Lowlander Silverback(48)

She read the title. Heart in the Riptide. It was the last book she’d read to Mac before he died. Layla shook her head, confused.

“Shh!” Willa and some of the others hissed. The shifters settled, and the room went silent except for the soft notes Denison and Brighton played on their guitars.

Kong licked his lips, then lifted his voice. “I only got to meet Mac one time. He made me read this book to him, but near the end of Chapter Sixteen, I couldn’t do it anymore. It hit too close to home. And before I left, he told me that someday, I should read the end of the book.”

Layla bit her trembling lip as her eyes filled with tears. She remembered how the book ended.

Kong pushed the book across the bar top and smiled, his eyes full of emotion.

“Read it!” Creed called across the bar.

“Read it,” the others said.

Layla huffed a thick laugh and nodded. “Okay.”

A few cheered and a few whistled as Kong opened it to the last page of Chapter Sixteen. Wiping her damp lashes to clear her vision, Layla cleared her throat and read. “So many decisions in his life that got him to this exact moment in time would haunt him, but he couldn’t regret the journey. The jagged road he’d taken in his life had led him to a few glorious moments with her. He’d lived more in the last two weeks than he had in the entirety of his forgettable life because he’d known love—the bone-deep kind that changed a man from the inside out. And now…he knew sacrifice. The riptide carried her farther and farther, the strokes of his first mate’s oars like a lash against his heart every time they dragged through the choppy water. Was this really what sacrifice meant? He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take his eyes away from his love as she wept silently, eyes filled with tears that he’d caused. Sacrifice wasn’t supposed to hurt them both this much. He had a responsibility to the ship, to the crew, but none of that seemed to matter when he could see he was ripping her heart out by sending her away. It didn’t matter to his love that he was trying to keep her safe from the dark end that awaited every pirate. It only mattered that they would be separated from here on. For the rest of their lives, they would bear a hole in them that was too deep to ever be filled by another. He’d ripped that into her by allowing her to fall in love with him. He’d ripped it into himself by adoring her like this. As he stepped up to the railing and stared through the sea spray waves that pounded against his ship, he realized he’d had it all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to give her up. He was supposed to give himself up. He turned and looked at his boat—the boat he’d worked his whole life to captain. He looked at his crew, and in their eyes, he could already see it—their silent goodbye. Standing on the bow, he inhaled the salty brine and closed his eyes against the sea mist, savoring it for the last time. Then he lifted his hands above his head and dove into the frigid, unforgiving waters below. Every stroke he swam toward his love changed him. Whoever he’d been yesterday didn’t matter anymore. She required and deserved more. The only version of himself that mattered was the man he would be tomorrow—for her. And when he broke the surface to gulp air, she was there, tears glistening in her eyes and arms outstretched, ready to help him up. Ready to catch him. Ready to push him to be the man she believed he could be.” A tear slipped to Layla’s cheek as she looked up at Kong and uttered the last lines. “She was everything, and he was nothing, and the sacrifice was never his to give. It was hers.”

Layla blew a long, steadying exhalation of air as she wiped the tears from her face.

“Turn the page,” Kong whispered.

She sniffed and turned the heavy paper slowly. On the other side was taped a simple white gold band and a key. Her face crumpled, and her vision blurred again as she plucked away the chipped, pink camouflage key she’d carried on her keychain since she was sixteen, up until the day she was asked to give it back to the bank that took Mac’s house after his death.

“Did you buy Mac’s house?”

Kong angled his head and nodded once.

“For me?”

He shook his head. “For us.”

She laughed thickly as she pulled the ring off the back page. “Is this one for me?”

Kong leaned over the bar and kissed her softly. Just a sweet sip of her lips that said he loved her. Then he rested his cheek on hers and whispered against her ear, “Will you be mine?”

She gripped the back of his neck to keep him there against her, touching her until she could steady her thoughts enough to speak. She looked out at the Gray Backs and the Ashe Crew. At the Boarlanders and at Damon, who stood just on the outskirts of the shifters he protected. She’d always feared that when Mac died, she would be left alone in this world. No home, no purpose, no family.