Page 59 of Everything You Hate
I drive away with Evangeline’s journal in the passenger seat and Colter’s wave in the rearview and the certain knowledge that I have just become Bodhi Haven’s least worst option.
Not trusted. Not wanted. Just safer than the alternative.
The road back to town is empty. No tourists. No metal detectors. Just gravel and trees and the water to my right, blue and indifferent, and somewhere out there, a boat, and a man on it who can’t protect everyone but tried to protect himself from me, and failed.
Chapter Sixteen
Dean
Bodhi doesn’t ask. Bodhi doesn’t negotiate. Bodhi texts me a time, a dock, and the words “be there or I sell the boat,” and then he stops answering his phone.
I stare at the screen. Doug snores from his nest of life jackets. Captain mutters something obscene and goes back to preening.
“He can’t sell the boat,” I tell them. “The boat’s registered to me.”
Captain squawks, “Abort! Abort! Abort!”
I scowl at him. He fluffs up like he’s won something.
“Nobody asked you.”
I’m at the dock at eight. The Rosen charter slot is still empty, the weather’s holding, and if I’m going to be miserable I might as well be miserable on the water. That’s the story I’m telling myself at seven-forty when I’m already fueled and rigged and watching the road for her car.
She shows up at eight-fifteen with a backpack, the journal, and the same boots she’s worn every day since she fell in the harbor. Her hair’s pulled back. No makeup. Dark circles underher eyes that match mine, which means she’s been up reading that damn diary again.
I look at her too long. I know I’m doing it while I’m doing it.
We don’t say hello.
I hand her a life jacket. “Put this on.”
“I know how to put on a life jacket.”
“Good. Do it anyway.” I check the fuel. Check the bilge. Check the weather on my phone for the third time this morning. NOAA says clear until evening. Wind seven to ten. Visibility good. Standard April day on the sound, which means absolutely nothing because the sound does what it wants and NOAA is guessing.
The chop’s already running outside the breakwater. Two feet, maybe. Enough.
“You get seasick,” I say.
“I didn’t throw up.”
“You would’ve if I hadn’t given you that ginger chew.”
She digs into the side pocket of the backpack and holds up a blister pack, two tablets already gone. “Took these at seven. There’s a second dose in here, more ginger chews, and those wristband things my old publicist swears by.” She zips the pocket. “So don’t use it as an excuse to leave me on the dock.”
“Didn’t say I would.”
“You were thinking about it.”
Iwasthinking about it.
She clips the jacket and stands at the edge of the dock, waiting.
“Last chance to have Corey Merrick take you,” I warn.
“Nope. It’s you or nobody.”
“Why?”
