14. Caladesi Island
Caladesi Island
Cole arrived before the sun.
Not by accident. He needed the quiet, a few minutes to find his footing before Jenna Hart showed up and knocked him off balance again.
The Causeway at dawn had always been a reliable thing, predictable in a way people weren’t.
The sky still held the last bit of night, deep and bruised at the edges.
Pelicans perched on the channel markers. The water barely stirred.
He stood beside his paddleboard, hands braced on his hips, watching the horizon. He wanted the first sliver of light. He wanted calm. He wanted to get his head straight.
Because Jenna . . . hell.
She liked him; he knew she did. He wasn’t speculating.
He’d seen the looks, felt the shift in the air when she got nervous, caught the way she loitered in doorways when he walked by.
But she wasn’t just any woman. She was avoidant to her bones, a runner.
She ran to Atlanta when life got too heavy, and she’d run home when it had crushed her.
He didn’t blame her for either, but he wasn’t interested in becoming the next reason she bolted.
Emmie needed her; and Jenna needed room to grieve without him complicating the air she breathed.
He’d looked her up weeks ago, before he ever set foot in the bakery. He knew how respected she was in Atlanta. How people talked about her work ethic, her precision, her results. She was someone you didn’t push. Someone you let come to you, slowly.
He repeated that to himself now: Stay professional.
He was still repeating it again when he heard the crunch of tires behind him. He didn’t turn right away. Just listened.
A door shut softly. Footsteps on crushed shell. Then— “Hey.”
Her voice. Soft, a little breathless. Like she wasn’t sure she should be here. He turned.
And forgot every bit of the speech he’d rehearsed.
She wore a black long-sleeved one-piece, sleek, zipped to mid-chest, modest in a way that only made it worse.
It hugged her waist tightly enough to remind him why he had sworn to himself to behave.
He didn’t know something so simplistic could unnerve him so intensely.
A worn baseball cap sat low over her brow, somehow making her look both softer and braver.
She tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear with a shy flick of her fingers.
He looked away to regain his composure. “Morning,” he said, praying he sounded normal. “Are you ready?”
She smiled, small and real, nerves tucked behind her eyes.
It threw him a little that she looked so vulnerable in that moment. “I think so,” she said, biting her lip.
His grip tightened on his paddle. “You’ll be fine,” he said, and meant it.
They pushed their boards into the water, stepping into the morning like it had been waiting for them.
* * *
They were barely a hundred yards from shore when a smooth gray arc broke the surface beside them.
Jenna inhaled sharply. “Dolphins?”
Cole felt his mouth curve before he could stop it. “Yeah. They like this pass.”
Another surfaced, then another, cutting slow, easy lines through the morning water. Sunlight skimmed over their backs like silver paint.
Jenna pressed a hand to her chest, breath catching. “I forgot what that feels like.”
He didn’t ask what she meant; the answer was written all over her.
That feeling, the one that loosened something tight inside a person. The kind of joy you didn’t earn, didn’t chase, didn’t even expect. The kind that just showed up, like a blessing.
He watched her eyes instead of the dolphins, saw the years fall away from her shoulders for a moment. The grief, the worry, and the tight, careful posture she’d been carrying since the day he met her all slipped, just a little.
She looked younger. Lighter. Almost free.
He swallowed the urge to say something, anything, that might keep that expression on her face longer. But speaking would only break it.
So he stayed silent, paddling slow, steady strokes while the dolphins escorted them through the pass.
And he let her have that moment, something simple, something unbroken, because he knew she didn’t get many of those anymore.
* * *
About halfway around the island, he felt her watching him. Not glancing, watching.
Her paddle slowed. Her breathing hitched. Her lip caught between her teeth.
He could almost feel the heat of her stare on his skin.
“Careful,” he said, not looking at her. “I’m going to have to start charging you for looking.”
She whipped her gaze away and sighed, sounding disappointed to be caught. “Put it on my bill.”
He laughed, too loudly, too reflexively, and the sound cracked something open in him. He didn’t think. He didn’t weigh it. He just said it, “If that swimsuit was any more revealing, I’d have to give you a credit.” Her eyes widened.
Shit.
Too much. Too honest. Too fast.
He splashed her before she could respond.
“Oh my God!” she sputtered, laughing and outraged. “Did you just—?!”
“You were asking for it,” he said, backing away on his board.
“You started it!”
She splashed him back, water arcing into sunlight.
For a few minutes, they were nothing but laughter and spray and a breathless truce.
* * *
After one full lap around the island, they arrived back at Lone Oak Point. It was the kind of place people overlooked: coarse sand, close mangroves, nothing manicured or convenient about it. But that was why he picked it. No crowds. No noise. No expectations.
The sand stretched out in long, untouched sweeps, pale as sifted sugar, the surface ridged from last night’s tide.
Heat shimmered at the edges where the dunes rose in soft, uneven mounds, sea oats bowing in the breeze like they were greeting whoever managed to find this hidden strip of shoreline.
Behind them, the mangroves formed a tangled green wall; in front of them, the Gulf opened into an endless blue that bled straight into the sky.
Not a single footprint except their own and the light drag marks from their boards.
A calm there wasn’t empty; it was warm, alive, the kind that made you want to whisper without knowing why.
He unpacked the cooler, sandwiches, fruit, and chips, while she slowly took it in, like she knew she’d want to remember this exact morning for the rest of her life.
“You came prepared,” Jenna said, amused.
“You get hungry out here,” he said, offering her a bottle of water.
“Are you . . . mothering me?”
“Maybe.”
She sat beside him, not touching, but close enough that warmth drifted between them in the quiet morning light.
“You didn’t have to fix the roof in that storm,” she said suddenly. “I never thanked you.”
He shook his head. “No need. I was just doing my job.”
“Your job is not to get struck by lightning.”
“Still,” he said with a small shrug.
“I feel bad, like I’m the problem client. You on my roof at two in the morning, soaked through . . . then picking me up off the floor the next day. I’m truly mortified.”
He looked out over the water, a light smile tugging at his mouth. “Neither was a big deal.” Then, quieter, honest, “I kind of liked picking you up off the floor.”
Her breath caught, but she masked it with a teasing snort. “Maybe we can arrange for you to do it again.”
“Not like that, I hope.”
“I just . . .” She exhaled, staring at the wake of her board. “I feel so bad.”
“You said that already,” he murmured, not unkindly. “You don’t have to. You’re human. Nothing about the last few weeks has been easy.”
She nodded, but the guilt didn’t soften in her shoulders.
He hesitated, then said, “When my mom died, I snapped once too. Except, I broke the closest thing I had to your chalkboard.”
He huffed a soft, humorless breath. “One hit. It shattered. I’m not a violent guy, but grief . . . it makes you do things for a split second that don’t feel like you.”
She froze, eyes fixed on him.
“So,” he added gently, “I get it.”
Her voice went thin. “Cole . . . I didn’t know.”
“Most people don’t.” He kept his gaze on the water, letting her absorb it. “And I’m not telling you so you’ll feel sorry for me. I just—” His voice softened. “You’re not alone in this. That’s all.”
Beside him, she swallowed hard before nodding once.
A quiet settled between them, broken only by the soft knock of water against their boards.
Then he spoke again, slower this time, like he was working the thoughts loose as he went.
“There aren’t a lot of people left who knew who I was when I was eight years old.
When all I wanted was to play baseball,” he said.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Wanted to be the next David Justice. I used to stay outside from sunup to sundown, drenched in sweat, throwing balls at the side of the house until my dad threatened to take the bat away.”
She glanced over at him.
“The funny part is, I wasn’t even that good,” he admitted.
“And honestly? I didn’t even like baseball that much.
I just liked the idea of being on one of those Post Cereal trading cards.
” That earned the smallest breath of laughter from her, and his expression softened.
“I ended up better at basketball. That’s what everybody remembers now.
‘Didn’t you play basketball?’ But my mom remembered that little David Justice wannabe. ”
His gaze drifted out across the water again.
“That’s the thing about your parents and your siblings,” he said quietly. “They don’t just know one version of you. They know all of them. Every stage. Every embarrassing phase. Every dream you had for five minutes before you became somebody else.”
Beside him, Jenna went very still.
“And when they die,” he continued, “it feels a little like those versions of you die, too.”
Silence stretched between them. Cole immediately wondered if he had said too much. He usually preferred to carry his grief quietly. But he knew that Jenna understood, and he wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.
Cole rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, thoughtful now.
“I watched my dad grieve the version of himself he used to be, too. Before my mom died, he was this . . . loving, ridiculous husband who brought home flowers for no reason and acted like thirty years together still wasn’t enough time with her. ”
His voice thinned slightly at the memory.
“I miss that guy,” he admitted. “The one who came home smiling because his favorite person was waiting there.”
Jenna looked down at her hands.
“I think death takes more than the person,” he said softly. “It takes whole versions of people with it. Versions of the rest of us, I mean. And sometimes we’re so busy mourning who died that we don’t even notice all the other things that got ripped away at the same time.”
He imagined she was thinking about all the versions of people she had lost alongside her siblings. The parents who had been weathered by more grief than anyone should have to bear. The orphaned niece who was shaped by loss after loss.
The changes were impossible to ignore, and so people found themselves grieving the living alongside the dead.
And not just the people, but the days themselves. Entire seasons altered. Holidays and birthdays permanently changed. The loss of easy joy, forever shadowed by melancholy.
Cole didn’t interrupt the silence that followed. He just sat beside her, steady as the tide, giving her room to finally see the shape of the wound.
* * *
Two eagle rays glided beneath their boards on the paddle back, wings sweeping through the water like silk drifting in slow motion. It was rare to see them on this side of the island, rarer still for them to come this close.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered. Cole looked at the rays for half a second. Then he watched her instead.
The angle of her jaw tipped toward the sun. The way her mouth softened when she was wonderstruck. The faint flush on her cheeks from the paddle back. He wanted to memorize everything about her in this moment.
“So are you,” he said, too soft, too honest, the words barely more than the breath behind them.
Jenna didn’t react.
Of course, she didn’t. She hadn’t heard him. Or maybe her mind was somewhere else entirely, caught up in the moment rather than the man sharing it with her.
And God, he was grateful for that.
Because earlier, twice, she had heard him.
When he’d slipped and told her the house looked good, and then couldn’t catch himself.
When he’d gone too far this morning about owing her a credit, both times, he’d watched her whole body tense like she’d been jolted with a live wire.
Jenna Hart didn’t take compliments lightly.
She absorbed them like they were dangerous.
He needed to be smarter.
If he wanted time with her, real time, not stolen edges of it, he had to keep a careful balance. Push too hard, and she’d retreat into work, into routine, into that distant, unreachable space people like her used to protect themselves.
Avoidants didn’t run at full speed. They vanished gradually, one “maybe later” at a time. He couldn’t risk that. Not with her.
He’d spent thirty-six years not knowing what it felt like to want someone this much.
To want their company, their quiet, their laugh.
To want the curve of someone’s mouth when they said his name.
And now that he’d had even a glimpse of it, even a day of paddling beside her, talking in the sun, watching her loosen in places she didn’t realize were tight, he couldn’t find enough oxygen in her absence.
He paddled beside her, matching her pace without thinking.
“Ready to head in?” he asked, voice steady, controlled, like he hadn’t almost given himself away.
She smiled, bright, unguarded, sun-warm. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
And he fell in behind her, letting her lead the way back to shore, the ache in his chest tightening with every stroke of the paddle.
* * *
By the time they pulled the boards onto the Causeway, she was sun-warmed and glowing, hair wild from salt and wind.
He wanted to ask her to dinner. He wanted to keep her a little longer. He wanted—
He couldn’t.
Not her. Not now. Not when she was grieving, terrified of closeness, and balancing Emmie’s whole world on her shoulders.
“Thanks for coming,” he said instead.
Her smile faltered before she tucked it away. “Thanks for inviting me.” Silence pulled between them, warm and charged.
He forced himself to step back. “Monday’s going to be busy,” he said. “We’ll have the flooring wrapped up in the bakery by noon. My crew will move into the house next.”
She nodded, but something in her eyes tightened, anticipation or dread, he couldn’t tell, but maybe both.
He wanted to hug her, simple, harmless, comforting. But with her looking at him like that? There was nothing simple about it.
He steadied himself, gave her one last smile, calm, careful, safe.
Then he walked to his truck and shut the door before instinct could override judgment. He wanted her.
But he wouldn’t be the thing that made her run. Not when she’d only just stopped sinking.