Chapter 6
I’ve always had a temper.
As a young man, it ruled me. I never started a fight, but if another man raised his fists to me, you’d better believe I finished it. I’d go from cool, calm, and collected to brutal berserker in six seconds or less.
It was easy. That rage, that violence, was always there, simmering beneath the surface. I couldn’t get away with beating the shit out of my father, the true focus of my loathing and contempt, but bullies at school and drunken assholes at local bars were fair game.
Then, one night at Columbia, the summer after I graduated from grad school, when I was hanging out with old friends, I nearly beat a man to death.
He was a lacrosse player, a big guy, who’d thought it would be funny to stick his fat fingers under my friend Kayla’s skirt without permission. He stayed on his feet a lot longer than most. By the time I finally got him flat on his back, one of my eyes was swollen shut, my lip was torn, and my rage had become a wild animal, shaking me in its jaws.
The other guy—Blake—almost didn’t make it. The trauma to his face and skull was too much. My father had to buy the university some high-tech chemistry equipment and pay off Blake’s parents to make it go away.
I hated needing his help nearly as much as I hated the fact that I’d so completely lost control.
Just like dear old Dad.
That day, I swore I’d never let my rage rule me again. I went to therapy, worked on controlling my anger, and haven’t raised my fists to anyone since. I haven’t wanted to. The memory of how close I came to becoming one of the monsters has made it relatively easy to keep that violent part of me in check.
But right now, the urge to slam my nephew against the side of the brick building behind him and bury my fist in his stomach is so strong that I force myself to stay at the end of the alley for a long beat after Sully sends him to the ground. Only when it’s clear that she’s okay, and Mark isn’t getting up anytime soon, do I take a breath and start slowly down the dimly lit passage.
She gulps when she sees me, looking like she might bolt.
Instead, she stands her ground, lifting her chin like the Viking warrior she is. If I were going to battle in ancient times, I’d pick Sully over Mark in a hot second. She might be smaller, but she makes up for her size with a courage Mark will never possess, not if he lives a hundred years.
“You’re okay,” I say, a statement, not a question.
“I’m fine,” she says. “And I’m leaving.”
“Please, don’t,” I say softly as Mark groans on the ground a few feet away. “I’d like to buy you breakfast. My way of apologizing for my nephew’s poor behavior.”
“We’re dating, Weaver,” Mark grunts from the ground, wincing as he braces a hand on the bricks and shifts slowly onto his knees. “I wasn’t attacking her, for fuck’s sake.”
“I believe that’s up for debate,” I say, my cool voice belying the lava running through my veins. Even Rodger would have been ashamed this morning. My big brother was a greedy bastard who regularly cheated on his wife, but even he didn’t make a move without consent.
“We’re not dating and you were being an asshole, Mark,” Sully says, backing away. I follow her, leaving Mark on the ground behind us. “I’ll let it go because I know you’re upset about your dad, but if you ever grab me like that again, you won’t be walking away with something as minor as a pair of bruised balls.”
“I didn’t grab you. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mark whines, a thin attempt at gaslighting that isn’t fooling anyone.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?” I ask in a voice for Sully’s ears only.
“What happened to wanting me to sneak onto your boat in the dead of night?” she shoots back in a hushed voice. “So no one knows who you’re spending time with?”
I lift a shoulder. “Things change.” I don’t tell her that I couldn’t stop thinking about her last night or that her face was the first thing through my head when I woke up this morning.
The only thing worse than developing a fascination with this girl would be if she realized she’s already under my skin.
“They do,” she agrees, her eyes haunted. “I know who you are now, and I can’t see you again. Not ever. Goodbye, Weaver.”
Before I can acknowledge how good my name sounds on her lips, she’s gone, vanishing around the corner, her swift footsteps fading away in the opposite direction. And suddenly, something about the way she moves, about the way her sandy blond hair catches the sun and her full hips sway, reminds me of a woman I haven’t thought about in a long time.
“Who was that?” I ask Mark, returning to his side as he rises to his feet.
“Gertrude. Sully to her guy friends,” he says, still doubled over, his forehead furrowed in pain. “Seems like you knew that. You said her name.”
“What’s her last name?” I demand, careful not to get too close to my nephew.
The urge to punch him is still stronger than I would like.
“Sullivan,” he says, pouting. “Sully is short for Sullivan. She’s John Sullivan’s granddaughter.”
My blood cools as rapidly as it began to burn, and the few sips of coffee I consumed before I heard the café owner tell Mark he could catch Gertie on her way out the back roil in my stomach.
John Sullivan’s granddaughter. Which means she’s Leon Sullivan’s daughter.
And Tracy Sullivan’s daughter…
I should have guessed. Or at least suspected. Yes, it was dark in my bedroom last night, and Gertrude has a warm, earthy quality that’s the polar opposite of Tracy’s aloof energy. But she has her mother’s hair, her mother’s hips, her mother’s big blue eyes…
And she told me to call her Sully for God’s sake, clearly short for Sullivan.
Fuck. No wonder she never wants to see me again.
“I mean, you’re not one of us anymore. You have no idea what goes on around here,” Mark babbles. From his tone, I’m guessing he’s been speaking for a while, but I’ve tuned him out.
And I intend to continue tuning him out.
Mark exhausted the last of my patience with him when Sully said “no,” and he chose not to listen.
Pulling his phone from the pocket of my jacket, I toss it at him, unaffected by his, “What the fuck, Weaver?’ as he scrambles to catch it before it hits the ground.
“Get your own breakfast,” I say. “I’ll see you at the funeral home. If you behave yourself, I won’t tell your mother what I saw this morning.”
“You didn’t see anything!” he shout-whines. “Sully and I are fucking, Weaver. She was a cold fish this morning, but?—”
His words end in a gulp of fear as I brace my forearm against his throat, pinning him to the wall. It takes what’s left of my control to keep my voice low and even as I say, “You aren’t fucking her, and you will never fuck her. You won’t so much as share the same sidewalk with Gertrude Sullivan again. If you see her coming, you cross the street. If she’s at the pub, you don’t go inside. Do you understand?”
He swallows, his eyes wide. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?”
“Do you understand?” I repeat.
Sweat breaking out on his upper lip despite the chill in the October air, he gulps again. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Fine. It’s over, I’ll leave her alone. It was just casual anyway, Weaver. It wasn’t like we were in love or something. I know better than to marry a local girl. Dad taught me things, you know. He taught me to respect our family legacy.”
He isn’t good enough to lick a local girl’s shoe, let alone marry one. Our family isn’t royalty in Sea Breeze, we’re grifters, predators who have used our influence to hoard wealth for ourselves while leaving less and less for everyone else.
But Mark will never understand that. Just as I’m sure he’ll never understand why I won’t be giving him control of the family business.
I turn without a word, striding back toward Main Street and my rental car.
“What about coffee?” Mark calls after me. “We were going to talk.”
I keep walking.
“You can’t do this, Weaver. You can’t cut me out without at least having a conversation. Not because of this.”
But I can, Mark. I just did.
“We’ll talk later,” he calls, his voice breaking. “Tonight maybe. I’ll buy you a drink after the visitation.”
I turn the corner, leaving my nephew behind me in the alley.
As soon as I’m in my rented Subaru, I head out of town, into the surrounding marsh, bound for the trail I walked a hundred times as a restless teenager, counting the days until I could leave this town. Here I am again, back to my old coping mechanisms—women I shouldn’t touch and miles of marshland under my feet—a mere twenty-four hours after arriving in Sea Breeze.
So much for getting older and wiser…