Chapter 9: Keeper

Conal's POV

I heard the brass bolt slide home on her door, and I stood in the hall with my forehead against the wall.

My wolf was awake and loud.

He wanted the bolt off its hinges. He wanted the door gone. He wanted her.

I breathed through my teeth until the gold went out of my eyes.

I had been breathing like that for three years, ever since a wet October morning at the harbor.

She had come down the quay in a yellow raincoat, laughing into her phone, and my wolf had gone still and then gold.

A week later she wore a Lowell ring, and Gisela came up my cottage steps while my father lay dying in the back room.

"Stay on your side of the water," she said, "and you may bury your father on the headland where he belongs."

I stayed on my side of the water.

Tonight Isla had put her mouth on mine, and I understood I had been lying to myself for three years.

I took my keys from the hook by the door.

I stood there with my hand on the latch of her room for a full minute first.

Then I took my hand away, because a door she had bolted was a door she had chosen.

I didn't wake her.

The registrar lived in a shingled house behind the church, and a light was on in her kitchen.

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