Chapter 6
Before I could answer, Rowan moved.
Not aggressively.
Not loudly.
He just stepped forward half a pace and drew me slightly behind him, calm and elegant as ever.
The tub overturned with a crash.
Water flooded across the floor.
Adrian’s massive tail slammed against the boards as he braced himself on both hands, breathing like he had run a mile.
“Ellie,” he said, voice breaking around the edges, “who is he?”
I was still trying to process the fact that Adrian had come back at all.
“You left,” I said stupidly.
His eyes got redder.
“You brought home someone else.”
He sounded less angry than wounded, and somehow that made everything worse.
Then he did something I had been half convinced I had hallucinated before.
He yanked the bedsheet off the mattress, wrapped it around his waist, and right in front of us his tail vanished.
Legs.
Long, pale, very real human legs.
I stared.
Actually stared.
Because he really had been able to shift all along.
My first coherent thought was triumph.
My second was fury.
“You can walk,” I whispered.
Adrian’s mouth trembled. “You told me I was good too. You said you liked me.”
Then he turned and headed for the door.
I lunged after him on instinct, but the second my fingers brushed his arm, he shoved me back.
“Don’t touch me after touching someone else.”
The floor was still slick from the overturned tub. My heel skidded.
I would have fallen if Rowan had not caught me instantly.
Adrian saw that.
Whatever was left of his composure shattered.
He fled into the night barefoot, wrapped in a wet sheet, white shoulders shaking.
For several seconds I could not move.
Then my eyes dropped to the bruise ointment he had bought for me.
He had come back.
He had cleaned the floor.
He had gone to town for medicine.
So why?
Why had he hidden the fact that he could shift?
Why all the anger, all the resistance, all the distance, if he cared enough to return like this?
I sank down by the door, dizzy with confusion.
Rowan righted the tub as if nothing had happened, then knelt beside me.
“Eat first,” he said gently. “Then I’ll help you find him if you still want answers.”
When I looked back at him, the room was already tidy.
A hot meal sat on the table.
Four dishes. Steam rising.
“You made all that?” I asked.
He propped his chin in one hand and smiled. “Do you like it?”
The food was incredible.
I barely tasted it.
My head was too full of Adrian. Of his red eyes. Of the way he had looked at Rowan like someone was stealing air from his lungs.
After dinner, Rowan took my hand and led me toward the shore.
The wind was sharp by the time we reached the rocks.
Standing there, I could not help remembering the first night I met Adrian.
The way he had been tangled in my net.
The way he had sneered, then blushed.
The way he had demanded a giant pool and still followed me home when I had none.
The way he had stayed in that ridiculous little tub, cursing me and clinging to me at the same time.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted his name over the waves.
“Adrian!”
Nothing.
Again.
“Adrian!”
Still nothing.
I kept calling until my throat hurt.
Beside me, Rowan finally said quietly, “He can hear you. He just doesn’t want to answer.”
I looked out at the dark, heaving water for a long time.
Then I let my hands fall.
That night, for the first time since Adrian had entered my life, I did not have to get up in the dark to change tub water or rub dry skin with melted fat.
Instead I curled beneath blankets with Rowan’s enormous fluffy tail around my waist, warm as a furnace, and slept straight through until morning.
When I woke, sunlight spilled across Rowan’s face.
He was propped on one elbow watching me with sleepy green eyes.
“Morning, Ellie.”
Then he kissed my forehead.
A stupid little blush spread right across my face.
The comments immediately lit up.
The fox is too good at this.
She fell asleep beside top-tier temptation and survived? Unbelievable.
I fled the bed before my brain stopped working altogether.
At the door, my hand tightened on the latch.
Something glittered at the threshold.
Pearls.
A whole pile of them.
I crouched slowly, pulse jumping.
Rowan came up behind me and looked down.
“Looks like somebody cried very hard last night.”
I swept the pearls into my coin pouch with shaky fingers.
And that day, I did not go back to the beach.