Page 5 of Everything You Hate
“Fuck me sideways,” the bird squawks.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly.
My expression must give away my feelings on the matter, because Abel laughs. “I promise he’s the best. Knows everything about this island.” He hands me a key card. “Tidewater Resort. Top of the hill. You can’t miss it. It’s the one that looks like a Bond villain’s summer home.”
I take the key. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He glances toward the door, then back at me, and lowers his voice. “Dean’s not wrong, you know. About Uncle Malcolm having an agenda. He always does.”
“I figured.”
“Just—” He hesitates. “The feud’s complicated. People have strong feelings. Dean’s got stronger feelings than most.”
“Why?”
His expressive face shuts down. “Uh, maybe you should ask him.”
“I tried. He grunted at me.”
“That’s his love language.” Abel smiles again, but it’s careful now. “Tour’s at two. Don’t be late or Dean will be even more pissed off than usual.”
I thank him and head for the door, suitcase squeaking behind me. As I reach for the handle, Abel calls after me.
“Hey— the bulldog, Dockside Doug? Heisactually in charge. We all just work here.”
I look back at the dog, still snoozing on his life jacket throne. He’s flipped to his back, all four legs in the air, jowls pooling on the floor under his head. His paws paddle the air like he’s swimming, and every once in a while he lets out a muffled woof.
“Uh huh.” I glance at Abel and the parrot bobbing its head on his shoulder. “Is the parrot in charge, too?”
“Captain? God, no.” He laughs and scratches the bird’s neck. “Captain’s just an asshole.”
“Asshole!” Captain echoes. “Shut it, asshole!”
I laugh and step outside into the salt air, hauling my suitcase toward the road.
The Tidewater Resort sits on the hill above town, all gleaming glass and sharp angles. Below it, six blocks of weathered storefronts. And somewhere between the two: a feud I don’t understand, a treasure hunt nobody believes in, and a ferry captain who looks at me like I am exactly the kind of trouble he’s spent years learning to avoid.
I pull out my phone again—still no signal—and tuck it back into my bag. Right. Off the grid. I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
I start walking.
Chapter Two
Dean
I watch her from the dock, this woman with the snapping blue eyes and the too-bright smile, and I tell myself that I’m not going to think about the way she felt against my chest.
She’d been light. That’s the thing that keeps catching me wrong—she’d been so goddamn light. When I grabbed her, I’d braced for weight, for the solidity you expect from a woman her height, and instead my hands had nearly met around her waist. Like catching something hollow.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like any of it.
I remember the clip of her that went viral a couple years ago. It showed a different woman. Polished, perfect, screaming at a barista over a wrong coffee order until security dragged her out. A morning show host having a public meltdown, the kind of entitled breakdown that makes for good internet content. I remember thinking at the time that she was out of touch with the real world and had no clue what real hardship looked like. But now I can’t reconcile that version of her with the one I just met.Nothing about that woman in the clip suggested she could stand on a dock in salt-stiffened clothes and smile at a stranger who’d just been an asshole to her.
She disappears around the bend in the road, and I exhale a long, slow breath. My jaw aches. I’ve been clenching it since she stepped onto my ferry, and I roll my shoulders to try and loosen the knot between them.
“Fuck me sideways,” Captain announces from the dock piling where he’s perched, feathers ruffled from the morning chill.
