CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Raina
I’d never committed a felony before. Yet, when I read Jagger’s mind earlier about getting revenge for Lenora, I didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t even second-guess myself at all.
And I certainly didn’t feel guilty, or any kind of remorse afterward. All I felt was exhilaration.
Ever since last night, things between Jagger and me had been awkward.
I wanted to say last night was a mistake, but I couldn’t.
Last night was incredible. Yet, now, things between us were awkward.
At least until we slashed Walt and the Homewrecker’s tires, then laughed and ran all the way back to my car.
The way he looked at me in the car, hundreds of little raindrops on the lenses of his glasses, his cheeks rosy, dark-blue eyes sparkly and bright … he studied me hard. Almost like he wanted to kiss me. But it was more than that. Like he wanted to grab me, take my mouth and claim it.
I wanted that too.
I wanted to feel the scratch of his beard against my cheeks, chin, and lips. To taste his tongue and melt into the solid heat of his body.
But I couldn’t.
We couldn’t.
Last night was a onetime thing. An arrangement. An offering. But there was no second-helping or encore hanging in the wind. He never extended one, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask for one. That would definitely just give him something to lord over my head and tease me about.
We drove in silence to the marina, parked my car, and headed down the ramp toward the docks, where a group of people—also stranded on Wayman for two nights—gathered with their luggage and waited for the water taxi.
It came into view just as we joined the rest of the passengers, probably returning from a previous run to San Camanez.
A few people were on board—no doubt those who got stranded on San Camanez but lived on Wayman.
“Hey, Jagger,” greeted a bearded bear of a man with rosy cheeks, in a red flannel jacket that was perhaps a touch too small for his belly, and a tattered, black baseball cap. He held out his enormous hand and Jagger shook it.
“Hey, Gus. You’re our shuttle captain today, huh?”
“Yeah, this is our third run so far. Gabe Griswald from San Cam has been doing runs too. You guys might be the last one for us though. We’ll see how the winds are.” Gus’s brown eyes glanced past Jagger and me to more people coming down the ramp. “We leave in about ten.”
“Sounds good.” Jagger slapped Gus on the back as the big aluminum boat sidled up to the dock and a young man in hip waders and a gray, wool long-sleeve shirt hopped onto the dock to tie up the boat.
He immediately noticed Jagger and his face broke into a big smile, before he gave an enthusiastic wave.
“Do you know everyone ?” I asked, regretting the slight dollop of venom in my tone. Why was I being so hostile right now?
Jagger glanced down at me. “I know a lot of people. It’s my job to make connections.
I also just like people, and besides you—you little cactus—people seem to like me too.
” He smirked and shook his head slightly before a young man with patchy facial hair and cooked spaghetti for limbs bounded toward us. “Hey, Caleb. How’s it going?”
Caleb—who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one—shrugged. “Happy to be back on the water, that’s all I can say. Didn’t know you got stuck over here. That sucks.”
Jagger shrugged again. “Yeah, it wasn’t so bad.”
Heat definitely shouldn’t have prickled along my arms, but it did.
Gus approached again and dropped a big board from the edge of the boat to the dock, so the passengers on the boat had an easier time unloading.
The current captain of the boat, a tall, thin man with curly, gray hair poking out from under his ratty, denim ball cap was the last to climb off.
He nodded at Caleb and Gus before heading toward the floating house that made up the harbormaster’s office—or so I assumed.
“Gerry’s dealing with kidney stones,” Caleb said, his gaze following the bean-pole of a man whose pace seemed to pick up the closer to the building he got. “Not fun. Gus has been doing most of the runs, but because he had to deal with something, Gerry did one run.”
Jagger simply nodded, which prompted Caleb to get back to work. He and Gus helped all of us board the boat, and of course, it was a tight fit, which meant I was squeezed in against the window by Jagger’s enormous, hard, radiator of a body.
“How long of a crossing is it in this thing?” I asked, staring down at my purse in my lap.
Jagger, who had the decency not to man-spread his legs at least, checked his watch. “Depending on the conditions of the water, and the tides, maybe forty-five minutes?”
Forty-five freaking minutes?
He glanced at me. “You okay, Elsa?”
I swallowed past the taste of bile on the back of my tongue and closed my eyes. “I’m fine.”
Leaning over so his mouth was next to my ear, his minty breath cool and way too inviting, he whispered, “Hopefully we don’t get seasick again, hmm?”
I shot him a glare. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Damn, you’re prickly,” he said with amusement. “I would have thought those two org—”
My hand covered his mouth before I even knew what was happening. “Don’t you dare,” I said, practically sitting on his lap, I reared up and pivoted so fast.
Even more amusement glimmered back at me behind his glasses, and I could feel him smile against my palm. I intensified my warning glare, making sure he knew I wasn’t joking around. “Don’t,” I said again, giving him my best mom-tone.
Then, just for good measure, I tugged hard on some of his mustache whiskers as I removed my hand, making him go, “Ouch!” and rub at his top lip. “So prickly,” he murmured shaking his head and smiling.
“I just want to get home,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Me too. And we’re going to.”
I avoided looking at him by staring out the window. Once Gus and Caleb confirmed that everyone who wanted a ride back to San Camanez was on the boat, Caleb untied us from the dock, Gus started the engine, and we were off.
While the water wasn’t as choppy as two nights ago, it also wasn’t smooth sailing.
My stomach grew queasy as we hit the open water.
So I fixed my gaze forward on the blinking light of the lighthouse on San Camanez.
While it was daylight out, so the light wasn’t overly bright, it was good to have a focal point.
Something to stare at, rather than the tumultuous, rolling, gray-green sea out the window—or the bearded irritation on the other side of me.
We hit a big swell and everyone on board gasped as the bow of the boat pitched high, throwing us all backward into our seats. My stomach rolled and my cheeks inflated as I did my best to keep my breakfast sandwich down.
“Give me your hand,” Jagger said softly.
I faced him, narrowing my gaze. “What? Why? No.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just give me your hand, Raina. I’m not going to bite it.”
Still glaring at him, and with my body skeptical and nauseous, I held out my right hand.
He took it and turned it in his, palm up.
He placed three fingers on my wrist, tucking them in against the crease, as if measuring something.
Then he removed them and with his thumb, he pressed down hard, but not painfully, right where his index finger had been furthest from the crease. Locating the spot between my tendons.
“What’s this supposed to do?” I asked, distracted from the pitching and rolling of the boat by his soft, attentive touch.
“It’s an acupressure point. P6, located on the inner wrist, roughly three finger-widths below the wrist crease and between the two large tendons. It’s supposed to help relieve or reduce nausea and vomiting associated with motion sickness.”
I swallowed, still staring at his thumb on my skin. “You believe in this voodoo stuff?”
I didn’t have to see his face to know he was rolling his eyes. “It’s not voodoo. It’s TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine. It’s real, and it works.”
I glanced up at him and his raised brows.
“I started getting acupuncture and acupressure after my ACL injury in college. It helped a lot. I go see Suvi at Unger Wellness on the island at least once a month just to get my chakras realigned and keep that good chi flowing.”
The snort from my nose came out before I could stop it. “You’re kidding, right?”
He removed his thumb, his brows came together and that that sparkle in his eyes went out.
“No, Raina, I’m not. I believe in this stuff.
It’s real medicine. It’s real healing. Western Medicine isn’t everything.
The two combined are the best form of care.
And Suvi helps keep my knee from getting me to a point where I can’t walk.
And after my brothers lost their wives in the accident, when I didn’t feel like I had a right to grieve because they weren’t my wives, I developed a lot of pent-up trauma in my neck and shoulders.
She helped me deal with that. She stabbed me with her needles and released all that tension.
I cried like a fucking baby in her treatment room that day.
” He glanced at me, lifting one brow as if challenging me to make fun of him, to scoff or snort again.
The waves tossed the boat side to side, eliciting new gasps from the passengers. Swallowing and tasting more bile, I held out my wrist. “It, um, it was actually helping. Do you … do you think you could do it again?”
With his lips flattened tightly, he hesitated for a moment, then rolled his eyes and grabbed my wrist. “You don’t trust easily, do you?”
“No,” I said sheepishly.
“Not just people, but anything outside the norm .” It wasn’t a question.