“Oh!” Holt said. “That explains why you’re so darn good at being a pilot, then.”
“Yup,” Ace said proudly. “Dean was like a father to me growing up. I’m glad he’s flying the rescue mission. At least I know we’ll be in good hands.” He took a breath. “Please tell Dean to be careful.”
“I will,” Holt promised.
“Tell him we’ll be waiting,” Ace said. “Dean knows where the cave is.” He grinned at a teenage memory. “He’s been here many a time to get myself and Shaun when we were teens.”
“I remember,” Holt said with a soft laugh. “I’d better give you back to June. She’s getting impatient to talk to Willa. Dean will be about twenty to twenty-five minutes out.”
“Okay,” Ace said, glancing at his wristwatch.
Before Holt could say more, June came back on the line.
“I’d like to talk to Willa now, please, Ace,” June demanded
“Give me a moment,” Ace told her.
He lowered the phone and crossed the cave carefully, stepping around the sleeping bags with the practiced quiet of someone who had been navigating the space in the dark for hours. He reached Willa and crouched beside her, taking in the sight of her for a moment before he did anything else. She was deeply asleep, her face relaxed in a way it rarely was when she was awake, the constant, low-level alertness she carried smoothed away entirely. Grace was pressed against her one side, and Andy sprawled on her other side. His hand had reached to rest on his mother’s arm. The three of them together looked so completely, quietly right that Ace stayed crouched there a beat longer than he strictly needed to.
Ace took a breath before he reached and gently touched Willa’s shoulder. As he woke her up, a strange feeling hit him as if something between them had changed. A cold shiver washed over him, and he could’ve sworn he heard a deep, familiar voice whisper in his ear,“It’s time to tell Willa how you feel, Ace. Stop being a wimp!”
Wimp! That’s what Shaun had always said whenever Ace hesitated to do something. Ace tried to shake the feeling away, convinced he’d lost his mind somewhere in the cold Atlantic Ocean.
“Ace?” June’s voice came through the line and lifted it to his ear.
“Give me a minute,” Ace whispered. “I just had to deal with a ghost,” he muttered to himself as he leaned over and gently shook Willa’s shoulder again, and this time softly called her name. But as her eyes opened, that cold feeling washed over him again, and Ace suddenly knew it was time to tell Willa how he felt. He just had to find the right moment to do so.
7
WILLA
Willa heard his voice before she was properly awake.
Low and unhurried, and for one disoriented moment between sleep and waking, Willa didn’t know where she was. She knew the voice. That much her mind supplied without effort, the way it supplied breathing, automatically and without having to be asked. She knew the voice, and something in her chest responded to it before her eyes were open, a warmth that moved through her like the first proper breath of a morning you hadn’t expected to be so good.
Then the limestone ceiling came into focus above her, gray and faintly amber from the fire’s last light. The weight of Grace pressed along her side, while the sound of rain against rock brought back the memory of where they were, as everything came back to her at once.
“Hi.” Ace’s voice again came from just above her. “You need to wake up, princess.”
Willa blinked.
Ace was crouched beside her, close enough that she could see the tiredness around his eyes and the way his hair was still damp at his temples. He smiled down at her, and even still half asleep, her heart lurched, waking up the butterflies in her stomach.
“I fell asleep?” Willa asked, her voice rough with sleep.
“You did,” Ace confirmed. “You’ve been out for about two hours.”
Willa pushed herself carefully upright, trying not to disturb Grace, who stirred once and then settled back into the deep, even breathing of someone still a long way under. Willa’s body registered the night’s events the moment she moved. There was a comprehensive ache across her shoulders and down her arms as well as through both hips from the cold, the water, and the cave floor. Willa bit down on the sound that wanted to come with it and made herself move anyway.
“What’s happening with the storm?” she asked.
“It’s still going, but it’s pulled back from the worst of it.” Ace kept his voice low, his eyes moving to the sleeping bags and back to her. “The outer bands are still pushing through. There are still intermittent gusts of wind and heavy rain in stretches. It’s not safe to move yet.”
“Has there been any word from the Coast Guard or emergency services?” Willa asked him.
“I got through to Zane,” Ace told her. “They are sending a helicopter as soon as they can. Dean’s piloting it.”
Willa nodded slowly, absorbing it, her chest filling with relief at that statement. “Oh, thank goodness.”
