Page 24 of Island Girl

“Don't make the same mistake I did,” she'd whispered to him once, near the end. “Don't let someone else's idea of success become your prison.”

After she died, he couldn't stay. Couldn't pretend anymore. He'd quit his job, broken up with Kira, and driven south until he ran out of road. Crocker had been waiting for him, like he'd known Justin was coming.

Maybe he had.

Justin started the truck but didn't put it in gear. He sat there, thinking about Merritt.

He'd overheard her talking to her father on the phone a few days ago. She'd been on the deck during her break, laughingabout something, her voice warm and easy. “I miss you too, Dad,” she'd said. “I'll send more pictures, I promise.”

There was no tension in it. No weight. Just love, simple and uncomplicated.

He'd felt something twist in his chest, listening to that. Envy, maybe. Or longing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd talked to his father like that. The last time they'd just been easy with each other, without the expectations and the disappointments getting in the way.

Maybe it was too late for that. Maybe too much had been said, too many choices made. Glen had never understood why Justin left, and Justin had never been able to explain it in a way that made sense to a man who measured success in dollars and titles.

But sitting here now, watching his grandfather talk to a woman who'd been dead for twelve years, Justin wondered if it had to be that way. Crocker and June had loved each other fiercely, openly, until the very end. His mother had never had that with Glen. She'd had compromise and obligation and a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

Justin didn't want that. He wanted what Crocker had. What Merritt seemed to have with her father. Something real, even when it was hard.

He thought about calling Glen. Picking up the phone and saying…what? “Hey, Dad. I know you think I threw my life away, but I'm actually happy for the first time in years. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but I wanted you to know.”

He could imagine Glen's response. The long silence. The carefully controlled voice. “I just want what's best for you, Justin.” Which really meant “I want you to be what I think is best.”

Justin put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot.

Not tonight. He wasn't ready for that conversation. Maybe he never would be.

But as he drove to his small rental cottage a few blocks away, he made himself a promise. Whatever happened, however his lifeunfolded, he wouldn't become his father. He wouldn't let fear and expectation turn him into someone who couldn't say I love you without attaching conditions to it.

He thought about Merritt again. The way she laughed on the phone with her dad. The way she talked about him, the pride in her voice when she mentioned his books, his work, his love of birds.

She was lucky. She probably didn't even know how lucky.

Justin parked in front of his cottage and sat in the dark for a moment, listening to the night sounds. Frogs and crickets and the distant murmur of the Gulf.

Tomorrow, he'd go back to work. He'd pour drinks and tell stories and keep an eye on Merritt and Ray and whatever was brewing there. He'd talk to his grandfather, avoid thinking about his father, and try to figure out who he was supposed to be. He accepted the reality that these were the only things he had any control over, and that would have to do for now.

CHAPTER 8

Justin made the call on Tuesday morning, before the bar opened.

He sat on the small porch of his cottage, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. The sun was already warm, the air thick with the smell of jasmine from the neighbor's yard. He'd been thinking about it all night, turning it over in his mind, trying to decide if he was overreacting.

He wasn't. He knew he wasn't.

The thing with Ray had been stable for two years. Two years of the same routine. Ray came in around eight, sat in his corner, nursed his Jameson, and left around ten. He didn't talk to anyone. He didn't cause trouble. He was as predictable as the tide.

But Justin had heard the stories.

Paula had told him some of it, back when Ray first started coming to Shorebirds. How Ray had been different before his time in the military. Funny, charming, the kind of guy who lit up a room. How he'd come back from his second tour changed. Quieter. Angrier. How he'd tried to hold it together for a while, for his wife and daughter, but something inside him had broken.

There had been incidents. A bar fight in Fort Myers, backwhen Ray was still drinking heavily. Another one at a VFW hall, where he'd put a man in the hospital. Paula hadn't gone into details, but her voice had gone tight when she talked about it.

“He's not dangerous,” she'd said. “Not really. But when he's triggered, when something sets him off, he doesn't know how to stop. The anger just takes over.”

That was three years ago. Ray had gotten help after that, or at least he'd tried. He'd seen a therapist for a while and cut back on the drinking. He wasn't the same man he'd been in those dark days. But Paula had made Justin promise anyway.

“If anything ever changes,” she'd said. “If he starts drinking more, or if someone pushes him too hard. Call me. I need to know.”