Lawrence clicks his tongue. “Damn, that’s rough, man. No wonder you put Cole through the mattress.”
Ah, there’s my other best friend’s coping mechanism—humor and hypersexuality, no matter how inappropriate the timing.
“It’s hard to be here with all the reminders,” Morgan continues. “I think about what happened whenever I go through the gear room, and I hate that fucking sorting table.”
“You’re not alone in that,” Javi finally admits.
Alejo places his thumb and index finger just above his lips and spreads them apart, as if he’s making sure his mustache is still there. “Whenever I look for the buoys at the rail, I have to stop myself from looking for Seb.”
Wes turns to him. “I wish you said something.”
“It’s hard to talk about when you think you’re the only one.”
Lawrence twirls his chair toward Alejo. “If you get caught in a loop of looking for him, tell me and I’ll distract you with my buffoonery.”
Alejo smiles. “Thanks.”
Guilt churns in my chest. “I’m sorry. I should have realized working on theBriarwould trigger you guys. I don’t remember as much from that day, and I was so lost inside my grief that I didn’t think about how hard this must be for all of you.” I inhale a shaking breath and blink back unshed tears. “I spent the last year wishing I had died when I should have appreciated the second chance you all gave me.”
“Cole…” Lawrence’s shoulders sag, hazel eyes telling me exactly how crestfallen he is.
“I wasn’t suicidal. Not actively, anyway. I just wished I had died instead of Seb.”
“Just?Next time, tell me, okay?” Lawrence says. “I’ll knock some sense into you or kidnap you again.”
“I will. I’m sorry.” I clench my eyes shut, then open them again. “When I lost Seb, I pushed everyone away and told myself I lost my only family, but that wasn’t true. You guys have always been my family, and it was pretty fucked up of me to abandon you.”
“We understood you were trying to figure things out,” Wes says.
Lawrence eases down from the chair, and crosses the distance quickly, then throws his arms around me. Morgan tries to shuffle out of the way, but Lawrence drags him back into our awkward three-person hug without comment.
“Thanks, Lawless.”
“Anytime, brother.”
Javi clears his throat. “My turn.”
When Lawrence steps aside, Javi hugs me, and only me, probably to Morgan’s relief.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Me too,” he whispers back.
“I have to stop hiding from what happened,” I say once we part. “I want you guys to feel like you can talk about Seb and everything else that happened. You can call me out for my bullshit and hold me accountable too.”
“Oh, I never stopped calling you out,” Lawrence says.
I laugh. “What we have is special. I want you all here. Seb might have been the glue that held us all together, but we can do it without him too. Which brings me to, hopefully, my last point. I think we should talk about pay. Without Seb, we have a lot more money left over. We’d like to bump you all up to nine percent.”
Lawrence whistles.
“Are you sure?” Wes asks. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s the best deckhand pay in the fleet,” I say with a grin. “But you’re more than deckhands to us.”
“We can swing it with money left over for repairs,” Morgan says. “We’re lucky to own theBriaroutright.”
“Plus Dad’s quota,” I add.