Sweet Cherry Cove: The Complete Series

Cocoa

Days turn into weeks, and I slot way too easily into the harbor master’s life. It’s like there’s a Cocoa-shaped hole in his cottage and his routine, and if we’ve stopped trying so hard to jog my memory, if we’re relaxing into this new status quo… well, I won’t be the one to complain.

No one in Sweet Cherry Cove and the surrounding towns recognizes me. No sights or sounds or smells have shocked my memory back. We’ve put up posters, and had check ups with Dr Nahum. Mac even tried hypnotizing me one night, following along with a YouTube tutorial to get my memory back. The blaring ad for take out delivery shocked us out of it.

And… nothing. Nada. But you know the worst part?

I’m not sure that I care.

Wherever home is, it can’t be better than this. I’m like a stray cat who lucked into a mansion, suddenly pampered with a velvet cushion and as many cuddles as I could want. Would it be so terrible if I stayed?

“Hey, sailor.”

Mac glances up from where he’s coiling a thick rope on the jetty. He doesn’t smile when he sees me—this man’s face is set in stone—but his eyes soften at the corners. Biceps flex as he works. Maybe he likes it when I bother him at work after all.

The sea is flat as a mirror, the boats ghostly still beneath the pale sky. Out from the marina, a seal head bobs, watching us. It’s a sticky-hot day.

Mac wipes an arm over his forehead. “Did you get bored in the diner?”

Yup. And lonely. Sweet Cherry Cove is a cute seaside town, but knowing that Mac is nearby and not going to him drives me crazy. Was I this needy in my previous life? Or is it all down to the harbor master?

His blue plaid shirt is rolled to the elbows, and his forearms are corded with muscle, dusted with dark hair. Later, when it gets too hot to bear, he’ll strip down to his undershirt. So if I’m antsy, who can blame me?

“I missed you.”

Mac blinks. He’s always shocked when I say stuff like that, always taken aback. As though I don’t trail after him around town like a puppy, with cartoon love hearts in my eyes. As though I don’t spend every night clinging to the wooden frame of his single guest bed, holding on by my fingernails so I don’t sprint through the cottage and burst into his bedroom.

Would he mind?

Would he send me away?

Or would he flip back the covers and shift over, making room by his side?

Do his sheets smell like peppermint? His skin does sometimes. I think it’s his soap.

“I’m, uh.” Mac clears his throat, watching me from the corner of his eye as he goes back to coiling the rope. A line of sweat trickles down his throat, and god, what I’d give to lick it off. “I’m nearly done here.”

Alrighty. It’s not like I came to hurry him along—Mac can work for hours more for all I care. So long as I can be near him, it’s all good. Kicking off my flip flops, I stroll across the bleached wooden boards and sit on the jetty’s edge.

“Careful,” Mac says. He doesn’t like seeing me near the water. Something about finding me half-drowned, I guess.

Weird that he’s more freaked out by that than I am. Am I in denial? Or is Mac a worry wart?

The cool water rushes around my toes, heels and ankles, until I’m dangling mid-calf in the marina, peering at the green puffs of seaweed far below. My left knee is stiff, same as most days.

How did I injure it? What did I do for a job before?

“Cocoa,” Mac warns.

I shift closer to the edge, grinning.

“Cocoa.”

What? I can swim—we tested that theory last week, with Mac hovering so near me in the waves that every surge knocked me against his bare chest. The whole time, he couldn’t speak for anxiety; meanwhile, I was so turned on, every time I squeezed my thighs together, I whimpered. It was awesome.

Besides, the water’s stiller than a painting today. Tiny, silvery fish flash past the nearest boat. I kick my feet slowly, trying not to spook them.

“This,” two big hands grip my waist, lifting me away from the edge and setting my ass back down, “is bullshit. Stop freaking me out.”

The water sloshes around my ankles. My heart hammers against my ribs long after his hands leave my body, and two warm patches burn through my vest top.

Jeez.

I’m breathless, lightheaded on the dock, and all Mac did was drag my ass back a few inches. The wood creaks behind me as he goes back to work, coiling that damn rope. I’d stretch out long and let him coil me too if it meant he touched me again.

“I can swim,” I say.

Can I? I’m so winded, I can barely breathe.

His hands were so big, so rough, so perfect.

“Still,” Mac says, like that’s the whole argument. Like that explains everything. Like we never need to acknowledge how protective he is, how growly and possessive whenever we walk into town, or the hungry way he watches me sometimes—late at night in his cottage, a movie playing on the TV screen, both our eyes’ fixed on each other, chests heaving in the blue light.

We’ve been dancing around this for weeks now. And it’s always me pushing, always me sitting on his lap or scratching his beard or bumping him with my hip as we walk side by side. Always me initiating the quick bursts of contact, even if he’s greedy for them once they happen.

He’s interested. I know he is, because Mac might be a big, repressed statue, but that bulge he gets in his jeans does not lie. Damn nobility.

Will he ever kiss me? Will he ever make a move?

Or will I die of longing before then?

I push to my feet, droplets speckling the boards.

“What are you doing?” The rope is still in Mac’s hands as I peel my vest top off—purple cotton, bought from one of the only clothing stores in town. Mr Grumpy here said it brought out my eyes.

“Cooling off.”

My denim shorts are next to go, the button popped, the zip crackling down. They pool around my ankles, and I kick them off.

To strip or not to strip? If it were night time, or if this were a private cove, I’d peel my underwear off too and be damned. Anything to tempt the harbor master. But since this is a public marina and Mac already looks ready to burst a vein, I shake out my arms and step to the edge in nothing but my white cotton bra and panties.

“Cocoa—”

Splash.

Bubbles rush past my face, and cool salt water probes between the strands of my hair. I’m wide awake, zinging with a sudden rush of energy, and when I laugh underwater, the sound is warbly. A giant laugh-bubble rushes to the surface.

An arm plunges in after me, plaid sleeve soaked to Mac’s skin. He snatches for me, and I nip his fingertips, then swim away. If he wants me, he’ll have to catch me first.

When I break the surface between two boats, I splutter and cackle.

Back on the jetty, Mac shakes out his soaking arm, not amused. “Get back here.”

I try to splash him, but only soak his feet. “Make me.”

“Cocoa, I swear to god—”

“What will you do?” My lips are salty, and my cheeks ache from grinning. Everything has been so serious, so scary, so unsettled lately, and messing with the harbor master is my favorite pastime in the world. It makes me feel lighter than air. “How will you punish me, Mac? Put me over your knee?”

My rescuer pinches the bridge of his nose. His chest heaves as he draws in a deep breath, and he can pull the long-suffering act if he likes, but he’s not fooling me. I see that bulge. He likes this game too.

Bet my white undies have gone see-through. Time to find out. I splash my way back to the jetty, brace on the wooden edge, and kick my feet hard to launch out of the water—

Thunder.

Darkness.

The memory hits me like a slap, sends me reeling backward, and I’d topple back into the water if Mac weren’t lifting me up. He sets me on my feet, then grips me harder when I sway.

“Cocoa?”

The ocean was freezing that night, and so rough. There were no stars. By the time I fought my way into the marina, my limbs felt like lead, and my voice was hoarse from screaming for help—

“Cocoa.” Big hands brush my hair back and tilt my chin up. They trace my jaw. I swallow hard, staring into gray, worried eyes.

I’m back…

I’m back in the moment. Back in my body.

My soaked, basically naked body. With a gulp, I glance down at my bra. Two rosy nipples shadow the fabric, beaded from the cool water. It doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

Mac follows my gaze, then goes still. His hand is on my neck; the other on my shoulder. His tongue flits out, wetting his bottom lip. “Are you alright?”

He sounds wrecked.

Dragging his eyes back up to mine seems to cause him pain.

“Yeah.” Though a minute ago I wanted nothing more than to tease him, now I just want a hug. And here’s the proof that Bill ‘Mac’ McLaggen is a good man, because he senses the change in my mood, despite my soaked, see-through underwear, and when he pulls me against him, it’s with nothing but care.

“Did you remember something?” He cups the back of my head, rocking me from side to side. The lie’s out before I can stop it.

“No.”

Because maybe it makes me a coward, maybe I’m a liar and a fool, but… getting my memory back means leaving Mac. It means going back to my real life, and leaving the harbor master’s cottage. Losing the safe, warm feeling I have around this man.

For weeks I’ve wanted my memory back.

Now I’ve never feared anything more.

* * *

My real life comes back in fits and starts. In a burst of old laughter, carried on the breeze as we walk the beach path home, my damp underwear leaving shadows on my clothes. In the voices of people who aren’t here as I scrub myself clean in the shower, people whose faces I can’t quite picture. Not yet.

Images flit behind my eyes, peppering me like shrapnel as I help Mac chop veggies for a stir fry dinner.

A beat up camper van.

Bowls of bean chili, served steaming hot from a huge vat.

Stage lights.

“You okay, Cocoa?” He watches me like a hawk, still so worried after my ‘turn’ in the marina, but I don’t tell him about the pieces of my memory coming back. Don’t tell him these clues, because once I do, we’ll be hurtling toward the finish line.

Will he be glad to see me go? Relieved to have his solitude back?

Or will his heart break, just like mine?

“Hey.” Mac’s hands grip my shoulders, steadying me on his kitchen tiles. His left hand smells like chopped onion, and oil hisses in the pan. “Cocoa. Anyone home?”

Oh, I’m home alright. This cottage by the sea, with the stoic harbor master—this is home.

And I’m about to be evicted.

The kiss is desperate. My last stand. Mac grunts with surprise as I rock up onto my tip toes, flinging my arms around his neck. I kiss him hard, the kitchen spinning around us.

His mouth is bristly, but his lips are soft behind the beard—and when he groans and surrenders, when he holds me tight and kisses me back, my heart shudders and cracks.

I wasn’t sure. Not one hundred percent certain. Even after all the lingering glances and the shy, stolen touches, even after seeing that freaking bulge, I wasn’t sure he wanted this too.

But now Mac’s labored breaths fill the kitchen, and when he shoves me against the counter, he forgets to be gentle. He’s too wound up, too overcome. He curses and twists the stove off.

“Mac.”

His tongue pushes into my mouth—my new favorite way for him to shut me up. I moan and suck on it, clinging to his shirt like a harsh wind might whip me away.

He’s got me pinned, his muscled bulk pressing me against the counter. I feel him everywhere—his heart thudding beneath his clothes, the rigid length trapped in his jeans, his strained breaths, the fingers twisting in my hair until my scalp stings.

Everywhere.

And I’ve been a ghost of myself—maybe for the last few weeks, more likely for my whole life—but I’m solid now. I’m a bundle of raw nerves.

My hair will smell like onion, I think dimly.

Don’t care. If it means I walk away from this with proof that this kiss is real, not just another fever dream, I don’t mind at all. Mac can smear my chest with raw garlic paste for all I care.

A denim-clad thigh presses between my legs. My feet shuffle wider apart, and my moans turn hoarse.

Need him harder, need his hands, need bare skin. Right now.

Need his teeth on my nipple.

Need the harbor master inside me.

“Slow… slow down.” Mac tears his mouth away, lips slick and eyes wild. His whole body is taut, vibrating with tension, and even as he speaks, his hips rock me against the counter. “We need to slow this down. It’s too much, too soon.”

Too much?

Too soon?

Hard disagree.

“Please,” I beg, fumbling with his shirt buttons. Because what if we don’t get another chance? What if my memory comes all the way back and Mac finds out and then it’s goodbye, Cocoa? What if this is all I’ll ever get? “Please, I’ll be good. I’ll be so good for you.”

Please let me make you love me.

Mac frowns, and I know then that I’ve said the wrong thing. He steps back, the wall of heat leaving my body, and I’m left slumped and shivering against the counter. The kitchen clock ticks on the wall, suddenly so loud.

My pulse throbs between my legs. God. It aches. And I’m so slippery down there, so swollen and slick, that I wince as I shuffle my feet back together.

Shame fills my throat like bile.

Wait, that is bile.

“Cocoa?” Mac looks horrified as I shove past, sprinting through the cottage for his bathroom, but I don’t have time to smooth his ruffled feathers. My stomach’s flipped over, and my mouth is sour, and I barely have time to slam the bathroom door shut and lock it before falling to my knees by the toilet bowl. My gut heaves.

I’ve put this off as long as I can. Tried to push away the images crowding my brain.

And as I lean over the white porcelain, coughing up my lunch, the memories slam into my brain, battering me harder, faster—kid’s birthday parties, gymnastics lessons as a little girl, riding a horse bareback as a teenager, the smell of wood smoke, the roar of crowds, cotton candy melting on my tongue. It all rises up as one.

It’s all I can do to hold on, weeping. I don’t want this.

My old life sweeps me under in a tidal wave.