Chapter 1 #2
Morgan didn’t know much about Ty’s situation. He’d visited a number of times when he was a child, first with his family and then by himself, when no one else wanted to take Uncle Phil up on his offer of two weeks without the amenities they were used to, but he didn’t remember Ty.
“He’s shy,” his uncle had said the one time Morgan has asked about him.
“We like to give each other our space, but he’s a good friend.
He’s always looking out for me.” He’d been the one to call with the news that Phil had died, according to Morgan’s mom, but he hadn’t been here to meet the family or the coroner when they’d come for his body and personal effects.
Morgan still carried around the letter he’d received from Uncle Phil in his wallet.
Hey, kiddo, and ha, Phil was the only one who could get away with calling Morgan “kiddo” when he was pushing thirty.
If you’re reading this, I guess that means I’m gone.
I don’t mind; I lived a good life just the way I wanted to.
If I could have changed anything, it would have been seeing more of the family, but that’s just the way things go.
Morgan had felt intense guilt the first time he read that line, but the next had allayed it … somewhat.
You always were my favorite, though, and I guess you liked it here, too, since you came more than anyone else.
I know you’ve got a lot going on in your life—your mom tells me you’re a big-shot tech guy now, good for you—but if you feel the need to get away from the rat race, know that you’re welcome to come here.
We only maintain our permission to live on the island and maintain the lighthouse if we’ve got someone here for three months of the year or more, so …
well, just think about it. You might like it more than you think, and I know Ty would like the company even though he says he’ll be fine on his own.
I love you, kiddo. I hope you take good care of yourself.
Uncle Phil
The letter had come just when everything else in Morgan’s life seemed to be falling apart.
Bentley, his business partner and, for the decade before that, life partner had put their company up for sale without telling him.
Apparently, the offer was too good to refuse even though Morgan had been crystal clear regarding how he felt about their proprietary tech getting gobbled up by a venture capital firm.
“They’re going to ruin it!” he’d shouted at Bentley while the other man poured himself a drink. “They’re going to strip NovaChem for parts and fuck everything up, fire half our employees, screw the other half over, and leave us with a husk!”
“They won’t,” his idiot partner had insisted. “Trust me, it’s all laid out in the contract. I—”
“You didn’t even have our lawyers look over it before you signed it!”
“Because I’m not fucking stupid! I know how to read a contract, Morgan, Jesus.”
That defensive tone meant the fight was getting out of hand, so Morgan had reined in his anger and tried to go about the next part logically. “Look, are there at least clauses in there about us maintaining control?”
Bentley had shrugged. “There’s one for me, yeah.”
A feeling like ice had slipped down Morgan’s spine, numbing and tingling all at once, and suddenly it had been hard to breathe. “What does that mean?”
“It means … look, babe …”
“What does that mean?”
What it meant was that Bentley had negotiated a place for himself in their newly acquired company but not a place for Morgan. Instead, Morgan got a fat check and a kick right out the door.
Never mind that he was the person who actually knew how the bioware worked; never mind that he was the one with the PhD in Biomechanical Engineering while Bentley had a fucking business degree—his partner was the one the company wanted to keep. Not Morgan.
And Bentley had been all right with that if it meant getting them an admittedly enormous amount of money, but it also meant that all of their dreams about the future, the things they wanted to accomplish with the tech, and the plans for the brilliant minds they wanted to recruit and foster, were gone up in smoke.
The fight had been a loud one, full of cracking voices and breaking hearts.
It had ended predictably: Morgan left their high-rise San Francisco apartment with a single bag and a resolve to never have anything to do with his ex or their former company again.
The type-A personality in him had wanted to be making plans, figuring out the next big thing, plotting investments, making connections, and finding another company to work with, but …
Morgan was broken. Something inside of him, his indefatigable exuberance for the next step, the next challenge, had been snapped off at the root.
He couldn’t think about his bank account without having a panic attack.
The first time he saw his name mentioned in the news, he’d shut down everything and sat in the dark for over an hour, just trying to catch his breath.
Any mention of Bentley was like a wire brush scraping out his chest cavity.
His life, a life of running toward the next big thing, had become too much to bear. He couldn’t do it. He needed a way out.
Uncle Phil’s letter gave him that. Parrish Island was the perfect place to lie low, rest, and recover.
Cut off from everyone except an old fisherman, with nothing to do except get back in touch with the parts of himself that had been nearly exorcised in Silicon Valley, Morgan figured it was the chance of a lifetime.
He certainly wouldn’t spend a lifetime here; no, a few months and then he’d probably turn over control of the lighthouse to the state, but for now it was perfect.
Or it would be perfect if he could make it around this rocky outcropping without falling face-first into the ocean. Shit, how had Uncle Phil, a man in his early nineties when he died, managed this for so long?
Part of Morgan, the part he’d forgotten about once he got to college, reveled in the challenge of skirting around this enormous hunk of rock on his quest for company.
He used to love spending time outside, loved backpacking and kayaking and hiking.
This island had been a paradise for him when he was a kid, especially during the stretch where his parents were getting divorced, and all he wanted was to get away from it all.
You’ve got a habit of running from your emotions, Morgan.
Yeah, maybe he did, but it was better than burying them in drugs and alcohol like some people he could name. Now if he could just find a decent foothold over here … good, and then reach up there and get a grip on top of the—shit! Ow, fucking ow, what had he just grabbed?
Morgan jerked his hand back from the rocky shelf he’d reached for, realizing a little too late that he was overbalancing. He scrabbled for another hold, but his weight was already pulling him backward. A second later, he fell, and a second after that, his body hit the cold, murky Pacific Ocean.
Morgan gasped as he surfaced, eyes stinging from contact with the salty water. God, it was cold; it was only the first week of November, how could it be so cold already?
Only November? Listen to yourself. Or rather, don’t—get out of the water. Yeah, that was the thing to do, but … this section of rock was pretty sheer. He’d fallen a good five feet when he tumbled off what he had thought was the path. That was too high up for him to reach again.
All right, it’s okay. Just swim a little farther, and you’ll find a place where you can get out.
The beach the sea lions live on can’t be far.
Not that it seemed like a good idea to try and share space with animals that could weigh over a thousand pounds.
Fuck, why could he remember weird little factoids like that and not control himself enough not to fall in the freezing fucking ocean when—
A wave swept over his head, pushing Morgan under the water.
He flailed for a moment, all his swim training forgotten as panic took hold.
Up, which way was up? He finally figured it out, but just as his head broke water, another wave hit him, smashing him against the rock he’d fallen off of.
He screamed as his shoulder wrenched painfully, and then his right arm was useless, and he could barely keep himself above the water, and his clothes felt so heavy, and the sun might be shining above him, but he couldn’t feel the heat of it at all, only the cold of the water, and the rough, painful surface of the rock, and oh shit, that wave was even bigger, and he couldn’t push off the wall, and he was going under again—
The last thing Morgan felt before his head hit the rocks was something cold and firm wrapping around his waist.