The Luna He Lost to the Alpha King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Yacht

On Hazel's birthday Declan lifts her onto his shoulders and promises not to let her down, then walks off the dock at Felicity's call; Hazel crosses his name off her emergency form herself, and the Alpha King steps off his launch with a cake.

Declan came to my door every morning that week, and every morning I left it shut.

He looked worse each day.

By Saturday his hands shook when he held the rail on our porch, and the skin under his eyes had gone the color of a bruise.

A refused bond does that to the man on the other end of it.

I felt nothing at all, and I was ashamed of how good that felt.

"One chance," he said through the screen. "Her birthday. Let me take her out on the lake, Cora. I rented a boat."

I looked at Hazel, who was halfway down the stairs with her braids still wet.

"Your decision," I told her. "Not mine."

She thought about it for as long as a ten-year-old thinks about anything that matters, which was about two seconds.

"Can I steer?"

"Yes," Declan said. His voice cracked on it. "You can steer the whole time."

So at noon we stood on the dock at the Lake Aldous marina, where a white boat with a banner across the stern said HAPPY 11TH HAZEL in glitter letters.

I came as far as the planks.

I told myself it was for the sunscreen and the spare inhaler in my bag.

It was because I wanted to see him do it right, just once.

Declan crouched in front of her.

"Birthday girl," he said. "Up you go."

He swung her onto his shoulders, and she grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and shrieked with laughter, the first real laugh I'd heard from her in a month.

"This time," he said, looking up at her, and his voice had gone rough, "I won't let you down."

He said it with absolute certainty.

He meant it. That was the worst part. He always meant it.

The harbor master untied the stern line.

Hazel kicked her heels against Declan's chest, and I let myself breathe.

Then his phone buzzed in his jacket.

I knew the sound. I had heard that sound at every birthday, every recital, every dinner for a year.

Declan didn't reach for it.

He stood there with our daughter on his shoulders and let it buzz four times.

It stopped.

It started again.

His hand went to his collar.

"Dad?" Hazel said, very quietly, from up high.

"One second, sweetheart."

He lifted the phone to his ear, and Felicity's voice came out of it, loud enough that I heard every word from three feet away.

"Declan, I'm so sorry, I know it's her birthday, I wouldn't ask. It's Family Day at Jasper's school, and the other children all have their fathers, and he's standing there with a sign, and I can't, I can't do this alone."

She was sobbing.

It was lovely sobbing, the kind that makes you want to help.

Declan's face did what it always did.

It went still.

He didn't look at her sign, or at Jasper, or at me.

He looked at our daughter's sneaker, hanging by his collarbone.

"I have to go," he said. "Cora, I'm sorry. It's only an hour. Jasper has nobody, and I'll be right back."

"You're holding her," I said.

"I'll be right back."

He lowered Hazel to the planks with great care, and I watched her feet touch the wood.

Then he turned and walked up the dock toward the parking lot at a half run, phone still at his ear, saying, "I'm coming, I'm coming, tell him I'm coming."

He did not look back.

The harbor master looked at the water. The deckhand looked at the boat.

On the next dock over, a woman I didn't know put her hand over her mouth.

Hazel stood very straight with her arms at her sides.

She didn't cry.

"Well," she said. "Happy birthday to me."

I knelt down. I opened my mouth, and I had nothing, not one useful word.

She unzipped her jacket instead.

From the inside pocket she pulled out a square of paper folded in quarters.

It was the junior school's emergency contact form, soft at the creases, as if she had been carrying it for a week.

"I brought it," she said. "In case."

"Hazel."

"Can I borrow your pen?"

I held it out.

She smoothed the form on the nearest post.

She found the first line, Declan Mercer, and drew one hard line through it, and then another to be sure.

Under it she wrote my name, in her careful print, and my phone number, which she knew by heart.

She capped the pen and handed it back.

"Okay," she said, and her voice shook for the first time. "Now it's done."

I pulled her into my arms right there on the dock, in front of everyone, and she let me.

Over her head I saw the harbor master straighten.

He was staring toward the end of the pier, where a long dark launch sat idling with a gold crest on its bow.

A man in a wool coat stepped off it and walked toward us, carrying a white cake box in both hands.

It was the Alpha King, and he had clearly been waiting for some time.

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