
Here, moisture and mystery saturate the air, swollen with the scent of pine, damp earth, and cold moss.
