23. Chapter 22
Beck
Iremember the first morning I stood at the end of the Beachside Pier.
I thought it was the quietest place I'd ever set foot on, especially at nine in the morning.
This morning, I've been leaning on this railing long enough that the fishermen have stopped pretending not to watch me.
Two of them have set up in their lawn chairs a few yards back, coolers open, lines in the water.
One of them offered me a beer twenty minutes ago.
When I said it wasn't even nine yet, he looked at me like I'd insulted his way of life.
Below me, the waves roll in slowly. The bright morning sun is scattered across every ripple, twinkling as it passes beneath the wooden boards.
Behind me, the boardwalk is finally waking up, with the shutters rattling open and the kettle corn guy firing up his drum. The first tourists are wandering out of the Beachside Hotel, with coffee in their hands and bad sunburns leftover from yesterday.
And somewhere nearby, the carousel operator has just flipped a switch, because the old girl's lights blink on one row at a time, and that tinny music starts drifting up the pier like it does every single morning.
I lean back and take it all in.
This is where my life blew up.
Right here. With one livestream and a badly operated microphone, my dad's affair was broadcast to me and several hundred churro-eating strangers at the same time.
That's the funny thing about places where your life falls apart.
Sometimes you go back and they're just… places. Places with the same sun on the water, the same smooth wooden railing under your hands. Even the seagulls look the fucking same.
I sigh, and look down at my phone.
I've been holding it for ten minutes with the same phone number open.
There's a meeting happening at my house right now. Darcy has probably just walked in, looking sexy as hell while holding a report I told her to write honestly. Even if it ships my ass to the desert.
My whole future is being discussed in my own damn kitchen.
And I'm not there.
But whatever she says in that room, I know something this morning that I didn't know a few weeks ago.
I'm going to be okay.
In Vegas. Or Beachside. Or somewhere else entirely.
I'll figure it out.
Maybe that's what Darcy gave me without ever trying to. She watched me fuck up. Watched me get angry, get benched, make bad decisions and occasionally make some pretty fucking excellent ones.
And she never tried to turn me into somebody I'm not.
Somewhere along the way, I started believing I didn't have to either.
Poppy told me once that I didn't have to know what to say to Dad until I was ready.
Turns out, ready isn't some big dramatic feeling.
It's waking up at five in the morning and realizing I don't want answers from Dad because I need him to fix anything.
I just want to talk to my father.
I press dial, and it only rings once before the line crackles.
"Beck?"
The gravely voice punches me straight away. It sounds older than I remember. Which is stupid. It's been months since we spoke, not decades.
"Hey, Dad."
"Jesus." His breath shakes down the line. "It's good to hear your voice, son."
"Yeah." I swallow hard. "Yours too. Weirdly."
"Beck, listen — I've been wanting to explain.
About your mother and me, about how it all—" He pauses for breath, like he's trying to remember what he's probably been rehearsing ever since that first voicemail he left weeks ago.
"—there's a whole side of this you haven't heard, and I need you to understand that things between us had been broken a long time before—"
"Dad. Stop."
He stops.
"I don't want the autopsy." I grip the railing with my free hand, staring out into the endless ocean. "Whatever happened in your marriage, that's yours and Mom's. You two can carve that up with the lawyers and the therapists and Mom's healing-journey posters."
A surprised sound comes down the line. Almost a laugh.
"But here's my side, Dad." I take a breath. The ocean keeps rolling. "I'm pissed you cheated. I'm pissed you hurt Mom. But mostly? I'm pissed that everybody knew except me. Everybody decided what I could handle. And that sucked."
The silence on the other end is long enough that I check the screen to make sure he's still there.
"You're right," he says finally. No excuses loaded behind it. "You're right, Beck. I thought I was protecting you. That's the truth, and I know now that it's not a good enough reason. You were never the kid we all treated you like."
"Yeah, well." My throat goes dry. "Everybody keeps protecting me. It's exhausting."
My phone buzzes against my ear with another incoming call. I pull it away long enough to see Philip's name flash across the screen.
Again.
He's been calling since six this morning. Apparently Vegas spent half the night sweetening the deal, and somewhere between midnight and sunrise, their front office and Colin managed to agree on everything except the one thing they still need.
Me.
I decline the call and put Dad back to my ear in time to hear him finishing.
"I'm sorry, Beck. And I mean it. Not for the marriage, that's a longer conversation. But you should never have found out the way you did."
The carousel music floats up the pier behind me.
"So," Dad says, careful now, like he's stepping onto thin ice. "Mason tells me everything that's been going on. Vegas, huh? What are you going to do?"
I look back toward Beachside.
For most of my life, home has meant my family. The Morrison brothers under one roof. Zoey knowing where everybody is. Dad calling. Mom worrying. Somebody always reaching for me before I could fall.
But now, it feels different.
"You know what's fucked up, Dad? A month ago, I would've asked you that."
Dad doesn't say anything.
"Or Declan. Mason. Zoey. I'd have waited for somebody to tell me which choice was smarter, then probably done the opposite just to piss them off."
Dad laughs. "You never made it easy on us."
I take a deep breath, mulling it all over in my head.
Vegas wants me. Beachside might still want me if the report says so. Darcy loves me.
And for the first time, none of those things feels like an instruction anymore.
They're choices.
My choices.
"So what are you going to do?" Dad asks again.
I smile.
"Whatever the fuck I want."
Dad laughs with a rusty wheeze, like it surprised him on the way out.
"Sounds about right," he says. "You always were the only one of you four who knew how to do that."
Now I'm smiling at the ocean like an idiot. Is this what freedom feels like?
"I'm still angry at you, Dad," I tell him, because it's true and because I'm done pretending things aren't true. "That doesn't go away because we had one phone call."
"I know."
"But I'll call again. Sometime."
"That's more than I hoped for," he says, and his voice cracks just enough that I have to look very hard at a seagull for a second. "Go do your thing, son. Whatever it is. I'll be watching and cheering you on. Always."
"Bye, Dad."
I hang up and stand there for a minute, breathing in the salty air and letting my whole life try and settle for one damn second.
I didn't fix us. We're not fixed. There's no montage coming where Dad and I play catch at sunset.
And our family is still a fucking mess. He still cheated, and as a result, Mom and Dad are still getting divorced. None of that magically changes because I finally picked up the phone.
But I chose the call. I chose the words. I chose when it ended.
And now Poppy can put that in my file, because I don't care what anyone says, that's fucking growth.
"BECK!"
I turn around.
And fuck me. I don't have time to think.
Darcy Madden is coming down the pier at a dead sprint, heels in one hand, hair absolutely wrecked by the wind, and clamped under the other arm, bouncing with every stride like a hostage in a low-speed chase, is a giant blue stuffed bear wearing tiny plastic glasses.
"Darcy?"
I squint to make sure Kai didn't spike my coffee this morning.
Yep. It's her. And she's carrying Beartholomew.
"You—" she gasps, stopping at my feet, "—are impossible to find."
"I've literally been standing still at the end of a pier for an hour."
She points Beartholomew at me like an accusation. The little glasses flash in the sun.
"You weren't at the meeting. Your own meeting. About your career." She pants some more, and honestly, it's kind of hot. "What the hell are you thinking?!"
Christ, this woman really is incredible.
She has run through half of Beachside, holding an enormous stuffed bear, just to yell at me?
I have never been more attracted to anyone in my life.
"Yeah, I heard that was happening." I nod at the bear, grinning. "Did Beartholemew take notes? He looks like the type."
Darcy swings Beartholomew and catches me square across the chest.
"Ow."
She hits me again.
"That is for missing the meeting."
Whump.
"That is for turning your phone off last night."
Whump.
"And that is for making me run a mile in heels carrying a bear half way across town."
I catch Beartholomew around the middle before she can reload. "Okay! Jesus. He's a carnival prize, not a blunt-force weapon."
I pull her into me before she can protest, and she makes a small, surprised sound against my shoulder. Then her arms come up around my neck and she holds on as I bury my face in her hair.
I inhale, smelling her scent, feeling her heartbeat still hammering from running half of Beachside with a giant bear under her arm.
I kiss the top of her head. Then I do it again, because I can, and because I don't want to do anything else in the world.
She pulls back just enough to look up at me, her cheeks flushed.
"Beck." She drops her heels on the boards and steps back. "I need you to know what happened this morning. Before anyone else tells you their version. Or before you—"
"Before I what?"
Her eyes drop to the boards between us, and she goes all cute and quiet.
I can see it on the tip of her tongue.
Before you leave.
Her fingers close around the ear of the stuffed bear, and she tugs at it nervously.