Poseidon has been searching all his life for the safety he had when he was very young. He must’ve had to make it for himself on the Trident.
And now he’s lost what little he had. Not just lost it—gave it up. Ruined it. Sank it. For me. For my safety. Even if it meant he would never have it again.
I’ve been staring in Poseidon’s direction without seeing him, without seeing anything, and it comes back to me in a flash of embarrassment that there’s someone else here, someone dangerous, someone I should be paying attention to. I snap my head back to the man to answer him too late and too clumsily, but—
He’s gone.
The dock is empty. The beagle sits at my feet, tail beating weakly at the ground. It matches the weak beat of my heart in my throat. I was distracted. I was foolishly distracted. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be that way, and I did. Poseidon was right. I shouldn’t wander off at the shipyard.
It’s unbearable now—the short distance between us. Sweat pricks under my sundress. But before I go, I hold my head high and look in every direction. If he’s still watching, I don’t want him to think I’m afraid.
There’s no sign of him anywhere on the docks, or on the stairs. I’m surrounded by plenty of men with tattoos and rough beards. None are the way he was. I have the creeping fear that somehow he slipped into the water without making a sound and is lurking there now.
But that’s ridiculous. The sea wouldn’t want a man like that. The sea loves Poseidon.
The sea—
I shake off those thoughts about the sea, and whether the ocean can have feelings. It can’t. It doesn’t. What matters is Poseidon and getting back to him as fast as humanly possible without also causing a scene. I know better than to sprint through the shipyard.
Even if I want to.
“Come on, buddy,” I say to the beagle. He gets to his feet right away, eager and cute. “Let’s go.”
7
Poseidon
Ashley has a dog.
A fucking dog. Padding along at her feet with his tail wagging. A beagle that looks too thin to be a beagle. She reaches us just as the conversation from hell about the new ship ends and Nicholas heads off with the shipbuilder.
“We’re leaving.”
Ashley nods without a word and falls into step beside me. She sticks close, closer than she did on the way through the shipyard. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was keeping a lookout for something.
We get back to the Jeep, and I pull open the passenger door. I want her back at the mansion, and then I want her off this island the second we can leave. I want her with me, and I want her to have better than me.
I’m a mess.
She doesn’t get in.
I look up to find her standing there in her blue sundress, her eyes big and sad and pleading. My heart pulls toward her—anything. I’d give her anything to make her smile again.
And then I realize what she wants.
“No,” I tell her. “Get in the Jeep.”
“He’s alone, Poseidon.” Ashley doesn’t wheedle. She doesn’t whine. She just says it in that sweet voice of hers with that sad look of hers and I can’t fucking take it. I want to be away from this shipyard, and I want her to stop begging me with her eyes. It’s enough to break a man.
“Fine.” It takes everything in my soul to keep from growling at her, from snapping at her. “He can ride in the back.”
Ashley’s eyes light up. She moves quickly around to the back of the Jeep and opens it to let the dog in. “Here you go,” she says to him. “You’re coming home with us.”
We bounce our way back to the mansion, my frustration growing with every jolt from the ruts in the road. How the hell she managed to adopt a stray dog on Haven Island, I will never know. They don’t have strays in town, and people don’t leave things here. Or animals.
The two of them get out of the Jeep and she leads that dog inside without a backward glance. I put my head on the headrest and close my eyes. A dog. Fuck.
When the Jeep’s back in the garage, I go in through the kitchen entrance and kick off my shoes. The air-conditioning feels good after the heat, but the whole house feels foreign and strange. It’s not the kind of place I want to come back to. It’s not home.
And now there’s a dog.
Ashley sits with it on the rug in the living room in a shaft of light, a tray on the floor next to them. I do a double take. Not a tray. A charcuterie board that came with the last meal delivery. The woman in town who cooks for us sent her son with it after Ashley tipped him an absurd amount for bringing her packages from the mail drop-off. It’s fancy as hell.
“You’re feeding it charcuterie?”
“I’m feeding him charcuterie, yes.” She pinches a piece of salami in her fingers and holds it out for the dog. “And he has a name.”
First the charcuterie, and now this? We are not keeping this dog. “I don’t want to know.”
“It’s Buddy. Isn’t that cute? Hi, Buddy.” Whenever she says Buddy the dog perks up. “I ordered dog food for him. The dry kind and the canned kind, since I don’t know what he’ll like. It won’t be here until tomorrow, so for now he has to eat what we have. And he wants salami.”
“Jesus Christ.”
There’s nothing more annoying than this dog. I stalk back into the kitchen and lean against the island. The big open archway to the living room gives me a picture-perfect view of Ashley and Buddy, the most irritating thing to walk into my life since my brothers. Without my ship, I don’t have anywhere to go to escape it. I’m not going to sulk in the bedroom or hike through the forest. I don’t want to leave her.
But the dog. It’s going to get dog hair everywhere in this blank white space. Multiple colors of dog hair. And it smells like fish that’s rotted in the sun. And worst of all, it has Ashley’s attention. She’s fawning over the dog like it needs her most of all.
I cross my arms over my chest and try not to choke on my own jealousy. It’s a near thing. It feels huge and alive and sharp somehow, digging into the back of my throat. I want her to look at me. I want her to touch me. I want her to speak to me softly, even though I’m as much of a wreck as the dog. I want it. It’s fucking pathetic. No one has ever been so pathetic, or so undeserving, and I hate this so completely that I can’t bring myself to leave the kitchen.
My phone rings in my pocket. Thank fuck. I never thought I would be grateful for that thing, with its interruptions and its obligations and all the other bullshit it comes with, but I snatch it out of my pocket like a lifeline. I don’t care who’s calling and I don’t look at the screen. I just answer.
“What.”
“It’s not like you to be so affectionate,” says Hades. “Everything all right? Did the package arrive?”
No. Everything is not all right, and for a sheer-drop moment I want to tell him how wrong it is and how I’m dying. He might understand. He would understand. I know it. “It arrived.”
“Intact?”
“I wouldn’t know. It was for Ashley. She didn’t seem to think anything was missing.”
Whatever was in that box made her cry. Things from her mother, she said. No wonder she’d rather spend time with the dog. I didn’t ask her any questions. Didn’t wipe away her tears, or take her upstairs and wait for her to tell me. I didn’t do anything except drive her to the shipyard and snap at her.