Page 79 of Pull Me Under

Chapter Eighteen

BRYNN

Sunday morning in Sea Salt Bay has its own rhythm.

The harbour empties out like someone’s pulled a plug – fishing boats tied up, engines silent, the usual chaos of nets and crates and shouting replaced by a silence almost close to peaceful. Reset day, Grandad used to call it. The day the sea gives us back to ourselves.

I’ve been in the shed since seven, taking advantage of the quiet. The trawler sits on her blocks, engine spread across the deck in pieces that would look like chaos to anyone else but make perfect sense to me. Fuel injectors. Cooling system housing. The guts of a boat that’s seen better days but isn’t dead yet.

Neither am I, despite my best efforts.

Friday night keeps replaying. Reuben’s face, twisted with an emotion deeper than hate. My own voice, shaking: My father is DEAD because of your family. And Jude afterwards, on the harbour, looking at me like I was fragile and breakable, which I’m not, but in the moment made me feel as stretched and as brittle as blown glass.

I shouldn’t have said any of it. Should have kept my mouth shut, my head down, my secrets where they belong.

But God, it felt good to finally throw the weight of it at someone who might actually deserve to carry some.

Even if that someone isn’t Jude.

I’m elbow-deep in the fuel system when footsteps echo on the harbour stones outside. I don’t look up. Probably Bill, checking his boat. One of the weekend sailors come to admire their neglected toys.

‘Thought you might need this.’

Jude’s voice. Of course it’s Jude’s voice.

I look up. He’s standing at the shed entrance, two takeaway cups in one hand and a paper bag in the other. The morning light behind him catches the angles of his face, and he looks almost soft. Uncertain. Nothing like the scowling fisherman I’ve come to expect.

‘Coffee,’ he says, lifting the cups. ‘And whatever pastry Nina shoved in the bag. She said you hadn’t been in yet today.’

‘Checking up on me?’

‘Bringing you breakfast. There’s a difference.’

I wipe my hands on a rag and climb down from the deck, trying to ignore the way my heart has picked up. ‘And what do you want in return?’

‘Nothing.’ He holds out the coffee. ‘Call it a peace offering. After Friday.’

I take the cup. Our fingers brush, and I pretend I don’t notice.

‘Your father’s the one who should be offering peace.’

‘Yeah, well. Dad’s not great at apologies. Or peace. Or basic human interaction, really.’ He sets the bag on a crate, shoves his hands in his pockets, and his gaze drifts past me to the trawler’s stern. He stops.

‘You’ve named her.’

I follow his eyes to where I spent yesterday evening with a pot of marine paint and a steady hand. Betty. Dark blue letters on weathered wood. Not fancy. Not gold leaf. Just a name.

‘Betty,’ he reads, and I can hear the grin forming before I see it. ‘You’re naming a trawler … Betty.’

‘Problem?’

‘It’s a bit granny, isn’t it? Betty. Like she should be knitting in a rocking chair, not hauling nets.’

‘Betty was my great-grandmother. She crewed her husband’s trawler out of Mevagissey for thirty years, and when he died, she ran it herself for another ten. She was seventy-two when she finally came ashore, and that was only because the boat sank under her.’ I wipe my hands on the rag. ‘So yes. Betty. Like a granny who could outfish every man in this harbour.’

Jude stares at me for a beat. Then: ‘Fair enough. Betty it is.’

‘You’re damn right Betty it is.’