Page 37 of The Seascape Between Us (The Men of Saltwater Cove #4)
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grey
I stood frozen, watching Daniel stride quickly out of the hotel room as if someone were chasing him. I should have followed, gone after him and demanded an explanation for what he’d said, but I was too stunned. My feet rooted to the floor while my brain tried to catch up.
Sell it? Sell the hotel?
He couldn’t be serious. The Seascape was the only home he’d ever really had.
He’d never let it go, not under normal circumstances at least. I still felt a little queasy when I remembered how I’d threatened to sell the place when I’d first come back to The Square.
Given how hard he fought me to keep the hotel going, how could he be willing to let it go now?
It was as if all the fight had been drained out of him after the passing storm.
My chest ached at the thought. But as bad as I felt for him, the sight of Daniel turning and walking away without so much as a backward glance hit like a punch to the gut.
He was giving up? Now ? After everything we’d put into the hotel? After the hard work and the money and the time, and he was walking away?
My fists clenched at my sides. I wanted to shake him, make him see sense. Hell, all this time, it had been two steps forward and ten steps back with him. We could have a good life together if he would trust me, trust himself.
I sighed. I knew his hesitation wasn’t really about not trusting me or even trusting himself.
Daniel didn’t trust anything good; He didn’t believe anything good could last. That’s why he’d been so keyed up before coming to the hotel this morning and why he looked so broken when he’d come face-to-face with the damage from the storm.
He’d expected it. That look carved into his expression while we were in the restaurant, then, when we’d opened the door to the room I was standing in now, he’d been devastated but resigned, too.
To have come so close to finally making this hotel everything he wanted it to be, only to have it all snatched away by a fluke of nature, nothing he had any real control over, had broken him, and seeing him so wrecked had broken me.
I rubbed my chest where it ached, and felt hollow as if someone had carved it out with an ice cream scoop.
Had I lost Daniel in all of this after finally finding my way back to him after all these years? When he’d walked out of the hotel, had he walked out on me too?
As if on cue, a text from him popped up on my phone. Take my truck to get home. Keys in the visor .
Where the hell were you going? I typed the question into my phone, but wasn’t even surprised when he didn’t respond.
Still, a thin fissure of hope lit low inside me.
If he didn’t give a shit, he wouldn’t be worried about how I would get home.
When I talked to him next though, I was going to tell him exactly what I thought of this bullshit. In the meantime, I had work to do.
I wasn’t giving up, not on Daniel, not on the hotel. Not now. Not ever. He needed a win, and by god, I would burn this world down to give it to him.
I surveyed the mess of the hotel room, all the destruction, and all our hard work washed away. Getting it cleaned up, dried out, and everything replaced in time for the Grand Reopening would be tough, but with enough money and manpower, it could be done.
I had plenty of the former—that was never a problem—but I'd need to come up with a plan for the latter.
June didn’t live in Oceanwind Square or even Saltwater Cove.
She had a small cottage just outside of town.
High up in the jagged hills, the small yellow and white clapboard bungalow was set back from the highway, the covered wrap-around porch offering a view of the ocean.
Huge trees hemmed in the property from the back, with long grass and patches of wildflowers spilling over the rocky hillside—or they would have under normal circumstances.
Just like the rest of Saltwater Cove, June’s patch of land had felt the impact of the storm.
Fallen trees and flattened grass and flowers, their petals stripped away from the wind, covered the ground, weighed down from the rain.
June’s narrow, winding driveway was remarkably clear as I steered Daniel’s truck over the wet gravel.
Maybe she’d already dragged away the heavy branches and sticks that now edged the drive.
I stopped in front of her house and climbed out of the truck. June was sitting in an old wicker rocker on the porch with a book on her lap. She looked up, and her brows knit together when she spotted me.
A small, shaggy mongrel napping next to her chair jumped to its feet and let out a string of high, rapid barks cutting through the quiet afternoon.
“Did Daniel send you?” she called out. “I told him I was fine when he checked in on me this morning.”
I smirked to myself and shook my head. He’d been panicking about the hotel, and he’d still found time to check in on June. He’d probably checked in on all the people he delivered to as well.
“No, he didn’t.” I raised my voice, trying to be heard over the dog while I followed the flagstone path to the short set of wood steps that led to the porch.
The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Strong winds in the morning had blown out the last of the clouds lingering from the storm, leaving the sky clear and brilliant blue. As the day progressed, the wind died down, and now, the air was thick, hot and surprisingly still.
Sweat trickled down the middle of my back as I climbed the steps. The little dog kept barking but scrambled away to the other side of June’s chair.
“For the love of god,” she muttered impatiently. “Give it a rest, Charlie.”
If Charlie heard her, he gave no sign. If anything, his barking grew louder and faster.
“Sorry,” she said, hauling herself up off the chair. “That’s his stranger-danger bark.” She looped a finger under Charlie’s collar and guided him towards the house, opening the door and shoving him inside. Before the door swung closed, a gust of cool, air-conditioned air wafted out.
“Is your power back?” I asked, hoping the grid might have come back up on my drive over.
She shook her head. “Generator. I got one years ago. Power’s always sketchy out here, and it goes down all the time.”
I shifted uncomfortably under her perplexed stare. Since coming back to The Square, June had always intimidated me. She always looked at me as if she hadn’t quite decided if she liked me or not.
“I hope you don’t mind me coming out here,” I said carefully.
She smirked — “I don’t mind. I can’t figure out why you came.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Daniel and the hotel.”
She eyed me as if trying to work something out. It reminded me of the look Brody had given me the night before when I met him.
“How did the Seascape handle the storm?”
I reached for the back of my head and tangled my fingers in my hair. “Not great.”
“I’m guessing Daniel didn’t take it well, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s an understatement,” I said. “He's talking about selling.”
“Oh, don’t listen to him,” She waved her hand as if swatting away the possibility. “He doesn’t really mean it.”
“That’s the thing. This time, I think he does.”
“And you’re here because you want me to help change his mind?”
“He thinks it’s too late, and there’s too much damage to reopen. He thinks it’s over for the Seascape.”
“Is he right?”
I shook my head. “He loves that hotel, and I want to help him.”
“I need to know what your intentions are with him,” she said. “Before I help you with anything, I need to know that you’re sticking around.”
The memory of him walking away from me at the hotel, the sight of his back as he sailed out of the room without sparing me another glance, weighed heavily on me. The possibility of losing him again after finally finding our way back to each other was just too much.
“I’m here for him for as long as he’ll let me be,” I told her.
In all my years of dating, no one had ever asked me about my intentions about anyone before, even when Daniel and I were together the first time. Yet, here I was, explaining my feelings to a virtual stranger; and this wasn’t even the first time today.
Brody had called me on the drive to June’s and asked me almost the same thing.
When Brody’s number appeared on my screen, I answered using the hands-free option, hoping it was Daniel.
Maybe his phone had died, and that’s why he hadn’t returned my text and why he was calling from his friend’s phone. But it had been Brody.
“Daniel’s at my place,” he’d said, in lieu of a greeting.
“I thought he might be.” I kept my tone even, not sure where the conversation was going.
“So, the hotel took a shit kicking?”
“It wasn’t great,” I admitted. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s just being a stubborn ass.”
Some of the anxiety humming beneath my skin faded, and I let out the breath that had lodged in my throat
“Here’s the thing, Mackenzie. I need to know if you’re in this. Are you just with him while you’re fixing up the hotel, and then when it’s done, you’re back to Portland, and he’s here, and that’s it? Or are you with him for good? Because he loves you. He’s always loved you.”
My eyes welled up, and my throat tightened. I had to clear it before I could speak again. “I’m in this for the long haul. I love him too, and I’ve always loved him.”
“Good,” Brody replied. “Like I said, he’s in stubborn-ass mode right now. Pulling back when he feels like he doesn’t have control is a thing he does.”
I huffed out a laugh. “I’ve noticed.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Brody said. “Tell him to stop being a stubborn ass.”
“Good luck with that.” I smiled then, glad to have him on my side.
And here I was having almost the same conversation with June less than an hour later.
“I just want to take care of him, make things easier,” I told her.
June smirked. “He needs to be needed.”
I started to argue, but she held up her hand, cutting me off. “Believe me, I get how frustrating it is. I’ve known him since he and his mother turned up at the hotel, the bruises on Anna’s face just fading and his skinny arm in a cast.”
My stomach clenched. I’d known his father was a bastard, but not all the details. I wondered if the man was still alive, and if he was, I wanted to find him and scrub him from the face of the planet.
“I think Anna always thought he’d come after them, but he never did.
It was a long time though, before she stopped looking over her shoulder and even longer before Daniel stopped flinching any time someone raised their voice.
He’s never had it easy, and I want that for him, what you’re offering, but he needs to feel like he’s a part of it. ”
“It’s his hotel,” I assured her. “It always was. I want to give him his hotel and make everything right for him.”
Her smile stretched wide, and she pushed open her door. “Well then, you best come inside. Can I get you something cold to drink?”
“Since you have power, I’d give anything for a cup of coffee.”
She laughed, and I followed her into her blessedly cool house.