Page 1 of Everything You Hate
Chapter One
Scarlett
Welcome to Port Haven.
The sign is faded and salt-worn, creaking on rusted hinges as I step off the ferry.
You can see the whole town from the dock. All six blocks of it, if you squint. A single main street lined with weathered storefronts, a white-steepled church, and a diner with a neon sign that buzzes like a dying insect. Beyond that, dense forest swallows the horizon, and beyond that, the endless gray Pacific.
I hoist my leather messenger bag higher on my shoulder and check my phone.
No signal.
Of course not.
I’m officially off the grid.
I’ve spent the last forty minutes crossing the Puget Sound in a boat that, if you ask me, is too small to be on such a large body of water. I’ve been distracting myself from the wind and the roller coaster waves by trying to get the ferry captain to talk to me, and he’s spent those same forty minutes making very clearhe has no interest in doing so. He’s a man who has made peace with long silences and expects everyone around him to do the same.
But I’ve never been good at silence.
My producer used to joke that I could get a mime to talk, but by the time Port Haven materializes out of the morning fog, I’ve gotten exactly nothing useful. No name. No opinion on the treasure hunt. No comment on the Merricks or the Havens. But there’s one moment, when I ask directly about the feud between the two founding families, where annoyance flares hot behind his eyes before he turns back to the wheel.
I’ve hit a nerve.
Interesting.
Now he’s doing whatever boat captains do when they dock, and I take a second to appreciate the view. The man may have the verbal skills of a brick wall, but he looks damn good working with those ropes. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a weathered Carhartt jacket over a faded Henley, work boots that have seen actual work, and stubble that isn’t carefully cultivated but exists simply because he can’t be bothered to shave. Dark hair that curls slightly where it’s too long around his backward baseball cap. A scar cut through one eyebrow.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say, flashing my most charming smile. “Any chance I can buy you a drink later? Get the real Port Haven story?”
He doesn’t even look at me. Just grunts and points toward the ramp.
Oookay. Message received.
I turn, and my heel catches between the planks. My suitcase wheel catches at the same time, and the handle rips out of my hand, the whole thing toppling off the edge of the dock, pulling me with it. I pitch forward, arms pinwheeling, already bracing for the cold of the water?—
Big hands clamp around my waist, and suddenly I’m falling backward instead of forward. I collide with a solid wall of chest.
The captain.
His body is warm and his arms are steady, and it feels so good to have arms around me that for one stupid, breathless second I just stand there and let a man who hasn’t said more than ten words hold me upright.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, his breath warm against my ear. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
I twist in his grip to face him, suddenly aware of how close we are. He’s younger than I’d thought—maybe mid-thirties—with eyes the color of storm clouds. The scar through his eyebrow is more jagged than it looked from a distance.
“Just trying to make an impression,” I say, my voice steadier than my pulse. “Is it working?”
He releases me like I’ve burned him. “Your suitcase is in the water.”
I glance down. My leather messenger bag has landed on the dock, but my Prada suitcase bobs in the gray water below like a very expensive buoy.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect start.
“Well.” I smile, because smiling is what I do when things go wrong. It’s reflex by this point, muscle memory from five years on camera. “At least it’s waterproof. I think.”
The captain glowers at my suitcase, then at me, then looks back at the suitcase with the resigned expression of a man who has absolutely not signed up for this shit today. He sets his jaw. The muscle in his cheek jumps.
