I watched in curious silence as he readied each pole. Curses tumbled from his mouth, and he dropped a pair of pliers more than once.
“Hold this,” he handed me a fishing pole. “I guess I’m out of practice.”
“To be honest, you don’t really look like the fishing type either.”
“I hate fishing,” he admitted, straightening out the line and taking the pole back.
“Then what are we doing here?”
Isaac didn’t answer, suddenly too concentrated on a package of raw shrimp. He stepped behind me, placing my hands correctly on the pole. His casting instructions were warm, tickling the shell of my ear.
Of course, he was infusing this moment with sexual tension.
Except…this wasn’t sex.
What was this?
I fumbled with the fishing pole, failing four times before his chest pressed to my back, arms coming around me to show me the motion.
“See? You’re a natural,” he said when I finally got the line into the water.
There was a long stretch of quiet, then he murmured, “It reminds me of who I am. Or who I was. Or maybe both.”
“What?”
“Fishing.” Isaac took up his own pole, casting the line as casually as he did everything else.
It was easy to forget he grew up here. That this place was as familiar to him as the lines in his palms. I couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t make sense of a man like Isaac living somewhere like this.
Port O’Henry had a rugged sort of charm. There was a small town feel to some of it. Other parts were like any other tourist trap.
Where did he fit in among it all? When we first met, I assumed he was just another lawyer or doctor here for a fishing trip.
Seeing him here, I realized that wasn’t the full picture. He showed people only what he wanted them to see.
“We didn’t have much growing up.” He stopped abruptly, his jaw tight.
His wrist moved, slowly reeling his line in, eyes fixated on the surface of the water. “Some days we didn’t eat dinner unless we caught it. I hated it.”
I tried not to fill the silence that followed, tried to let his honesty catch in the wind and get carried away from us. I didn’t need to know about him. To feel anything for him.
And here I was feeling sorry for him.
That was always how it started. Thinking that once upon a time this man was just a little boy. Just some kid with a hard life.
Sooner or later, I would start plotting out all the ways I could fix him. Heal that inner child that had him reaching for somethingmore.
Which was complete and utter bullshit. The only person that could make that kind of change was him. It wasn’t my place or my purpose.
When I decided to fall in love again, it was going to be with someone that didn’t need fixing. Someone that had their emotional shit together.
So, I was going to get my emotional shit together too.
Or that was what I told myself before I blurted, “Why did you stay?”
“In Port O’Henry?”
“Yes. I don’t get it. You don’t seem like you belong here. Or that you want to.”