Page 64 of On Dry Land

But there’s no avoiding home or the man waiting there for me. No work at the vet clinic today means he was off walking around, filming things and talking to people. It also means that he will be at the cottage when I arrive back, as there has never yet been a day where I’ve gotten home and he wasn’t already there. If I let myself, I’d compare that to how it felt being married to a man who never once greeted me as I walked in the door and enjoy it a little. But I can’t, because every good thing comes to an end, and the more I like it now, the harder it will be to live without it once it’s gone.

There’s a pressure behind my eyes as I turn the car onto my property, like the beginning of a sinus headache. If I were the sort of person who cried, I’d wonder if it was that. But because I am not, I sit in the Porsche as the engine ticks down, head resting back against the seat as it throbs. The main house is dark and still, silent, the way it always greets me at the end of the day. The guest cottage, visible across the expanse of the yard, has a little square of yellow light reflecting through the window onto the grass.

Spencer meets me at the door with a frown when I finally leave the car and walk toward the cottage. He’s dressed in the same sweats I let him borrow weeks ago, and his hair is wet. Swimming or fresh from a shower, but, if I had to speculate, I’d guess swimming. Another little sliver of pain wiggles beneath my skin. I know too much about him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes bouncing between me and the car as he holds the door open for me to enter. “You sat out there a long time.”

I almost laugh. Dylan, who is always near at hand on this day more than any other, was so oblivious it was almost charming. He never remembered anything I told him and could be counted on to let even the most obvious of changes in routine pass him by. I sprained my wrist at the gym once, and despite the ACE bandage I’d kept it wrapped up in and me taking two weeks off working out, he’d never said anything. He’d asked if I wanted to play doubles with him and was surprised to learn I probably couldn’t play tennis without the use of my right wrist. He’d laughed and made a joke about how things just went over his head and then promptly forgot to ever ask me about the injury again.

Spencer—the polar opposite in so many ways—notices everything. If I sneeze in the morning, he’ll ask me that evening if I’m feeling okay or if I think I’m coming down with a cold. If I favor any part of my body, he asks what happened and follows up for days afterward. “How’s your shoulder doing today?” he’ll ask, brown eyes serious and unwavering, as though muscle stiffness is something to be concerned about. And if I come home from a long day hauling and spend ten minutes sitting in the car on the driveway, he’ll look at me with concern in those pretty eyes and demand to know what’s wrong.

“Nothing,” I tell him, watching the frown curl a little deeper into his cheeks before he turns his back and locks the door behind me. As though unable to resist, he twitches aside the curtain and peers out, reassuring himself that nobody is there and we’re alone.

Exhausted and wishing this house were big enough to afford me places to hide, I take off my boots to leave at the door. Spencer’s eyes remain on me, a pressure on the back of my neck as insistent as the one throbbing in my temples. I feel like shit.

“Hauling go okay?” he asks, trying a different avenue to find out what might be the issue.

“It did. We’re pulling more in the traps, which is a good sign for the season.” I glance at him as I say this, watching the way his expression relaxes. If I’d given him a one-word answer, he wouldn’t have been deterred. He’d have tried harder.

“That’s good. Are you hungry? I was going to make a peanut butter sandwich. But if you want something else⁠—”

“I think I’m going to shower,” I interrupt, wondering if tonight, for the first time in my life, the sorrows will consent to being drowned.

“Okay. I’ll make you something to eat. You’re probably starving.”

He stares at me after he says this, eye contact firm and posture somewhat stiff as though hunger isn’t the starvation he’s referring to. It doesn’t feel like it’s my hand that reaches for him, nor my lips that press against his. I meant to mollify him—to give him what he wants—with the gesture, but it’s clear from the hurt in his eyes that I wasn’t successful. The kiss felt as hollow to receive as it did to give it.

Disappearing into the bathroom feels oddly cowardly, and showering off the day doesn’t feel half as good as it usually does. Unchanneled frustration nips at me, and my body feels heavy with exhaustion despite the typical level of effort I put in. I feel as though I’m wearing a weighted vest as I pause with a hand on the bathroom door, stopping to give myself another moment before subjecting myself to Spencer’s presence once more.

I think it’s time to be done. This transient fling has twisted and molded itself into a relationship, and it’s time for it to stop. I’m a lot of things, but an idiot isn’t one of them, and only children and the foolhardy don’t learn from their lessons the first time around. I learned everything I needed to learn from Dylan.

I made sure to put barriers into place when I met Shiloh, made sure that history wasn’t going to come back around for a repeat, and I wouldn’t find myself at the mercy of another person again. He tried to bring me closer, and for two years, I pushed him away. I was proud of how fucking easy it was to let him go when it was time. I’d succeeded in precisely what I set out to do and found myself on the other side of a relationship with not a single scar to show.

It’s madness to find more connection with a homeless stranger than a man I was with for two years. Even worse to let something as unmanageable as feelings become involved. Somehow, in the short time I’ve known Spencer, I’ve regressed years in reverse, back to the kind of person who lets someone spend an entire night in their bed and wakes up with them in their arms; the kind of person who thinks of another before themself and will suffer for it in the end. I wish I could say I didn’t know better.

Spencer isn’t waiting on the other side of the door, but his discomfort is. As promised, there’s a peanut butter sandwich on the nightstand on my side of the bed. He’s sitting on the other, knees bent and arms wrapped around them, eyes on me the moment I step into the room. I work to keep every ounce of frustration off my face and out of my voice as I join him. He shouldn’t be punished for the things that are wrong with me.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” he replies quietly, eyes narrowed and brow low as he watches me. He’s puzzled, not angry, and I give myself yet another thing to be annoyed about with the realization. I wish I didn’t know him well enough to read the emotions straight off his face and hope, for both our sakes, that he’s not as adept at reading mine.

It’s the most uncomfortable we’ve been together since that first day, and the first time I’ve ignored the desire to ease it. Instead, I let it fester. I let Spencer stew in his worry. I turn up the sound on the television to a volume just loud enough to deter talking. And when it comes time to go to sleep, I meet the hurt in his stunning eyes with a cool wall of indifference and turn out the light.

Spencer is awake, so stiff and unrelaxed that he’s somehow managing to make me uncomfortable, too. I lie still, feigning sleep but unable to produce it in actuality, and am stupidly grateful for my alarm once it goes off. As though he’d merely been waiting, Spencer sits up.

“Morning,” he says, voice missing the rasp it usually has when he greets me first thing. I doubt he slept at all. I allow the guilt to grow just long enough for it to chafe. Just long enough to add another layer to the bad mood that hadn’t quite loosened its hold on me since yesterday. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach for my phone.

“Go back to sleep,” I tell Spencer, pulling up the weather on my phone and grimacing. I consider, for longer than I should after the events of this winter, going out to haul anyway. Storm cells don’t always amount to anything, and this one doesn’t look to be coming close enough to be much of a bother. Cody and I could go out and push hard through the morning, make it in early, before the weather has a chance to turn.

But the me before Spencer would not push anything at all. The me of a few months ago would be happy for enough wind to keep us docked, happy with a few more hours of sleep and a day spent in clothes that could double as pajamas. If I call Cody in and take the Maiden Seas out, I won’t be doing it out of necessity or want of anything other than avoiding Spencer. Throwing back the covers, I stand.

“Sounds kind of windy,” Spencer notes. “You’re not going to haul, right?”

I must have been clenching my jaw all night for how badly my ears are aching. Rubbing a finger against the joint, I walk toward the bathroom.

“Dryden.” A familiar bite snaps at my name, his tone reminiscent of the way he’d spoken that day on the road. Do not touch me. Softening my mouth into a smirk, I look at him over my shoulder.

“You can go back to sleep,” I repeat, happy with how indifferent I sound.