Page 10

Chapter 10

Territorial Waters

Calvin

“Pass me that board, Easton.” I hold out my hand.

“Here,” He says. It’s a green-stained one. The way they are fitting together makes it look like one of those bougie designs where everything doesn’t match, so it looks good. Then again, Zane spent the last hour laying the boards out where he wanted them. For a guy who’s never done this before, he’s good at it.

“Glad you could do that without shooting off by mistake,” I say taking the board.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to fire the flare gun. I was trying to get the flashlight to turn off.” Easton glares at me.

Right, he’s told us twice. Whatever. It happened. At least he didn’t set the Rock Candy on fire.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again? Captain’s coming, and we can head back to the ship.” Easton crawls to the next position.

I stop and focus on Zane. He’s marking and measuring another board. We’re almost done. Though if the captain brings the toolkit, we’ll have a saw. A real one. Or at least a sharper one. The one we have from the derelict trunk is good, but dull.

And suddenly I can’t remember if we’ve told him what a piece of shit the Rock Candy was before we left port. Anders spent most of the repositioning cruise trying to fix the problem with the electrical, and that was before the issue with the stabilizers hit. I can’t even begin to understand why we had a complete system failure. Why did the power stop working and the engines shut down? It’s kept me awake at night, as I comb through everything I remember. And because I don’t forget much, it’s haunting me. Day and night, when I’m not moving. Before the Rock Candy showed up on our island, I was getting close to pushing it out. But not now. Now, it’s at the forefront, which is why I’m not with Haley and Dante. They’re sitting on the beach waiting for the captain whenever he shows up.

“Fixing the ship isn’t going to be easy. There’s no unplugging it and plugging it back in. It’s going to need an overhaul. We can’t take it back out in the open seas, not with the issues we were having. Not to mention it sat for a long time with systems off. Things that worked when the engines shut down aren’t going to work now. That’s fucking nuts. The captain has been on board now for a long time. With us all on board, we’d run out of water in a week. What’s troubling is that repairs aren’t going to take a week. More like months, if we’re lucky. If we have the parts. If I can figure out how to do it. So we need a place to sleep. That hasn’t changed.” I grit my teeth, because the need for sleep hasn’t changed, but with the captain showing up, we haven’t talked about how things are going to go. It’s like we’re all super excited to see him, but we also want him to go away. Which is fucking twisted. Sam is my friend. And I’m sure as fuck glad he’s alive. But yeah, I saw the way he used to look at Haley when he thought no one was looking. The same way I did. We’re all assholes.

“Okay, okay, that’s logical. Why?” Easton’s eyebrow cocks up.

“Excuse me?” I push the next board in and glare at Easton. I take a straightened nail out of the tin can from the wreck. Two swings of the hammer and the board is in place.

“I mean, why was the Rock Candy so broken?” He takes the hammer and straightens a nail out, then hands the hammer and nail to me.

Right.

Zane cuts me off. “Your dad pushed Sam to leave before we were ready to go. He paid the factory off to rush the finish-work. And by finish-work I’m not talking about installing the damn horse statues. We were unboxing the interior as you came on board. Checking systems too. That’s not fucking normal.”

Easton turns to me. “Was that so hard?”

“No. Give me that board.” I point to the one sitting next to Easton’s foot. He passes it over. I hold it up, mark it, and hand it back to Zane. He cuts it and gives it back. Nail, swing. Nail, swing. I’m not picturing anyone’s face when the head hits the nail. Okay maybe Sam’s a little. I’m thrilled we have the ship back. But Sam isn’t getting Haley back.

“I think we can sleep in here tonight.” Zane stands in the middle of the platform. He’s right. It’s almost done. We should have another layer of boards to bring it up higher to where we have the plastic from the raft cut. It’s rolled up now like a shade. In the rainy season, we’ll drop it. We can put the other boards up later. Do I think we’re getting off the island alive now? Maybe fifty percent.

Fifty percent.

“I’m going to move the sleeping stuff up here.” Zane hustles off to the living platform. I catch Easton’s eyes and hold them for a minute. He nods. Yeah, Zane is moving around like he’s getting ready for inspection. But Easton gets it. This is not going to be good. Not at all. Sam is not going to understand the way we’ve been living. Fuck, it feels so normal to me now. But...

“Is he going to make a big deal of this?”

I know he’s talking about Haley, not the shelter. “His ex-wife cheated on him. So what do you think?”

“They weren’t together. That’s what I was told.” Easton means Haley.

“No, but you spend that many weeks alone at sea and you make up stories in your head.” I would have used the image of her to whack off, make it through another night, the next hour. Yeah, no way this is going to go down well. “It’s going to be a fucking shit show.” I say under my breath.

Zane moves around me, setting up the cushion. It’s a while before he says anything. “Damn, you think he’ll really bring things?” He’s so fucking positive he’s brushed everything I’ve said about this being a ticking time bomb off.

“Dante gave him a long list,” Easton says.

“Right.” Zane leaves to grab more stuff while Easton and I clean up the tools. When he comes back, he arranges the cushions and puts things in the cubbies he’s made along the back wall.

“It looks good, Zane.” I nod at him. We’ve worked really hard to get things done.

“Thanks. I... I was a lot.” Zane stumbles over his words.

“Yes. You were an ass. But your design is solid.” I smirk.

He glances up the map tree to where we’d planned to build a lookout tower. “Thanks.”

“Have you ever thought of being a designer?” Easton’s got a woven little hand broom that Haley made and is pushing sawdust off the platform.

“Maybe?” Zane shrugs.

There’s more there. I know he was saving for a boat of his own. But I might be wrong. We all stand and look at the platform. It looks fucking good for a bunch of reclaimed wood. Some of the derelict’s panels had carvings on them, and Zane has incorporated them. With some of those twinkly lights my mom used to scatter around the backyard screen porch, this place would look almost magical. There’s nothing left to do. We head down.

Dante’s got the fixings for dinner, some crabmeat and a bunch of small white fish from this morning’s tide. We’ve got a few hours before the next tide cycle when we’ll need to toss anything we don’t need and set aside the things we want to keep.

“I guess we should go down and wait with Haley and Dante.” Easton’s got his arms crossed like we’re going to the DMV on the last day of the month.

“Come on. I’m excited to see him. And, well, clothes that don’t smell like shit.” Zane nods, grabbing a pomelo from the basket.

“Hey.” Haley jumps up from a log on the beach. “How’s it going?”

Zane sits on the log next to Haley. He puts his arm around her. “Great.”

“The platform looks good.” Easton adds. Then we stare at the ocean watching the waves. No one’s talking about Sam coming. What are we going to do?

Easton clears his throat. “We’re going to need to tell him.” His face is void of emotion. The asshole really is meant for a corporate boardroom.

“Right. Sure. But how?” Zane looks around the circle.

“Hey cap, just so you know, we’re all fucking. And I’m not planning on stopping. That should work.” Dante shrugs.

“Dante!” She purses her lips at him. “We do have to tell him. Or rather, I have to tell him. It will be better coming from me.” She nods like that’s the decision.

“No, it won’t.” I shake my head. “I don’t want him coming at you.”

“He’s not going to come at me. What does that even mean?”

“He’s a man, Haley. We’re not great at not being possessive.” I take a step toward her. My heart thumps as I do. I’ve done hard things in my life, walking away from my brother and my ex. Then coming home for Christmas and not pounding him into the ground for my mother’s sake. Working for assholes who think they know what’s wrong with an engine when they have no clue. Heck, finishing my bachelor’s degree when all I wanted to do was explore the world. But this? This is fucking tough. The thought of losing her to Sam? Sam, who most definitely is a better man than me. How the hell do I fight that? Because I can absolutely guarantee there’s no way he’s going to get with the program and want to share Haley. He’s going to make her choose. And I’m going to have to not fucking punch him.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Then how do you explain... us?” She waves her hand around the circle. “Because you all seem to be able to—” She can’t even say the word. Share.

“Having some of you was better than never having anything.” Easton folds his arms over his chest. And Rockwell has never said anything more true. Then again, he’s leaving at the beginning of things. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was convinced we were never getting off this rock. But I wouldn’t stop now. Even if I could. I’ll do anything for this woman. She doesn’t realize how in control she is, even with the amount of testosterone pulsing through the air. It doesn’t matter; she’s the boss.

Over the top of Haley, I see something on the horizon: it’s small to start with, but with each minute, it’s getting bigger. Sam. Pirates wouldn’t be in something so small. “There he is.” I point. And for the next ten minutes, we watch. The waves are big, crashing around the inflated hull of the tender. It’s the smaller of the tenders. The one we would use to take Penny to the beach to do her business or run into port quickly to grab a case of champagne. Fucking rich people. I glance at Easton. He’s not as bad as I thought. Still don’t want to hang around them.

“Is Penny with him?” Haley stands next to me. Her hand is on Zane’s back and her head on my arm. This is the last minute for us. The last minute before we’re broken apart. I glance down at her. She’s watching him come. And all I do is watch her watching him. My throat swells shut. I can’t breathe. It’s like the devil from all my dreams is driving toward me. Promising all the things we wanted. All the things we miss. And I’m going to have to pay for it by losing her. I can’t think. I can’t hear the waves. It’s like the one time in high school when I was knocked unconscious on the football field. When the fucking Waterfield defensive lineman put his elbow inside my helmet and clocked my chin and I was knocked out cold. When I came to, I decided I was done with football and I was going to get out of my hometown no matter what.

Fuck it.

I’ve got two choices: pretend I don’t give a fuck or tell her the truth. I whip her around, turning her to me. I hold on to her shoulders and dip my head. My voice, though, I don’t dip. “I fucking love you.” I want to kiss her shocked face, but that’s a bit too much like pissing on my territory—even for me. So I spin her back to the incoming inflatable.

Sam’s got a Rock Candy hat on. I fucking want a hat.