Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Nash
The Brass Lantern is comfortably dim—scuffed floors, chipped barstools, cold beer, and the scent of the best fries I’ve ever had beckoning my taste buds.
The walls are cluttered with drawings, jokes, and notes of encouragement left by patrons over the years, faded pictures from Stillwater Bay’s past, and a chalkboard promising Tuesday Night Trivia, the handwriting as drunk as the guy who wrote it.
Behind the bar stands Cal Monroe, owner, bartender, retired Navy, and quiet keeper of half the town’s secrets.
Cal and Dad went to the same high school, then served together after.
They weren’t close in the usual sense, but there was mutual respect.
Tempered steel recognizing tempered steel.
After Dad passed, Cal didn’t say much, just showed up at the funeral in his dress blues and stood by the family like a silent sentinel.
Cal’s been running the Lantern since I abandoned my plan to join the military and went straight to college instead.
He’s got a beard like sea foam and thunder, arms inked with faded tattoos, and a gaze that’ll pin you like a butterfly if you try to bullshit him.
He sees me now and gives the smallest nod before reaching for my favorite whiskey.
No words. No questions. Just two fingers poured neat and slid across the bar like he already knows the kind of day I’m having.
“Rough day, Doc?”
“Just livin’ the dream over here.”
He snorts, wipes his hands on a bar towel, and jerks his chin toward the back. “Bennett’s in your booth.”
That’s Cal-speak for I see you, but I won’t make you talk unless you want to. It’s weirdly comforting. I grab the glass and head for the booth near the jukebox, then slide in across from Bennett, who jerks his chin at the TV mounted above the bar.
“That is exactly what your ego didn’t need.”
I glance up just in time to catch the end of a news segment I declined to be part of.
A woman stands beside a bed in a hospital room, holding the hand of the teenager I cut open in the parking lot two days ago.
His color looks better, face no longer swollen beyond recognition.
Breathing. Alive. The camera zooms in on his mother’s face—pure, bone-deep relief.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened to Oliver if Doctor Kincaid hadn’t acted so quickly,” she says, her voice thick. “That man is a hero.”
Bennett lets out a guffaw, tipping his beer bottle toward me. “See what I mean? Nash Kincaid. Local hero.” He waves his hand through the air like he’s reading it off one of the notes taped to the wall.
“Says the cop.”
“That’s totally different.”
I lift my glass and arch a brow before taking a swig. “Enlighten me.”
My brother leans back in the booth, stretching his legs under the table.
“I don’t know. It just is. You’re the bossy firstborn, always taking more responsibility than you need, trying to save the world like that’ll somehow earn your place in it.
” He puts a hand to his chest. “I’m the delightfully charming second son, the hometown protector, serving the people of this fine town out of sheer civic duty. ”
“You’ll never forgive me for being ten years older, will you?”
Bennett is a carbon copy of me, a decade delayed. Same dark hair. Same gray eyes. Same love of being right, of being in charge, of swooping in and saving the day.
He regards me with a sad shake of his head and tips his beer to his lips. “I should have been bossing Gideon and Grayson around. Instead, I got bossed right along with them. Probably why I joined the force. Some subconscious desire to right that wrong.”
“That must be it.”
“Wow.” Bennett draws his lips down in a frown. “You didn’t even fight me on that. Old age must be softening you.”
“I’m thirty-six,” I remind him dryly. “Fully willing to show you how soft I’m not.”
“There he is. The authoritarian brother I know and love.”
“Again… says the cop.”
I shake my head, but there’s a low hum of affection under the sarcasm. Bennett’s good people. Always has been. Out of all the Kincaid brothers, he’s the one with his head screwed on the straightest, though that may not be saying much.
He takes a drink and glances back up at the screen. The segment’s shifted to distracted driving awareness, the reporter now standing at the corner of Main and Baybreeze, talking about a young woman who narrowly missed being struck while crossing the street.
Bennett follows my gaze, then sits up straighter. “Yeah! Did you see that? I wasn’t the officer on scene, but the woman who almost got clobbered was Lucy Calder.”
My stomach tightens like I missed a step going downstairs.
While the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, the situation does.
Bennett’s talking about my patient from the other day.
The twenty-something Talia wanted me to ask out.
How she thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
I need a date with a young woman in the middle of a crisis like I need another reason for Admin to climb up my ass.
“How do you know Lucy?” I ask, frowning into my glass.
Bennett’s eyebrows launch into his hairline. “How do I know Lucy? We were best friends when we were kids. She basically lived at our house and Mom pretty much adopted her as an honorary daughter.” He laughs softly. “Last I heard, she moved to Los Angeles to get rich and famous.”
Rich and famous. The bastardized dream of the modern age. Narcissism wrapped in self-importance, with a side of performative altruism.
“Hold on a sec though,” Bennett says, cutting through my thoughts. “How do you know Lucy? You were in college when we were attached at the hip, so it’s not like you remember her.”
Oh, I remember her, all right. Those clear blue eyes locking onto mine, the delicate fingers gripping the edge of the hospital bed, her sharp inhale of fear when I ordered the tests.
The total lack of hesitation when she shamelessly hit on me.
And the totally unprofessional reaction on my part.
I liked it. I shouldn't have, but I did. I wanted more of it. More of her.
Worse? I wanted to protect her. From what? Couldn’t tell ya. I got the sense she needed someone on her side, and I wanted that someone to be me.
All of which is bad news for Dr. Nash Kincaid.
Rubbing a hand across my mouth, I refocus on my brother. “I was her doctor the night she almost got clobbered.”
Bennett lets out a low whistle. “At least I know she was in heroically good hands.” He leans back, propping his arm along the back of the booth. “How is she? Still sweet? Or did that awful Stella Beauford ruin her like she ruins everything else?”
I clear my throat, taking another slow sip of my whiskey. “She told me I had the jawline of a Greek god.”
Bennett chokes on his beer, coughing out a laugh. “Lucy? She used to be so shy.” He shakes his head, looking half-impressed, half-baffled.
“In her defense, she was medicated at the time.”
“Poor Lu. I bet she was mortified.” He chuckles, but there’s something in his expression that shifts, something quieter, less teasing.
“You know… I had a crush on that girl for most of my childhood. She’s just so bright and happy and easy to be around.
Pretty, too.” His voice is more thoughtful now, like he’s just remembering it himself.
“Kinda sucks we drifted apart. I’d love to run into her. ”
I glance down at my drink, watching the ice melt in slow, uneven shifts, trying to understand why the first thought I had when he admitted his crush was…
I get it. Something tightens in my chest, nothing I can name.
Not jealousy. Not attraction. Just this persistent awareness I didn’t ask for, clinging like static.
“Probably have a couple of days to make that happen,” I say after a beat. “Given that concussion, she won’t be traveling anytime soon.”
“I wonder if she’s still friends with Gabby Gifford,” Bennett says, like he’s plucking a new thread from memory. “The three of them used to be inseparable. You remember Gabby, right?”
I nod slowly. “Gabby was dating Grayson back in high school.”
That’s the thing about small towns. Everyone knows everyone, or at least knows someone who knows someone.
Anywhere else, it’d be wild luck that the woman I treated yesterday was friends with one brother and her best friend used to date the other.
But here? The real surprise is that she and I had never crossed paths.
“Gabby was going to marry Grayson.” Bennett sits back, lifting his beer to his lips, then lowers it enough to hit me with a bitter smile. “Until you talked him out of it.”
He tips the bottle in my direction before taking a swig. Bennett’s a romantic and I’m a realist. He’s never had his heart broken. Mine’s been stepped on and shattered. He’s never understood my perspective on this. Hopefully he never will.
“I gave Grayson advice.” I fold my arms on the table and stare at the chipped wood. “What he did with it was his choice.”
“You told him to chase his music instead of settling down.”
“I told him not to make permanent decisions at nineteen.”
“Right after you and Jadelyn divorced.” Bennett mirrors my posture. “After you’d sacrificed your plans for your high school sweetheart and were maybe—rightfully—a little jaded.”
I tense. He doesn’t mean it as a jab.
But it lands like one.
I gave up my dream for Jadelyn and built the life she said she wanted instead.
I'd planned to follow in Dad's footsteps. Honor him by joining the Navy and get my medical degree that way. Instead, I built a life neither of us was happy in at her request. When she left, she didn’t just take the marriage, she took the meaning out of what I built.
Letting Grayson end up like me would have been like watching my life fall to pieces all over again. Instead, I get to watch him take the world by storm.
“I stand by the advice I gave Gray,” I say, and mean it.
“I can see why you’d say that. You’ve been so… different… since everything with Jadelyn. And I know it had to hurt like hell, but I hate seeing you like this.”
“Like what?” I sit back, dragging my arms off the table and cocking my head at my brother.
Bennett flares his hands. “You’re… I don’t know… frozen. You used to go out. Have fun. You played the guitar…”
“I go out.”
“You show up for drinks with me here at The Lantern when our schedules align and family dinners with Mom. That doesn’t count. It’s no wonder you’re not happy.”
My jaw tenses. My brows furrow.
“Who said I’m not happy?”
“Show me one thing that says you are.”
“I have a good job that I don’t suck at. I…” I hold out my hands, searching for the end of the sentence. “I’m fine, Bennett.”
“If you say so.”
Silence wraps uncomfortably around the booth… until the jukebox kicks on, oozing a velvet-slick ballad sung by our younger brother.
“Wow,” I mutter. “He’s on the rotation here now?”
“If we’re talking egos, his has a better tour schedule than his band.” Bennett groans, though gratitude flickers through his eyes. We’d stumbled into difficult territory. Ragging on Gray offers a chance to retreat to safer ground.
I drape an arm over the back of the booth, the picture of unbothered, despite years of dissatisfaction boiling in my heart. “I should start charging that kid royalties for the brain space he takes up.”
“He was always dramatic.”
“Runs in the family.”
“Says the ER doc who performed an emergency surgery in a hospital parking lot yesterday.”
“Point well made.” I lift my hands in concession and Bennett raises a brow.
“All right. That’s it. You doin’ okay? That’s twice I’ve hit you and you haven’t hit back.”
I shrug. “Don’t get cocky. Age comes with wisdom. I’ll get you when you least expect it.”
Lucy’s face flashes in my mind again, unwelcome, insistent.
I don’t know why she’s still there.
You have the jawline of a Greek god.
It should’ve been nothing. Just a medicated slip from a concussed patient.
But for some reason, it stuck.
Maybe because Bennett’s more right than I’ll ever admit. And for one stupid second, Lucy Calder made me feel like things in this world could still surprise me.
Or maybe because, in that moment, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time.
Awake.
God help me.