Page 103

Blake

I pressed my palms into the sawhorses and closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe I was in here.

All I could smell was sawdust and turpentine. Everywhere I looked I saw him. Climbing the ladder with a bucket of paint. Arguing in the office about a bill someone refused to pay. But they were only memories. Dad was gone. He wasn’t going to barge in here and tell me I was doing this all wrong. He would know a better way to do it. He always had a better way than I did.

I picked up a tattered piece of sand paper and braced it between my hand and a piece of juniper. I smoothed the wood with the rough surface. The more I moved it back and forth, the sleeker the wood looked. I ground it harder, repeating the motion.

I got lost in it. The movement. The stillness of the barn. What it meant that I had opened the doors to his sanctuary.

Ten minutes later, Cole entered the boathouse.

He stopped a few feet short of where I was sanding. “I can’t believe it.”

“Don’t say anything.” I gritted my teeth.

He folded his arms over his chest. “You weren’t in the house. Didn’t think you’d actually be in here.”

I nodded. “Needed something to do.”

I heard him break the seal on a beer. “Need one of these?”

I grinned. “Hell yeah I do.”

I threw the sand paper down and took one of the beers. “Thanks.”

“So, you opened the barn back up. Does that mean anything?” he asked, taking a seat on one of the empty sawhorses. His feet shuffled over wood shavings that littered the barn floor.

“No.” I chugged. “Means I needed to sand this juniper.”

“Right. Right. So it has nothing to do with a certain blonde who is leaving the island?”

My eyes shot to his. “What are you talking about?”

“I ran into Shirley when I bought the beer. She said Sierra has to head back to Texas in a couple of days. Something about work. You didn’t know?”

“Huh. No, I hadn’t heard. Good for her.”

“Man, really?”

“What the fuck do you want me to do? She doesn’t want to stay. Some people leave and come back. Some don’t.”

“And you’re giving up on her? She came back, man. She’s trying to do the right thing.”

I

tipped the cold bottle to my lips. “The right thing? She was forced to come back here. Don’t cut her any slack. She’s here because she has to be.”

Cole shook his head. “I knew her in high school too. Don’t forget that.”

“And you were here when she left.”

“I was. But she was a kid. We all were. You seriously going to hold a grudge like that?”

“No. I don’t give a shit what she does.”

“You’re not going to call her?” Cole grilled me. “Because that’s what this is all about. The sanding, opening the barn, the pissy mood—it’s Sierra.”

I shook my head. “Nah, it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have taken her out to the Dock House or the Cape. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking opening up that shit back up with her.”