He didn’t say anything for a moment.
She became aware that he hadn’t moved his hand.
“I’ll always be there,” Ace told her. His voice was low and hoarse. His eyes darkened with emotion. “For you and for the kids. That’s not going to change.”
She looked at him then.
“You stayed,” Willa pointed out. “After Shaun. You stayed in Sandpiper Shores, and I’ve never once asked you if that’s whatyou actually wanted, or whether you stayed because of us. Or because of that promise you made to Shaun.”
“Willa.” Ace’s voice was very calm. “I stayed because it’s my home. Because the people I love are here.” He looked at her steadily. “That was my choice. Not a sacrifice. Not an obligation. My choice.”
She felt the truth of it. The directness of it. No performance in it.
“Still,” Willa pushed on. “I’ve held onto you, and I haven’t always been—” She stopped and thought about the breakfast table that morning. The cold, precise way she’d aimed at him over something she had no right to aim at him about. “I haven’t always been fair to you.”
“You’ve been human,” Ace said simply. “That’s allowed.”
The fire shifted, sending a brief warmth across them both. But the rest of the cave seemed to shrink away, leaving only them.
They leaned closer together without either of them making the decision to.
Willa could feel the warmth of him. She could feel the pull of the past ten years, the weight of everything that had happened on the island. All the impossible things that happened in the spaces between people who had known each other long enough and honestly enough that pretending became exhausting.
Then the tarpaulin blew open.
The wind hit with a sharp, sudden force, and the weighted edge of the makeshift door tore free from two of its stones, billowing in the cold, wet air that rushed through the opening, sending the fire reeling to one side and bringing two of the sleeping teenagers upright with startled cries.
They were both moving before the thought arrived.
Willa reached the edge of the tarpaulin and grabbed it with both hands, fighting the wind’s pull, her feet sliding on the damp rock near the entrance. Ace was beside her in a second, his hands over hers on the fabric, his weight braced against the frame they had built from branches the previous evening.
“Hold it,” Ace called over the howling gusts.
“I have it,” Willa told him.
They pulled the edge down together, the wind fighting them for it, and Ace used his knee to pin the corner while he repositioned the stones, and Willa held the fabric taut, desperately trying not to let go. After about thirty seconds of genuine effort, the tarpaulin was secured again, and the wind was outside where it belonged.
Willa stepped back from the entrance, and her foot hit a slick patch of rock.
She felt the moment of no return, that instant when the body knows before the mind does that the ground is gone and there is nothing to do but fall. But before Willa hit the ground, Ace’s hands were on her arms, and she wasn’t falling anymore. Willa was being held, caught cleanly and firmly, her hands coming up to grip his jacket as he pulled her back from the entrance edge.
They stood in the relative warmth of the cave interior, breathing hard, his hands still on her arms, hers still on his jacket.
She looked up at him.
He looked down at her.
The cave was very quiet around them. The fire had settled back to its steady pulse. Outside, the wind pressed at the tarpaulin and held. Nobody spoke.
Then his head dipped, and he kissed her.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t preceded by any announcement. He simply lowered his head and kissed her. A toe-curling warmth spread through Willa, and for a moment, the cave, the storm, the cold, the exhaustion, and the ten years of careful, managed distance all went somewhere else entirely. There was only this, only him, only the warmth of it and the startling, quiet rightness of it.
Then they pulled apart.
Willa stared at him, blinking in surprise.
Ace looked back at her with an expression she’d never seen on his face before, or rather, one she’d seen but never allowed herself to name. The silence between them was the loudest thing in the cave.
