Page 13

Chapter 13

Refitting

Sam

“Are you going to explain any more to me?” I look at the chef. I guess I’m in debt to him. He told me when no one else said a thing, though there have been plenty of weird looks. I wonder if I would have picked up on the way they all seem to touch her if he hadn’t said something.

“Yeah, like I said, I’m not stopping it. I have a relationship with Haley; I’m not ending that because you’re here. Going back to being friends with her isn’t happening. She’s mine.” Dante nods.

“You mean she’s everyone’s.” It makes my stomach flip when I say it.

“So help me, Miller... If you for one damn second think I will allow you to disrespect Haley, you’re going to have to back yourself the fuck up. She’s the best human I’ve ever met. She has feelings for you too. I saw it when I first met the two of you back at port, when you were sitting on that tiny bench, watching Penny.”

“Did you? Then why didn’t you stop her from fucking all of you?”

“Did you put a ring on her finger? Were you going steady?”

I purse my lips.

‘“Exactly. Asking her to go touring with you after the season is over isn’t the same as telling her you’re exclusive. Telling the crew you’re together. Being together. I had a captain a few years back marry his chief stew. It didn’t work out, but that’s because they were both narcissistic a-holes. But it’s done, it’s happened. You could have told Rocky. Hell, Candy would have been thrilled to know that Haley wasn’t trying to dig around in her gold pot. But you didn’t.”

I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Why? Not that it matters now. But why?” Dante tips his chin up at me, and I’m convinced he’s as much of a narcissistic asshole as his old captain. But he’s got a point.

“She’s young.” It’s one of the reasons I’ve told myself over and over again. It’s shit.

He laughs. He does that a lot. “She’s the most mature out of all of us. Including you, fucker.”

I square my shoulders. If we were on board, I’d fire him. I’d have him off my boat so fast his luggage would have to catch up with him.

“I see that look. You’re not my boss on this island. I might be cooking for my family, but that’s because they’re my family. We’re Haley’s. She’s ten times more mature than you.” He’s not wrong.

I feel my eyes burn through him. Jennifer, my ex, used to say something along the same lines―I’m not mature enough―and I fucking hated her for it. Not mature enough to forgive her for fucking around while I was at sea just because she thought I was doing the same when I wasn’t.

I nod at him. What else am I going to do? Hit him?

“Someone had to tell you. Haley’s mortified. Zane and Calvin have some sort of weird hero worship thing with you. And Easton thinks you’re going to be our savior. But you are just as fucking scared as the rest of us. You’re not a savior; you’re another liability. But I fucking love your dog.” He turns back to the dishes.

I’m counting to ten in my head. If I were a decade younger, my knuckles would already be swelling. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from taking a crack at his jaw. I’m more than that now. I was more than that then. I’m trying to see it as they do.

“They tell me you’re great. And maybe you are. But right now, to me, you’re yet another captain. One of my contacts at the yacht crew management company said you’re good to work with. Reasonable. You’re the guy who said yes to my résumé. That’s all you are. And I’m the asshole who laid it all out on the table for you. So let’s start there. We’re on an island, just trying to survive without hurting the girl we love.”

“Love?” It’s like a slap across my face.

“Yeah, I fucking love Haley. I’m not going to tell her. Not now. Doing it now would make me a selfish prick.” Dante glances over his shoulder at the shelter. “If you so much as mention any of this to her... well, that’s your relationship with her. But know that it will crack her open. Break her. Let her not be broken for a little longer. It’s taken a long fucking time to get where we are.”

I nod, but I don’t say I won’t.

“For the record, I know the difference between edible mushrooms, hallucinogenic, and deadly ones. I’m the one who cooks all the food. Do you understand me?”

“That you’re a fucking psychopath and I need to hire a new yacht crew management company?”

“Exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.” He smiles and slaps me across my back. He picks up the dish tub and heads past the fish weir up the path to the treehouse.

I walk back up the beach, slowing at the trap. It’s ingenious. It’s definitely been repaired, adjusted, and redesigned a few times. There are old posts in the sand that aren’t being used and a pile of replacements in the dry sand next to the tree line. I’m examining it like my life counts on it. It helps push the conversation with Dante out of my head.

Damn. Looking at Haley’s picture every day is what got me through being out there alone.

I’m standing there looking at the fish weir when Zane comes walking up. “Heard you and Dante had a little chat.”

I nod. “You could call it that.”

“Right, so Dante’s heart?—”

“He’s fucking nuts.”

“Aye, he is that. But what he said. I mean it too. I’m not going to let you get in the way of what I have with Haley. I mean, I’m absolutely chuffed to bits that you’re alive, but I’m not going to move to the side to let you, well, take her from us.”

It’s a phrase my ex used, and it stands out in my memory. She said her new husband couldn’t have taken her away from me if we’d already had a stable relationship, which at the time I thought was total BS. But now I’m wondering if that’s true on either side of my relationship with Haley. If we’d really had something, would she have started anything with them? And on the other side, could I take her away from them? Would I want to?

What I need to do is stay away from her. I need the crew to help me fix the ship. They deserve a life. The evidence needs to get to the government. And really, the only ones I can tell about the broken motherboard are Calvin and Zane. I know them―they had nothing to do with it. So for now, I need to keep it to myself. Well, between the three of us. I need to keep the peace and stay away from Haley.

Easier said than done. I’ve made her out to be “the one” in my head for weeks. The one. Now she can’t be the one. She can’t be anything. Not when she has four guys drooling over her already. Four guys who glance at her like I do. I’m captivated by her.

Fuck. She’s mesmerizing, and what the psycho said is true―she’s wiser and kinder than anyone I’ve ever met. Then again, I’ve had a long time to think about her. In my head, I’ve aged the relationship far beyond what it is.

Zane has a crude basket in his hands. He takes some of the bigger fish from the weir and tosses them in it. Then he meticulously goes through the trap and throws anything too small or inedible back into the ocean. He turns to me. “Well?”

“What?”

“Everyone wants her.”

“Right.” I chuck a four-inch pink reef fish over the weir fence. “This is good.” I touch one of the posts.

“Lots of things here are good.”

And it hits me. No one has talked about getting the ship seaworthy again. No one but me. I’ve had conversations with Calvin about it, but no one has brought it up without me talking about it first. They’ve mentioned getting clothes, spices, a mattress, but no one has talked about wanting to sail away from this place.

“I need to get back to the ship. Do you want to help me and bring some things back?”

Zane gives me a look I can’t read. “Sure.”

“I can’t leave Penny overnight.”

“Of course.” He tosses the last fish and heads back.

“This beach would be a far better place to keep the inflatable tender, anyway. Having it scrape back and forth over the reef all night wouldn’t do it any good. You mind if you and Calvin come back with me?”

“Sure thing, Cap. You want to go now?”

“Yeah. We’re going to lose light soon enough, and you guys should get back in time to secure the tender.”

“Right. Right. I’ll go get Calvin.” Zane takes the fish basket from my hands, and I spend a few minutes helping a small reef fish find its way back to sea, but it looks stressed. Like me.

The tide will turn soon. It always does.

I look up, and Calvin and Zane are walking down the beach with the others.

I wave. “I’ll see you three tomorrow. Everyone should come for a visit.” I fucking sound like my dad standing at his door for an hour saying goodbye to the neighbors after a football watching party.

Zane gives Easton and Dante fist bumps, then he hugs Haley and kisses her on her cheek. It looks innocent enough.

Then Calvin grabs her and kisses her... and kisses her, and what the fuck? “Later,” he tosses over his shoulder at the other two. “Anything else you want besides the list?”

“No.” Haley waves. She can fucking barely look at me, and it makes my chest clench. I want to lose dinner. And dinner was the best thing I’ve eaten in... well, I’m not sure when I’ve had a better meal. I licked my bowl. I mean, I turned around when I did it, but I fucking licked it.

Calvin pulls the other rope and hops in.

“Captain, how come you hadn’t inflated this before?” Zane cocks his head.

I grit my teeth. It’s embarrassing really. “Honestly, I’ve been so busy trying to fix the boat. The patch is holding. It went through the storm last week without getting torn open again. And I only had enough water for another two months. Getting things working was more important than exploring. I figured if anyone lived on the island, they would find me. I had dreams that when I sailed around the corner I was going to find a modern city and want to slap myself. But then it’s just so rare to not see any light in the ocean. Even when you’re in the Caribbean and think you’re in the middle of nowhere during the day, at night, you can almost always see the lights of a cargo ship. Of course, we can see them on radar too. But here, I’ve seen almost nothing. One night during the storm, I saw lights, but they were so far away. I sent two flares up, but they didn’t see them. Then again, with all the pirates that were reported last season, I don’t blame them for not stopping if they did see. I only thought of this tender a few days ago.” I don’t mention the pirate boat I saw. I want to talk to Calvin about it by himself.

Zane pushes us off and far enough out that I can put the motor down, then jumps in.

It’s choppy getting back out, but we manage. When we get to the cliffs, the wind wants to throw us into the rock wall. But I steer us away.

“Fuck, there she is,” Zane shouts into the wind. “She’s horrible-looking and amazing all at the same time.”

“Indeed.” I pull up to the swim deck. I’ve got one of the inflatable docks tied to the back of the ship. The reef has popped one already, but we have ten of them and some days I’m too tired to pull it in and put it back out again. I use it to float equipment around the sides of the ship to check on the patch.

The way Zane hops out is a thing of beauty, a little slice of normalcy in the way he does it.

“I know we don’t have much time before we lose light, but I want to talk to you about what I’ve found. And this stays between us. Let’s go up to the wheelhouse.”