I don’t have a sufficient explanation for my actions. All I know is, one minute, I was motoring down the Cape Ann coast, telling myself I should check our long-neglected traps off Magnolia Point… and the next, I was here. In the little cove where I’d spent so much of my youth, with the Valentine mansion rising up behind it like a mountain range of turrets and pitched roofs.
The estate is far more intimidating at this proximity than it ever appeared during my distant drive-bys. As I close the final distance, my heart begins to pound a frantic drumbeat inside my chest. I grip the steering wheel harder as I navigate toward the dock, ignoring my jangling nerves as I drift to a stop in the space formerly occupied by a bright red Alerion sailboat. My fenders bump gently against the wood planks as I shift into neutral, shut the engine, and scramble overboard. I’m securing the stern line around a sturdy cleat when approaching footsteps rattle the boards beneath my feet.
I glance up.
Straight into a set of sky blue eyes.
They widen as they meet mine, clearly shocked by my presence. She freezes a dozen feet away, her expression flickering between so many emotions, I can’t decipher a single one of them. She’s in cut-off jean shorts that make her legs look a million miles long and a sleeveless linen blouse. Her long blonde locks are damp around her shoulders, a shade darker than usual. She wears no makeup, fresh from the shower.
It’s hard to look at her, she’s so damn beautiful.
I rise slowly to full height, holding the breath in my lungs until it starts to burn. Never shifting my gaze from hers. Not daring to move an inch into her space, for fear she’ll run away. Or, worse, come closer. Within arm’s reach. Within lip’s reach. Close enough for me to pull her up against my chest and beg forgiveness. Beg absolution. Beg anything, so long as she’ll give me a chance to repair all I’ve broken.
I push aside the thoughts.
“Hi,” I say dumbly, clearing my throat. I don’t know much about how this interaction is about to go, but I do know this: I’m the one who has to speak first this time. I’m the one who has to take the leap of faith. After our last interaction — the things I said to her — I’m just lucky she hasn’t punched me in the face.
Not yet, anyway.
“What are you doing here?” The question trembles from her lips. Her eyes look glossy — as though she’s already on the brink of tears.
Isn’t that the question of the century?
What the fuckamI doing here?
I fist my hands at my sides, trying to hold myself in check. “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I was just motoring down the coast and then I… suddenly found myself here.”
She stares at me. “You found yourself here.”
I nod.
She mulls that over for a moment. I can’t read her eyes, nor her expression, but after a while they drift away from my face to study my lobster boat, moving over the bow with frank curiosity. “New?”
“Yes.”
“Yours?” She steps closer, skimming her hand along the rail. Her fingers dance lightly against the fiberglass. I watch them, swallowing hard around the lump in my windpipe. Trying not to think about those hands — how they feel on my skin, how one small brush is enough to unravel me completely. I’d give just about anything to feel their weight again. To lace one with mine and walk down a street together, just a normal couple on a normal day.
No fractured past, no perilous future.
She turns to me, brows raised. I realize I haven’t answered her question.
“Yes. She’s all mine.”
“Looks expensive,” she notes.
“I wouldn’t know. She was a gift.”
She whistles lowly. “Some gift.”
“My boss — the owner of the boat that sank — bought her with the insurance payout. He’s ready to retire. He had no use for her, so she’s mine now.”
Another whistle. “Some boss.”
“He is.” I’m rattled by her composure. She’s eerily calm. Not the good sort of calm. Calm like the sky before a storm. Still as the clouds before lightning touches down. I get the sense, if I push the wrong button, she’ll strike out with similar lethal force.
“Jo.”
Her eyes slide to mine. “Archer.”