Free In the Waning Light by Loreth Anne White Page A

rags at supermarket checkouts he’d glimpsed photos of her with that filthy-rich, celebrity-shrink fiancé of hers, him with his James Bond looks. He’d known every moment what Meg Brogan was making of her life.
    And not for one of those moments had he ever expected to see her back here. Home. Standing on the deck of his marina. Petting his dog. And in the distance behind her, across the water, the spit where he’d found her lying unconscious and close to dead.
    “Meg?” His voice came out hoarse.
    Her gaze shot up to the sign on top of the building. BULL ’ S MARINA .
    “I know.” He came forward. “I should get around to changing that one day, huh. Only been mine for two-plus years now. Still, it’s been a lot of work to fix up. Damned Pacific Northwest, you know—everything tends toward entropy. Even the buildings are biodegradable. Salt wind doesn’t help. Just feeds it. And then there was that super tide that flooded Crabby Jack’s. I’d like to get it shined up before spring . . .”
    Shut the fuck up, Blake, you asshole.
    She stared, confusion chasing across her features. Her thinness, paleness, made her eyes seem even bigger than he remembered, and they swallowed him whole. She held her thick hair back off her face as wind gusted. The sun crested the top of the building and caught her features. She blinked. An ethereal thing of beauty—like some shining piece of a dream plucked out of his past and plunked down into this soggy, decaying, paint-peeling reality that was his present. He swallowed. Unsure. Feeling somehow less. As if in approaching any further, speaking another stupid word, he might spook her off. Shatter the illusion.
    Jesus Christ, he was still totally messed up over this woman . . .
    “Is . . . your dad?”
    “Bull passed away. Two and a half years ago now. The old ticker”—he tapped his chest lightly with the front of his fist—“finally packed it in.”
    The news seemed to physically punch her in the gut. She lowered herself slowly onto a wet log bench. He hesitated, then moved closer to her. Close enough to touch. Her eyes dipped over him, taking in what had become of him over the past sixteen years. His pulse raced. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “That your rig back there?” he said with a jerk of his head.
    She nodded.
    He bent down, gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, stealing her scent. “God, it’s good to see you again, Meg.”
    She swallowed.
    He turned on the gas that fed into the concrete fire pit, and set it aflame. Fire whooshed to life in the cold air, the warmth almost instant; then he seated himself on the rough-hewn cedar bench opposite her. He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs.
    “What on earth brings you back, Meg?”

    Ryan Millar waited until his wife had disappeared through the back door of the convenience store. He reached for his cell phone, dialed, pressed his cell to his ear. As the phone rang, he ran his palm gently along the body of the tricked-out monster truck he’d jacked up on one of the garage hoists. The chrome, the studs— this was his true passion. This was how he liked to spend his time off, when he could sneak it.
    His call clicked over to voice mail on the third ring.
    “Hey,” he said quietly, leaving a message. “It’s Millar. I heard Meg Brogan was seen back in town—thought you might like the heads-up.” He hesitated, debating whether to say more, then killed the call instead. He stood for a moment, phone in hand, staring at his own caricatural reflection in the chrome hubcap, thinking of dreams versus reality. How you made big shiny goals when you were young, and how life turns out misshapen in the end. How people settled. Found a comfort zone. Or a rut that just kept on getting deeper, and harder to climb out of.
    Wind gusted, sending water drops spattering down from the brooding cedar onto the garage door. He started at the sudden noise. The weather was turning. . . . something foul carrying on the