Page 92 of Everything You Hate
Loving Dean means wanting something I cannot control. It means opening a door I welded shut eighteen months ago, when the diagnosis landed, and I decided, with the cold clarity of absolute terror, that I would never again put myself in a position to lose something I couldn’t survive losing. I rebuilt my life around that principle. Work I could walk away from. Connections that ended at a professional handshake. A smile that kept everyone at exactly the distance I needed them.
Then I came to Port Haven and met a man who saw through the smile on day one, and now I am sitting in the dark beside him with my heart beating too fast and the knowledge that I am already in too deep to walk away without getting hurt.
The thought should terrify me.
It does terrify me.
It also, inexplicably, feels like coming home.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Scarlett
Shea’s kitchen smells like cinnamon and strong coffee. She stands at the counter in yoga pants and a Haven Bed and Breakfast hoodie, slicing apples like she’s organizing them. Dean sits at the table with a mug between his palms, staring at the wall like it might have answers written on it.
“Good morning,” Shea says without looking up. “There’s toast. Dean burned the first batch, so I took over.”
“I didn’t burn it. It was crispy.”
“It was charcoal.” She slides a plate toward me, the toast golden-brown with butter melting into the crevices. “Eat. Chief sounded impatient.”
I take it and sit across from Dean. He doesn’t look at me. His thumb traces the rim of his mug, around and around. The table isn’t wide, but this morning it might as well be a harbor.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine.” He swallows a mouthful of coffee. “They’ve got footage from three angles. He climbed the east balcony aroundtwelve-fifteen, stood there maybe thirty seconds, climbed back down. Clear as day. No question who it is.”
“Who?”
“Curt Malloy.”
It’s not who I expected. At. All. “Why would he?—”
“Because he’s an asshole.” Dean sets his mug down hard enough to slosh coffee onto the table. “I fired him a year ago for showing up drunk. He never got over it. Been a thorn in my side ever since.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Sorry. Not your fault.”
“It’s a little my fault. I’m the one who brought the treasure hunters.”
“Yeah, well.” He looks at me then, and the anger isn’t for me—it’s for Curt, for the balcony, for the fact that someone scared me and he couldn’t stop it. “Doesn’t give him the right to climb up your fucking wall in the middle of the night.”
Shea clears her throat. “Language. And you both need to go. Chief said he’d be there by nine.”
The station sits at the end of Harbor Street, a squat brick building with a flag out front and a single cruiser parked at an angle in the lot. Dean pulls in beside it, kills the engine, and sits for a second with his hands still on the wheel before he says anything.
“Stay close to me in there.”
“It’s a police station, Dean. I think I’m safe.”
“Humor me. Until we know this is done.”
The light through the windshield sharpens his profile, jaw set and eyes already tracking the door, and I understand that the Coast Guard never really left him—he holds himself like a man who maps the exits of a room before he needs them. “I’ll stay close,” I say, and he nods and gets out.
Inside, the station is smaller than my apartment. One main room with three desks, a coffee maker that looks older than me, and a corkboard layered with flyers for the harvest festival and a missing cat. A hallway runs to the back, where I can see the edge of a holding cell and a man slumped on the bench inside it.
The chief comes out from behind the far desk to meet us. He’s younger than I expected for the job—early forties, maybe, with the kind of build that says he still works with his hands when the paperwork lets him. Dark hair going gray at the sides. He shakes Dean’s hand first.
“Kinsella.”
“Jake.” Dean’s shoulders come down half an inch. “Thanks for the call.”
