“Come down,” I repeated, that unwelcome knot of concern tightening in my chest, making it hard to breathe. I wasn’t asking anymore. “Now. Before you get seriously hurt.”
She glared down at me, her blue eyes clouded with a potent mixture of defiance, frustration, and despair. For a long, tense moment, she just clung there, a small, stubborn figure silhouetted against the vast, decaying backdrop of Heron House. I could practically feel the internal battle raging within her: fierce pride warring with the dawning realization that she was utterly out of her depth.
Then, with a defeated moan that seemed to carry the weight of the entire dilapidated mansion, her shoulders slumped. The fight visibly drained out of her. She let go of the siding. It swung free with a groan of stressed wood and a sickening scrape against the clapboard below, hanging at an even more drunken angle.
Slowly, her movements stiff and jerky, she backed down the rickety rungs. Her knees buckled slightly on the last step, and I instinctively reached out, my hand closing around her upper arm to steady her. Her skin was hot, damp with sweat, and she was trembling like a leaf.
When her feet touched solid ground, she just stood there, swaying slightly, her gaze fixed on the disastrous piece of siding as if it had personally betrayed her.
Then her carefully constructed composure shattered.
It started with a single, choked sob, a sound so raw and full of despair it hit me like a blow to the chest. Then another, and another, until she was standing in the middle of her overgrown yard, tears streaming down her dirt-streaked face, her shoulders shaking.
“I—I can’t…” she gasped out between sobs, her voice hoarse and broken. “I just… I can’t do this!”
I was rooted to the spot, completely unprepared. I wasn’t good at this. Not with tears. Or feelings. Especially female feelings being unleashed like a Category Five hurricane directly at me. My first instinct, honed by years of practice, was to retreat. To find my quiet sanctuary and bolt the damn door. I’d just wanted to stop her from breaking her neck, not trigger a full-blown emotional meltdown I was in no way equipped to handle.
“This whole goddamn place is cursed!” she screamed, her voice cracking, all pretense of G-rated language abandoned. “And that bastard Riley just left me! With this… this shitpile! And everyone thinks I’m just some stupid, clueless girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing!” Her voice rose, laced with a desperate, ragged anger, her fists clenched at her sides. “But I’m not. I can do this. I will do this. I swear to God, I will finish this goddamn stubborn bastard of a house if it kills me!”
She stood still, hands scrunched into fists at her sides, dust and tears and righteous indignation emanating from every pore.
I just listened. There must have been some short circuit in my usual self-preservation instincts because I didn’t walk away. My internal alarm bells were screaming at me to run. But I stayed and watched this irritating, disruptive, surprisingly good baker of a neighbor fall to pieces in front of me.
And, against everything I stood for, I moved. I closed the space between us. My hand, large and calloused from years of hauling lines and wrestling with boat engines, landed awkwardly on her trembling shoulder. It was small, bird-boned beneath my fingers, and shockingly fragile.
Before my brain could process the shift from verbalonslaught to physical collapse, her frame was leaning heavily against my chest, her face buried in the rough cotton of my shirt. Her shoulders hitched with a final, shuddering sob.
Acting on an instinct that bypassed every wall I owned, my arms came up. They hovered uncertainly. Then, as another ragged tremor ran through her, they settled around her, pulling her loosely against me. It was an awkward embrace, foreign territory. I found myself patting her back in a clumsy, repetitive motion.
“All right, now.” My voice was gruff, the words ridiculously inadequate in the face of her raw anguish. I could feel the dampness of her tears soaking into my shirt, the heat of her body, the fine trembling that still wracked her. “All right, Iris. Just breathe. It’s okay.”
She didn’t pull away. If anything, she seemed to melt further into my arms, her hands gripping my shirtfront as if I were the only solid thing in a world that had just spun into space. The scent of her—dust, sunshine, and that faint, lingering sweetness of baked goods—filled my senses in an unexpectedly potent combination.
For a long moment, we just stood there, me holding this bewildering, sobbing woman, her ragged breathing slowly beginning to even out. The anger, the sharp edges of her earlier fury, dissipated, leaving behind a profound, bone-deep weariness. I could feel it in the sag of her shoulders, the heavy way her head rested against me.
Against everything screaming at me to maintain distance, I pressed my cheek against the top of her head, against the surprisingly soft silk of her blonde hair. It was an unconscious gesture of comfort, maybe. Or just presence. I wasn't good at words, not the kind she needed right now. But I could offer this. This private, unyielding solidity. A temporary harbor. So I just let her be.
Safe, for a moment, in the circle of my arms.
The tremors gradually subsided. Her breathing became deeper, the tension easing. Then, slowly, she stirred. She didn’t pull away entirely but tilted her head back to look up at me.
Her face was a mess. Tear tracks carved paths through the grime on her cheeks. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, her lips trembling slightly. But beneath the devastation, there was something else in those cornflower-blue eyes now. A raw vulnerability, a flicker of trust. And a spark of the determination I was beginning to recognize.
And then, before I could process it, she moved. One slight, surprisingly steady hand snaked up, her cool fingers sliding into the hair at the nape of my neck. Her gaze held mine, intense, unwavering. Then she pulled my head down. Her lips, soft and salty from her tears, crashed into mine.
My brain just… stopped.
Ceased all function.
Complete system shock.
All thought, all resistance, all carefully constructed defenses I’d spent over a decade perfecting vanished in an instant. Obliterated. There was only the feel of her, the unexpected, desperate heat of her mouth, the taste of her. Salt and dust and sunshine and something uniquely, undeniably Iris.
For a bare second, I was frozen, every muscle locked. Then something inside me, something primal and long-dormant, roared to life.
I kissed her back.
Hard.
