Page 38 of Pull Me Under

‘Sure you did.’

I bite back a smile, focus on the road, and pretend not to notice how right he looks in my passenger seat. How natural this feels, despite everything. How dangerous that is.

Because this is what I came back for. Not Jude Harding – not a man, not a romance, not some fairy-tale rescue from the loneliness of the last twenty years. A boat. A business. A trade that should have been mine since I was old enough to hold a net. Trelawney Marine Services, reborn in a harbour that tried to forget us.

But Jude Harding helping me is complicated enough. Jude Harding making me laugh is something else entirely.

Something that probably ends with one or both of us getting hurt.

But that’s a problem for future Brynn. Current Brynn has a boat to buy and a Harding to keep in line.

‘Left here,’ he says.

‘That’s a one-way street.’

‘Not if you’re brave enough.’

‘Are you actually trying to get us arrested?’

‘Just testing your commitment to danger.’

‘I’m driving to Plymouth with you. How much more danger do you need?’

He actually smiles then, quick and real before he catches himself. ‘Fair point.’

We find the harbour eventually, park in a space that charges tourist prices even in March. The boat seller’s waiting, and Jude’s right – he does look sketchy. But he also looks nervous when he sees Jude unfold from the Land Rover, all six-foot-two of suspicious fisherman’s son.

‘You brought your boyfriend,’ the seller says.

‘Yeah. No,’ I snap.

Even if I know exactly where he is without looking. The heat off him. The weight of him in my peripheral vision like a tool I haven’t picked up yet but my hands already know the shape of.

The boat, when we see her, is perfect in her imperfection. Weathered hull, salt-scarred wheelhouse, deck that’s seen better decades. But the bones underneath – the frame, the keel, the fundamental architecture of her – are sound. I run my hands along the gunwale, drop to my knees to check the hull plates, lean into the engine compartment and breathe in the familiar cathedral smell of diesel and salt and metal.

This is what I came back for. Not a cottage or a shed or a grudge. This. A boat. A business. A life on the water that should have been mine all along.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I breathe.

‘She’s a disaster,’ Jude says, but he’s running his hand along her hull like he sees it too – what she could be.

‘Exactly,’ I say, and we share a look. Like maybe we recognise broken things because we are them.

Or maybe that’s just the lavender shortbread talking, sweet delusion in a bitter world.

Either way, I’m buying this boat.

And Jude Harding, whether I invited him or not, is going to help me get her home.

Chapter Ten

JUDE

The winch groans as we lower her down, chains clanking against steel. Brynn’s hand brushes mine as she steadies the line – the lightest of touches, nothing more – but I feel it everywhere.

I don’t breathe.

She doesn’t flinch.