The dial tone clicked to a halt. With an optimistic gasp, Elise pressed her phone to her ear and lowered a hand to still her thumping heart. "Hey, it's Cade," her friend's pre-recorded voice crackled down the line. Elise collapsed against the back of her seat and massaged her temples. "If you're hearing this, I'm probably busy, or I'm avoiding you. Stop bugging me and maybe I'll call you back. No promises!"

    Studying her defeated face in her phone's dark screen, Elise ended the call and slid the handset into her bag. Her mind stressed the likelihood that Cadence was busy, or that she had let her phone die once again, yet the tightness in her chest wrenched that possibility beyond her grasp. As the girl's message had stated, Cadence was avoiding her, and Elise struggled to find the will to resent her for it. She only wondered if within this silence lay the sound of their ten lost years catching up with them.

    A solid gust lashed against the bus window, pulling Elise from her tangled thoughts just in time to press the stop button. Old spillages clung to the bottom of her shoe as she made her way to the door, her every move watched by the ranks of empty seats behind her. Even the driver sat behind a spectral veil, the foggy surface of their cabin window blurring them out of sight. The bus coasted to a stop, and Elise stepped out into the darkness without a word.

    Immediately as her foot hit the pavement, the wind whipped past Elise's cheek and knocked her off-balance. The crooked bus stop sign groaned under her sudden weight, and her vision blurred as waves of chilled rain forced tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath, choking down the bitter taste of salt and saturated dirt that flooded her mouth, and set her sights on the beach. Her body shivered and begged her to turn around, only for her smallest, faintest curiosity to raise her hand against the gale and pump her legs forward. She had to know if Cadence was really here.

    Elise pushed back against the thrashing gale and stinging rain that whirled around her, yet a slight twist in the air stopped her bloody-minded march in its tracks. Beneath the soil and sea tang, there was an unmistakeable burnt taste. It was smoke, and one glance ahead revealed a substantial bonfire tucked inside a ring of black beach rocks, its blaze howling in defiance of the stormy weather. "Who's starting a fire in this..." Elise began under her breath before letting the question splash against the soaked ground. Her disbelief had already given her the answer she needed.

    Puddles lined the way to the beach, reducing the dirt path to a shapeless smear. More than once, Elise's swift foot raced through wilted wild grass and plunged into the bloated mud pool that hid beneath it. The slick track slid, tripped, and skidded her into splintered fences and jagged rocks, and her lungs complained as the smoke's stench grew heavier and headier. It did not matter. Her mind's eye pictured Cadence waiting for her by the fire, arms outstretched to catch her in a tight embrace, and the thought kept her shattered body moving forward.

    Then she saw her. She had her back to the trail, and her hands clutched a bottle of whisky and a lighter instead of Elise, but it was definitely her. Elise's voice poured into the wind before she had stepped onto the sand. "Cade!"

    Cadence spun on her heels with a start. "Ellie?" she cried as the girl stumbled onto the sand. "Christ, what the hell are you doing out here?"

    "I had a hunch you'd be here, seeing as today was kind of a car crash." Elise crossed her fingers inside her hoodie's pockets. The claim was not untrue, and the pain that Cadence had suffered in her nightmares was still too difficult for Elise's tongue to bring to life. "Though getting here was a lot rougher than I thought it'd be."

    "No shit. I knew you were an impulsive gal, but..." Squinting through the rain, Cadence's lips split apart at the sight of Elise's knotted hair, colourless skin, and trembling legs. Water wept from every corner of her clothing. "You look like you just crawled out the sea, killer."

    "Speak for yourself, mer-punk," Elise quipped back, hoping her sly laugh covered up the aches that haunted her muscles as she took in Cadence's state. Though her girl was equal parts resilient and stubborn, she could not disguise her wind-torn limbs or her fight against the rain for the breath to stay afloat. Witnessing Cadence's struggle dispelled the misty affection that flooded Elise's eyes, and she saw the wounds that resided below her girl's surface, still raw and exposed from their last meeting. "Cade, I need to talk to you."

    The question washed with the raindrops over Cadence's stunned expression. She needled the tip of her boot into the beach, her thumb flicking at the lighter's cap. "I was afraid you'd say it like that," she said as she kicked up a lump of clumped sand. With a small swing of her wrist, she extended the whisky towards Elise. "Think you'll need a swig of this first? Nothing hypes you up like booze and bonfires."

    A quick sip sparked a fire in the back of Elise's throat, its fleeting warmth tantalising enough to drive her back to the bottle straight away. Nestled in the alcohol's sweet heat, she perched herself on a rock and shifted to make space for Cadence. Flickering firelight draped over Cadence's body, and while she studied its golden threads, Elise's delicate nerve cracked into dust. "How are you doing?" she asked with a sudden jolt. "That stuff with Melody got pretty intense."

    "I'm getting by." Cadence drew her knee up to her chest and set her chin on it, leaving her other leg swinging off the rock face. Staring into the fire, wisps of a dense mist twisted over the seas of her eyes. "Look, I know you're a sweetheart and all, but I don't buy for a second that you came all this way just to check on me. You can get to the point, Ellie. I can take it."

    "Did you mean it?" The words broke from Elise's hold before she had even formed the thought behind them. As the question hovered in the air, her own voice reverberated between her ears, the hopeful final lilt jarring with her heart's lead cell. "What you said to Melody about how you...you know. Is that how you feel?"

    Cadence did not flinch from her contemplative posture. "I know I thought it." Noticing Elise's inquiring gaze, she tugged at her beanie and shrugged. "I guess I'd spent so long thinking about telling her, I'd pretty much forgotten how not to think about it. In my head, Mel was always the one for me. She was something I could hold onto whatever mess my life was in."

    As she rubbed Cadence's shoulder, a numbing stream of icy rainwater trickled over Elise's fingers, yet its chill only drove her to tighten her hold. "I know. I can't imagine how important she's been to you through all the stuff with your foster parents, Florence, me," she said, her gut too wearied and sore to feel the shock of her final syllable. "But did you mean what you said? Are you really...in love with her?"

    "I don't know. Maybe?" Stretching her hands into the veil of rain around them, Cadence froze in place as if waiting for an answer to land in her grasp. The whisky bottle from Elise's hold was the only inspiration that was forthcoming, and it did enough to spark Cadence back into motion. "I don't even know how I'd know. And anyway, she obviously doesn't feel that way, so it's not like it matters."

    "It matters to me." A bolt of lightning flashed overhead, and the following thunderous boom pushed Elise close to Cadence's side. Despite her mind's pleas to pull away, her girl's subtle heat did a better job of warming Elise's frozen fingers than the waning fire had done. "Whatever you feel for Melody, it's real, Cade. You can't bottle it up and act like it's not there. We've both tried that, and it doesn't do anything but make us feel shittier and shittier until we do something stupid."

    "Like getting mushy on someone after six months of silence," Cadence snickered, setting her bottle down on a flat section of rock.

    With a tickled snort, Elise gave into the urge to rest her head on Cadence's shoulder. "Or blurting out that you love someone minutes after hooking up with them," she added, grateful for the open invitation to openly mock herself like she had done internally all day.

    Against Elise's expectations, Cadence did not share in her laughter. Another shot of lightning lit her face up, revealing the stern black marbles of her pupils. "I meant what I told you then," she uttered by Elise's ear, her soft whisper drowning out the raging storm. "If you'll have me, I'm with you, Ellie. Nothing's going to come between us again, you hear?"

    Elise rubbed the rain from her eyes, yet her girl's gaze remained just as sincere. "Cade..." she gasped, jolting as the screech of a distant siren breached their intimate bubble of rumbling rain, crackling flames, and thrashing waves.

    "Hell, even if something does get in our way, we'll just knock it down together," Cadence continued with a bright smile that failed to reach her eyes. Regret, relief, and pure exhausted pain collided in the specks of tears that carried the rain from her cheeks. "We're bonded for life, killer, like we always have been."

    Her girl's words tinkled a light, airy tune against the storm, and it took the last fibres of Elise's strength to stop herself collapsing into Cadence's lap. "Of course we are, Cade," she said with an intensity that surprised herself. Reining her passion in was not an option, not when Cadence was saying almost exactly what Elise had wanted her to say for so long. "Whatever happens, I'll do everything I can to find my way back to you, I promise."

    The words hung in the thin space between their lips in quaking anticipation, yet something pried Cadence's gaze away from Elise's face. Unfazed by the whipping winds, the sirens from the streets hurtled closer until the harsh blue light of their partnered beacons danced into view.

    Cadence's entire body tensed. "No way. They can't be," she whispered as she slipped off the rock to her feet, her eyes fixed on the approaching lights.

    Stranded in the rain, Elise dragged over the sand behind Cadence. "They can't be what?" she asked, and her fists trembled with dread. She pled for the sea to rise around them and scoop them up, yet she dashed that hope as soon as she had formed it. The surging wave in her nightmare had never been a literal one. "Maybe we can hide at the cabin again. Surely Florence wouldn't rat us out to the police?"

    "If it meant getting rid of me, she'd lock the holding cell door herself." As the police cars blared beside the beach carpark, Cadence jerked herself around and pushed Elise towards the nearby rocks. "Quick, hide! I'll cover for you."

    "What? No! I won't let you take all the blame," Elise cried, wriggling herself free of her girl's directing hold. The flash of inspiration in her eyes blazed against the bonfire's dwindling glow. "We can tell them about Matt. We have that footage of him breaking into Natalie's locker, and we can talk about his threats and his stupid knife too."

    "The stupid knife right here in my pocket, you mean?" With a flap of her jacket, Cadence sighed and parted from Elise's side. "Just leave this to me, killer. I'll be fine, alright? It's not like it's my first time."

    Rogue currents raced through Elise's waters, scattering her brittle heart far beyond the horizon. Sunken under endless rainfall and swept away by relentless winds, she clutched the spittle-glazed rock for balance and searched the sky for scraps of steady starlight. The rock provided no support beyond streaks of ruby pinpricks along her fingertips, and the stars had been displaced by the warring storm clouds that collided across the sky. It was fitting weather for a night in which she had lost Natalie, set herself on the verge of losing Robin, and now sat idly by while the world claimed her best friend – her love – too.

    The tide rushed around Elise's feet, and she slipped down the side of the rock onto the muddied beach. With balled fists, she flailed against the flowing sea, sinking her knuckles into the soaked sands and spraying founts of frothing water over her bowed head. Cadence was her last, most precious island of certainty throughout so much turmoil, and she was not going to give her up to any storm, natural or otherwise.

    "Get the hell away from her!" Elise marched towards the fire, eyes set on the pair of uniformed figures that closed in on her friend. "She's not the one you should be coming after!"

    "Oi! Back off!" Glaring through the gloom, the officer swiped the rain from her skewed hat. "We're busy here. Unless you started this fire in a public space and fancy a trip to a cell, stop loitering and get home already!"

    An exasperated laugh left Cadence's lips. "Really, sister? Are you seriously mad about the stupid fire?" she asked with an elaborate eyeroll. Smoke trailed out of the gaps in the bonfire's kindling, its popping and crackling death throes cutting through the wind's constant howls. "Can't a girl impulsively burn their ex-friend's stuff in the middle of nowhere anymore?"

    The other officer shifted his weight between his legs, a furrowed brow spoiling his young features. "I think that's been against the law for a while now, actually," he remarked as he kicked a loose pebble between his sand-packed shoes. His partner turned her spearing eyes towards him, and he cleared his throat as he side-footed the rock beyond his reach. "But no, we came because someone phoned in about seeing your vehicle pull up here."

    "So what?" Cadence took a step towards the younger officer, eliciting a visible flinch of his lips. "It's not a crime to drive during a storm, dude."

    "No, but breaking and entering, theft, harassment, damage to property, and assault all are offences. Offences that we have reports tying to somebody using your vehicle," the older officer stated as she positioned herself between Cadence and her partner. Driving Cadence back with a fierce look, she flitted her eyes onto Elise's lingering form. "Two somebodies, in fact. Happen to know anything about that, gobby?"

    Tremors wracked Elise's numbed legs. "You mean...you're here to arrest us?" she mumbled, her lower lip shivering under the weight of reality. Her throat burned as the rest of her words clawed their way into the tempest around her. "You can't do that! Please, don't! We never wanted to hurt anybody or cause any trouble, I swear. I promise we'll keep –"

    "Save it, girl." A heavy pair of footsteps approached from the promenade, the coarse grain of her father's voice tunnelling through Elise's shaken ear. Wrapped in a grey raincoat and leaking water from his hiking boots, Leon's face wore the same frown that he had left her flat with on their last run-in. "You're coming with me."

    "Dad? What are you doing here?" Elise asked as she struggled to meet her father's eye. Suddenly, the crisis that snared her by the ankles made too much sense. "Oh my god. It was you, wasn't it? What the hell is wrong with you?"

    "Elise." Her father's single-word response cut through Elise's heart more cleanly than the harshest threat. Leon had not used her proper name since her mother had died. Its sound filled Elise's mind, reducing her to the voiceless, powerless girl she had thought herself to be all those years ago. "Car. Now."

    Elise looked to Cadence for support, yet even her girl's eyes lacked their usual rebellious spark. Taking a deep breath, she finally looked her father in the eye. "Fuck off."

    Before her tongue stilled, Leon seized Elise by her arm and yanked her like a ragdoll. She dug her feet into the sand, desperate to fight the relentless force of her father's pull. Through tear-soaked eyes, she turned and called out for Cadence, snatching in all directions for the safety of her girl's reassuring presence.

    All that met her numb hand was cold rain and the hollow plastic inside the car door.