Page 44 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Chris

T urns out Hopper’s a half-decent cook. Okay, more than half decent, at least as far as omelets go.

“Damn, Duke,” I say over a mouthful of egg and gooey cheese.

But really, I’m glad to have something to keep me occupied now that we’re out of bed.

Because the reality of what just happened hasn’t stopped pummeling me since we pulled on some semblance of clothing.

Hopper told me he loved me. He saw all of me, and he loves me.

My heart is so vulnerable, so tender. Every time I look at him, I feel like I’m going to burn up like a supernova.

The truth is, I may have revealed all of myself to Hopper, but I’m still holding one thing back, from him and even from me.

It’s the truth about how I feel. This person who’s shown himself to be everything I never dared to dream of all those years I knew I had no one in this world.

I’m clinging to it because I think if I admit to myself that I feel the same way, I might lose all grip on reality.

Because the truth is, I know in my heart that I trust him completely.

And his love feels like all the love I never got before, all at once. It’s so much, I can hardly breathe.

Hopper gives me a grin over his shoulder as he uncorks the wine, and I bring myself back to earth.

This wine wasn’t in my house, but somehow magically showed up on my doorstep sometime during the time we were…occupied.

“You didn’t get Cindi to come out here after hours, did you?” I ask.

“Nah,” Hopper says. “I pulled in a favor.”

I inspect the bottle now as he sits down across from me at the table, shoveling food into his mouth in giant bites, like he hasn’t eaten in years.

The wine is from a local vineyard, run by a famously reclusive winemaker. “This is one of the nicest bottles on the menu at the Rusty Dinghy. Mac had to pull teeth to cut a deal with them to carry it.”

“Yeah,” he says, his mouth full of egg. Somehow it’s cute and not gross. “Well, Russell and I go way back. He told me this would be your favorite.”

My jaw falls open, my fork clinking to the plate. “You know Russell? Wait, Russell knows me ?”

“He only knows what I told him. He asked me all these questions about you and then told me I should get you the pinot noir—but only this year’s.”

“How are you friends with him?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m here for it. ”

“Listen, us guys with shit reputations are an exclusive club. We don’t share our secrets.”

I work my jaw for a minute, not giving up. “You bought a hat there.”

He laughs. “I did. But honestly? I filmed a movie in Vancouver a while ago and came up here during some time off. I found that place on my drive up and got to talking with him and, well, yeah, we’re buds. As much as you can be buds with Russell.”

I’m shocked by this. “Wait, you’ve been to Redbeard before?”

Hopper looks suddenly alarmed, like he shouldn’t have said anything. “I didn’t spend any time in town. I was just looking for a place to get away to for a bit.”

Something about that feels off. Maybe…“Have we met before?” I ask. “When you were up here last time?”

Hopper chooses that moment to choke on his egg. He coughs and coughs, going red in the face. I clap his back as hard as I can. “Hopper!” I exclaim. “Hey!”

“I’m fine,” he wheezes, reaching for his wine.

“Let me get you some water.”

“No, honestly, I’m good. Wine is great.” He throws back half a glass.

I narrow my eyes. “We did meet before, didn’t we?” Suddenly it makes sense. “Did I serve you at the Rusty Dinghy? The place is packed in the summer, so I might not have noticed exactly who I was serving.”

His face looks pained.

I’m pretty sure I would have remembered Hopper, but maybe not if he had a beard and a hat on.

“Do you want to maybe go for a walk?” Hopper asks .

I lift my brows. He’s trying to change the subject. He’s embarrassed I didn’t recognize him. Maybe it’s even why he was such a dick that first day. I decide to drop it, since he’s clearly uncomfortable.

“Sorry, Hopper. It’s fine. We don’t need to go out there; it’s cold.”

“Honestly, I’d really like to take a walk with you if you’d be up for it. On the way over, I saw some Christmas lights. I wouldn’t mind looking at them again.”

“Are you serious?”

Hopper nods, smiling briefly, almost sheepishly. “When I was a kid—before all the acting—my mom and I used to drive around looking at lights on nights my dad got…well, the nights he wasn’t good company.”

That hits me a little too hard. I wish—or maybe the little girl inside me wishes—I’d had a mom who could have taken me out of the house those nights too. My dad wasn’t a violent drunk, but when it was bad, he wasn’t someone I wanted to be around.

“Okay,” I say softly. “That sounds nice.”

It is nice, actually. One of the nicest nights I remember in a long time. We bundle up, and I remake those teas we never drank earlier, fixing them in travel mugs so we have something to keep us warm.

Hopper walks with his arm around my shoulder, pulling me in tight against the chill.

“It’s been a long time since I wanted to look at Christmas lights,” I confess .

“Yeah, hasn’t been my jam in a while either,” Hopper says.

We walk in silence for a bit, stopping at the houses with pretty displays up. At the edge of town, I hesitate. “Maybe we shouldn’t walk close like this? In case anyone sees us?”

“Hell no,” Hopper says, pulling me tighter. “I’m cold.”

I laugh.

“It’s fine, bangles. You’ve got a scarf covering your face and you loaned me this woolly-ass animal.”

“Hey, it looks good on you!” I say, looking up at the fur hat I picked up at a vintage store years ago. It’s got ear flaps and strings. It looks a little ridiculous on me but it fits Hopper just right. It does look good on him. But so does everything.

I decide to relax. Main Street is deserted, anyway. Only the odd car has passed us, lights glowing in the distance as the road turns back into the highway.

We talk the whole time. About our favorite Christmases—both of ours so far in the past we still believed in Santa Claus.

“Wait, what do you mean he’s not real?” Hopper asked when I pointed that out.

The best meals we ever ate—Hopper some kind of banana leaf fish in Vietnam; me, a granola bar I ate right after skydiving, when I had to land using my backup parachute.

Hopper’s shocked but also not shocked to learn I used to be kind of an adrenaline junkie.

“I’m winding down in my old age,” I tell him .

He levels me a look that says I’m not allowed to say old around him.

I don’t tell him I haven’t taken a single physical risk since the dirt bike crash. If you don’t count riding on his motorbike.

Somehow, an hour later, we’ve ended up down at Redbeard Cove beach.

It’s stunning. Moonlight stretches in a line across the ocean, and the sound of waves on sand is instantly soothing.

In the near distance, a tiny island rises up from the dark.

There’s a retreat center there, with hotel rooms. Maybe Hopper and I could go there one day.

One day.

Beyond, there’s rippling ocean and the bigger islands. Past that, open ocean. The air is crisp and smells of salt water and seaweed.

“I can’t remember the last time I was here at night,” I say. “Besides the nights I was working, anyway. But all I wanted to do then was go home and pass out.”

The Rusty Dinghy’s closed now, just a dark blot against the starry sky off to our side.

“How’d you end up working there, anyway?” Hopper asks as we settle on the sand, our backs against a log, his arm wrapped snug around me.

“Kind of a long story,” I say.

“There’s literally nowhere else I’d rather be,” Hopper says. “I want to know everything.”

I look up at him, searching his face in the moonlight. “Seriously, Hopper?”

“Let’s start at birth. ”

I laugh, but it dies off quickly. I decide, as a lark, to tell him my life story in fifty words or less.

“I was born here. My mom took off when I was a baby. My dad was a drunk and that got him fired from the fire station. We moved to Swan River, where he got himself killed in a little accident I may have mentioned. I went into the system. No one wanted me. Then I came back here. Begged my childhood bestie’s older brother for a job. ”

I laugh, sitting up and curling my arms around my knees. I know it’s weird that I’m being so lighthearted about all of this. “None of that is funny, I know.”

“Humor is a perfectly reasonable response to trauma,” Hopper says. “At least that’s what my old therapist told me.”

I try to picture Hopper in therapy. This big man on a little couch. A little Nietzsche-looking therapist scribbling notes. I know from my own sessions as a kid that it looks nothing like that, but still, the thought makes me smile enough to keep going.

“So yeah. That’s the long answer. The short is Mac took pity on me.

He gave me a job as a busser until I was nineteen, when I could start serving.

And I just…stayed.” I look over at Hopper, suddenly embarrassed.

“I know, I should have been doing more with my life. Like going to college. Or getting a better job. But…I was happy, I really was. At the Dinghy, I met my family. Mac, Shelby, Lana. And it gave me time to do what I really loved.”

“What was that?” Hopper asks.

It’s the strangest thing. It’s like he already knows the answer .

“It sounds like a good life, Chris.”

I nod. “It was. But I told you before, I had an accident. It kind of changed everything.”

He’s quiet, so I tell him about it. How dirt biking was something my dad and I used to do together. How I saved up to buy Betty, and how it was the one thing that I lived for.

Then I crashed.

“I can’t ride anymore, Hopper.”

Hopper’s jaw goes tight. “I know.” He looks out at the water. “Chris?—”

“It’s okay, you know,” I say. “Working with you—it’s kept me busy. I haven’t missed it too much.”

The first part is true. The second, not so much.

Hopper’s jaw works. Then he looks away again. “Do you want to try? I could get Betty back. I could go with you. We could practice together, put a bike on one of those stands…”

But I shake my head. “No. I mean, maybe, yes. But I don’t think the driving and racing is what I want anymore, at least not for me.”

He cocks his head.

I bite my lip. “Today, at the track, I offered to help teach Shay how to ride. And even just the possibility of getting a girl like her up and running—taking risks, kicking ass—I haven’t felt that kind of excitement in a long time.”

“That’s amazing,” he says, and sounds like he really means it.

Maybe there’s something there. I don’t know what yet, but something .

I play with Hopper’s hand curled over my shoulder, stroking its broad length. I feel better for having told him my story.

It’s only when we’re lying in my bed later, Hopper at my back, his arms wrapped around me, hand on my belly like it’s his new favorite place to be, that I realize there’s more to it.

With Hopper, I feel safe. For the first time in a long time, I feel like the ceiling isn’t going to come crashing down on me in the middle of the night. That I can take risks and tell my story and be as vulnerable as I want without everything going sideways.

I feel like I might finally be able to look at my life as something to go after instead of something to navigate.

None of this makes any sense, of course. Because the person who’s helped me feel this way isn’t mine to keep. Even if we figure it out, how would it work? He’s Hopper Donnach. I’m just me.

But I like being me. I like being here in Redbeard. In town, on the beach, at the dirt track. All those places give me that same feeling.

So does Hopper.

They all feel like home.

I wait until I hear his breathing stretch out long again.

And then, only then, I whisper, “I love you too, Hopper. But I still think you’re going to break my heart.”

But maybe, this time, I’ll survive.