Chapter 16
Cassidy stood on the dock at six in the morning, watching Bryan prepare the Mary Catherine for departure.
The sun was barely up, and the sky was tinted with shades of pale coral and gold.
She’d worn sensible shoes this time. Boat shoes, actually, purchased from the general store after Sally had informed her that heels and boats didn’t mix.
While she was in town, she’d picked up some shorts and a couple of t-shirts, not that she’d ever been a t-shirt type of person.
“You’re here early.” Bryan looked up from the rope he was coiling. “Coffee’s in the cabin if you need it.”
“I’ve had two cups already.” She stepped carefully from the dock to the boat, pleased when she didn’t stumble. “What are we doing exactly?”
“Testing the boat parade route.” He secured the rope and moved to the helm. “I want to make sure the timing works before we commit to it in all the promotional materials you’re designing.”
She settled onto the bench near the cabin as the engine rumbled to life.
The harbor was quiet at this hour. A few other fishing boats were heading out, and their captains raised hands in silent greeting as they passed.
Bryan returned each gesture with the easy familiarity of someone who’d known these people his entire life.
They cleared the harbor entrance, and the Gulf opened before them. The water was calm, with barely a ripple disturbing its surface. She breathed in the salt air and felt a simple peace flow through her.
“We’ll follow the proposed route.” Bryan adjusted their heading. “Start at the harbor mouth, loop around the lighthouse point, and come back along the beach. Should take about forty-five minutes at parade speed.”
“And at regular speed?”
“Twenty minutes. But we’re not in a hurry.” He glanced at her. “Unless you have somewhere to be?”
She thought of her color-coded sabbatical schedule, abandoned weeks ago in a drawer, and the urgent emails still piling up in her inbox, unread.
“No,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”
They motored along in comfortable silence. She watched the shoreline slide past with beach cottages, the lighthouse rising white against the morning sky, and the pier where she’d wrestled that tent in the storm. Everything looked different from the water. Smaller somehow, but also more connected.
“Can I ask you something?” Bryan kept his eyes on the water ahead. “What made you agree to help with the festival? The real reason.”
She could have deflected and given him the polished answer about professional development or portfolio building. But something about the morning, the quiet boat, and the way he’d asked without looking at her made honesty feel easier.
“I was afraid of disappearing,” she said.
“At work, I mean. Steve, a co-worker, was taking over my accounts. My boss was making decisions without me. I could feel myself being erased while I sat in that cottage doing nothing.” She wrapped her arms around herself despite the growing warmth.
“The festival gave me something to do. Proof I still existed.”
Bryan slowed the boat slightly, adjusting their course around a channel marker. “And now?”
“Now I’m not sure.” She watched a pelican plunk down on the water. “I started this as a project. Something to put on my resume. But it’s become something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something real maybe.” She looked at him. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “It makes sense.”
The lighthouse was growing larger as they approached. She could see the cottages arranged around the courtyard and the keeper’s quarters where Winnie probably already had coffee brewing.
Home. When had she started thinking of Heron Cottage as home instead of temporary housing?
“I’m terrified I’m going to fail,” Bryan said suddenly. “The festival, the restaurant, the fishing business. All of it. I lie awake at night running numbers, trying to figure out how to make everything work.” He shrugged. “And I can’t.”
She turned to face him fully. His jaw was set, and his hands gripped the wheel.
“I see my grandfather standing at that grill,” he continued. “My father working the dining room. Three generations of Lucas men building something that mattered. And I’m the one who’s going to lose it all because I can’t figure out how to adapt fast enough.”
“You’re not going to lose it.”
“You don’t know that.” He glanced at her, and the fear in his eyes was raw. “Morton’s offer is still on the table. The bank is still deciding about my loan extension. One bad season, one health inspection violation, one festival that doesn’t bring in enough revenue, and it all collapses.”
She understood that fear. Had lived with its twin for years. The terror of not being enough, of failing to meet impossible standards, and disappointing everyone who’d invested in your success.
“What would you do?” she asked. “If you weren’t afraid of failing?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He was quiet for a long moment, steering them around the lighthouse point. The beach opened up before them, stretching toward town. Empty this early except for a few joggers and someone walking a dog.
“I’d experiment more at the restaurant,” he said slowly.
“Try new dishes instead of sticking to the same menu we’ve had for twenty years.
I’d take the boat out less and focus on making the restaurant sustainable.
Maybe hire a real chef instead of relying on Mom and me.
” He paused. “I’d stop trying to do everything exactly the way it’s always been done and figure out what actually works now. ”
“But you’re afraid that would be disrespectful.”
“Yeah.” He cut the engine back to an idle, letting them drift. “Feels like admitting my grandfather and father were wrong, and that their way isn’t good enough anymore.”
“Or it’s admitting that times change,” she said. “That honoring their legacy means keeping the spirit of what they built alive, not preserving it in amber.”
He looked at her and smiled gently. “Wise woman.”
“I’m not wise. I’m just good at seeing other people’s problems clearly.” She laughed, but it came out hollow. “My own problems are a complete disaster.”
“What are your problems?”
The question was genuinely curious. Just Bryan, asking because he wanted to know.
“I don’t know who I am without a deadline,” she admitted.
“Without a project to complete, a client to impress, or a presentation to deliver. I’ve spent my adult life defining myself by what I accomplish.
And when that was taken away, I just... dissolved, like I was never really there in the first place. ”
He turned off the engine completely. They drifted on the gentle current, the boat rocking slightly. The only sounds were water lapping against the hull and distant seagull cries.
“You’re here right now,” he said. “On this boat. Helping with this festival. That’s real.”
“But it’s temporary. I have to go back eventually.”
“Do you?”
The question hung between them, heavy with implications she wasn’t ready to examine.
Of course she had to go back. Her apartment was in Chicago.
Her career, her entire professional identity, and the life she’d built over two decades.
She couldn’t just abandon all that because she’d had a nice few weeks in a small coastal town.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
He stood and moved to sit beside her on the bench. Not touching, but close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. They sat there watching the shoreline with the lighthouse standing watch over the harbor it had protected for generations.
“My grandfather used to say that the lighthouse’s job was to show people where they were,” he said. “Not where they should be. Not where they’d been. Just where they were right now, in this moment.”
“That’s lovely.”
“He was talking about navigation. Helping ships find their position so they could chart their course. But I always thought it applied to life too.” He turned to look at her. “You don’t have to know where you’re going yet. You just have to know where you are.”
She met his eyes. They were warm and steady, the same gray-blue as the Gulf on a calm day.
“I’m on a boat,” she said. “In Starlight Shores. With you.”
“That’s a good place to be.”
The moment stretched between them, charged with possibility. She thought about leaning closer and closing that small distance. About what might happen if she did.
Bryan’s phone buzzed, shattering the stillness. He pulled it from his pocket and frowned at the screen.
“Mom. The restaurant.” He stood, already moving back to the helm. “I need to get back.”
“Of course.”
He started the engine, and they headed toward the harbor at a speed faster than parade pace. The moment was gone, but its echo remained. She could still feel the warmth of him beside her and his words settling into places that had been empty for too long.
They didn’t talk on the return trip. He focused on navigating, and she watched the water slip past, but the silence felt full instead of awkward.
When they reached the dock, he secured the boat. She stepped onto the weathered planks.
“The route works,” he said. “I estimate forty-three minutes at parade speed.” He smiled. “You know, if they don’t all cut their engines and talk for a bit. We should budget an hour to be safe.”
“I’ll update the schedule.”
He climbed onto the dock beside her. They stood there in the strengthening sunlight, neither quite ready to return to the demands of the day.
“Thank you,” she said. “For taking me out. For showing me the route.”
“You’re the co-chair. You needed to see it.”
“I meant thank you for the conversation.”
Something softened in his expression. “Yeah. Me too.”
He walked toward town, and she headed back to the lighthouse. She stopped for a moment and turned to watch him go. He moved with the easy confidence of someone who knew every inch of this place, who belonged here so completely that the town and the man were inseparable.
She envied his certainty of belonging and the deep roots that connected him to generations of history and community.
But maybe, she thought as she climbed the steps to Heron Cottage, belonging wasn’t something you were born into. Maybe it was something you built, day by day, connection by connection. Maybe she’d been building it here without even realizing it.
Inside the cottage, her laptop sat on the coffee table where she’d left it last night. She opened it and stared at her inbox. Sixty-two unread messages now. Steve’s name appeared multiple times. Her boss had sent a check-in email. HR wanted to schedule her return-to-work meeting.
Her old life, calling her back.
She thought about what Bryan said about not knowing where you’re going yet. You just have to know where you are.
She was in Heron Cottage, in Starlight Shores, working on a festival that mattered to people she was starting to care about. She was living a life that looked nothing like the one she’d planned but felt more real than anything she had experienced in years.
She closed the laptop without reading a single email.