Chapter 24
twenty-four
SKYLER
When I wake up in the morning Hudson is still here. He’s looking disheveled from sleeping the night on my floor, and it makes my heart ache to see him.
“You didn’t leave,” I say, sitting up.
“I said I wouldn’t,” he replies simply. And that’s probably all I need to know about this man. He makes a promise and he keeps it.
I let out a breath. “You should go. Ayda will want to see you. And you have to work.”
“There’s no rush. Let me get you a coffee and then we can see how you feel.”
I run my hand through my hair. I can tell that it’s as much of a mess as the rest of me. “I need to talk to Jesse,” I say.
“Yes you do.” He gives me the softest smile. “He’s messaged me about a hundred times.”
“Can you ask him to come over?” I ask. “At eleven.”
“Eleven? It’s going to be a long three hours.”
“I’m going to need that long to make myself look respectable,” I say. Between the tears and the tossing and turning I hate to think how terrible I look. But Hudson’s face is soft as our gazes meet.
“You look perfect.”
“Shut up.”
He leans forward and kisses me softly. It makes my toes curl.
“And now I’m going to get those coffees,” he says, standing up and stretching. He took his shirt off at some point during the night, so he grabs it and slides his arms through it. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m going to be fine.” It’s weird how strongly those words come out. Because I am, I know it. “I’m going to take a shower, drink that coffee, then go for a walk on the beach before…
“Before Jesse comes over,” Hudson says.
I nod. I was going to say before I talk to my brother. What a weird word. All this time I’ve thought I only have one sister. But he was here all along.
So many thoughts are whirling around my mind. But right now I need to get up and face the day.
“Thank you,” I tell this man who is so hard and yet so tender. “Thank you for being here for me.”
His gaze rakes my face, like he’s trying to take everything in. “I wasn’t going to let you deal with this alone.”
* * *
Jesse lets out a long breath, his face full of emotion as he looks at me later that morning.
It’s a beautiful late spring day. The sun is beaming down from a cloudless sky, the ocean is sparkling and we’re sitting out on the bar’s deck, at the far end so we can’t be seen from the road. We’re both drinking coffee because Jesse brought me one – I guess as a peace offering.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that my love language is apparently caffeine. Or that the two new men in my life seem to understand that. I’ve gone from being a loner – albeit with a small family that I love – to having this extended network of people who care about me. If I think about it too long it’ll make me feel uncomfortable. I know how to be alone.
I don’t know how to be part of a community.
“It’s what Dad wanted,” he says. “For me to tell you when the time was right. It just…” he shakes his head. “It never felt right.”
He called into work sick for the first time since he’s started working there, apparently. And I can see why. He looks so pale he’s almost ghostly. There are dark rings beneath his eyes like he didn’t get any sleep.
And his eyes themselves are full of regret.
Hudson and I walked and talked for an hour along the beach this morning before he took me at my word that I felt better and agreed to go home.
We talked about my family – the one I knew and the one I didn’t. About my dad and how I feel more upset about him not telling me than about Jesse and the rest of the island keeping it from me.
I have so many questions I started losing track of them. Hudson gently suggested I write them down in my phone so I could have them ready for Jesse.
He looked almost shocked when I did as I was told and got my notes app up on my phone and typed in a dozen questions in one go. Like he expected me to ignore him. But he was right. I’m starting to think he’s always right.
And now I’m going through those same questions methodically, feeling almost like the adult I should be as I ask Jesse each one.
“How long have you known about me?” I ask him. That’s question number two. The first was why my dad didn’t tell me. Jesse’s answer was as honest as he could be without actually knowing the answer. Because my dad took a lot of secrets to his grave.
“So you need to know a little about my life for me to answer that one,” he says. “I didn’t know Wayne was my father until I was sixteen.”
I blink. “Seriously?” I would have been eighteen or nineteen. After the wedding. I wasn’t speaking to Dad by then.
Jesse takes a deep breath, his brows knitting. “My mom never told me. Or Wayne. They apparently had a short fling, then he left the island for a while and she went back to my dad. It was only years later when my dad died that she finally admitted that Wayne was my biological dad. He was back on the island full time by then, running the bar. We did a DNA test.” He shrugs.
“Were you close to him?”
“As close as anybody gets to him I guess.” He presses his lips together. “He was a drunk. You know that. And even when he tried to get his drinking under control he was sick.”
“A dry drunk?”
“Along with the liver disease and everything else that comes with abusing your body for that long, yeah.” Jesse’s jaw tightens. “He encouraged me to play the guitar. Gave me gigs here. But he was more of an uncle than a dad to me.”
“And you went to his funeral.” My chest tightens.
He nods. “I was hoping you’d be there.”
“I was avoiding…” I let out a long breath. “Everything.” Our eyes meet and there’s so much understanding there. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree.”
“You’re nothing like him,” Jesse says firmly. I lift a brow and he smiles. “Okay, you’re only like the best parts of him. He had his moments. He loved to sing and dance. When you got him talking he’d tell you all about his travels. He had a restless soul but that was a good thing. How boring would it be if we were all settled down from an early age?”
“Having a restless soul can hurt people,” I say. And I think we both know we’re not talking about my dad anymore.
“It can also inspire. Light up the world. The sun isn’t always here. She has places to go, but when she does show her face…” He tips his head, the warmth of her rays illuminating his skin. “She makes you feel good like nothing else can.”
A smile steals across my lips. “Are you comparing me to the sun?”
“I’m just saying, you’re you. And Wayne was Wayne. He spent a lot of time fighting who he was. Drank a lot of alcohol to try to forget who he was. If he’d just accepted it…”
“He would have been happy?” I say, completing his sentence. My little brother is wise. I like that a lot.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “But anything is better than fighting yourself, isn’t it?” He looks at my phone, still open on my lap. “What’s your next question?”
“Does everybody on the island know that he’s your father? And have they always known?”
“Once we took the DNA test it wasn’t a secret that I was his son. They knew that Wayne wanted me to be the one to tell you, and they honored that wish.” He swallows hard. “Don’t blame anybody else for this, it’s all my doing. I should have told you earlier. I wanted to. I was just…”
“Afraid?” I ask.
“I don’t have any other siblings. My mom moved back to the mainland. It felt… I don’t know… big , having you here. My sister. I was scared that if you took it the wrong way I’d be left with nothing. I heard a lot about you from Wayne. He followed you, you know. Your Instagram, he had that on his favorites.”
“He followed me?” I whisper.
“He was so fucking proud. And I was so in awe of you. You seemed so together. So in love with life. You weren’t afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid of everything,” I tell him. “Social media is a bitch. It lies constantly. I only ever put up the good stuff. The happy stuff. Mostly to make my mom and Lee feel like they didn’t have to keep saving me.”
“I’d like to meet them sometime,” he says. “I know we’re not actually related but…”
“They want to meet you. I spoke to them this morning.” I called them right after Hudson left. I had to be sure in my head that they hadn’t been keeping this from me, too.
Lee was just as shocked as I was. Mom was… not surprised. I guess she knew my dad better than anybody and she knew that he wasn’t an angel.
“Of course you’re family,” I tell him. “Family isn’t just about blood. Or titles. It’s about being there for each other. Taking care of the other person.” I take his hand. “You’ve always felt like family. I just couldn’t work out why until now.”
His face lights up. “You felt like family too.” He chuckles. “I mean I know I knew you were. But there’s been this connection…”
“At first I thought you were attracted to me,” I admit. “But it was a different kind of pull, wasn’t it?”
“I love you, but not like that.” He wrinkles his nose.
His words hit me so hard that tears form in my eyes.
“What? What did I say?”
“You love me?”
“Of course I do.” He takes my hand, squeezing it tight. “You’re my sister. You’re my friend. But most of all, you’re you. I feel like I knew you before we even met. How can anybody not love you?”
The tears start to fall. But this time they feel like good tears. Cleansing ones. I don’t fight them – because maybe my brother’s wisdom is seeping in. You don’t fight, you accept. And here’s my accepting.
There’s a reason my dad brought me to this island, even after his death. And now I know what it was. He’d made errors. Ones he couldn’t admit to my face. But he wanted to clear them up. He wanted me to meet my brother.
And he made it happen.
A part of me will always wish he’d done it when he was alive. That he’d tried harder to tell me about Jesse. And that maybe I’d be a little more willing to listen.
But regrets are like fighting against your nature. They eat you up. And I can’t let that happen. Not when my younger brother is here, looking up to me, wanting me to give him the same acceptance he gave me.
“Right back at you,” I tell him, hugging him tight. “I love you too.” And it’s true, I do. A weird sensation of protectiveness washes over me, and that’s when I realize that I’m not the youngest in the family anymore. Not the baby in the corner.
“Oh my God, I’m a middle child,” I say to him. “That makes so much sense.”
He starts to laugh.
But it’s true. I’m that wandering soul that they say middle children are. Always looking for something I can’t have. Always moving on to the next thing, hoping it will be my thing.
“And also,” I tell him, my voice turning serious. “I want a veto on every girlfriend you have. Because they’re clearly not good enough for you.”
“Jesus, don’t make me regret you finding out. Ask me another question before I run away.” He shakes his head.
So I do. I ask nine more before I get to the big one. The one that makes me hesitate, because I don’t want to hurt him, but I also know that it will hang between us for as long as I let it. And I don’t want anything bad between us.
Not now that we’ve found each other.
“The last one,” I say solemnly, and he smiles, like he’s ready for this to be over. I take a deep breath. “Why did he leave the bar to me and not both of us?” I ask him.
Jesse looks like he’s been expecting this one. He doesn’t shift, doesn’t break our gaze. Just gives me the softest of smiles. “Because I asked him to.”
“Why?” I ask, completely confused. “This place is worth a lot of money. You could have sold it to Hudson and been set for life.”
“I don’t give a damn about money,” he says. “And I think you’re the same. Yes, I need enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach, but more than that? I don’t know…” He shrugs. “It doesn’t seem to make Hudson happy, does it?”
I swallow hard, remembering how Hudson looked this morning, all crumpled up on my floor. I have no idea what time he fell asleep, but he was dead to the world as I looked at him, my stomach tight because even at my lowest he kept to his word. He didn’t get into my bed.
I’m still processing that. I’ll think about it later, because there is a lot going on in my world right now and I need to concentrate on one thing at a time.
“Money can definitely help,” I say. “And it doesn’t matter, I’m signing over half of the bar to you.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that.”
“You just said yourself that money doesn’t make you happy. But do you know what does? The thought of co-owning a bar with my baby brother.” I give him a broad smile. “Plus I might get a day off if you have to help too.”
“I work on the ferry,” he points out.
“And that’s fine. You can come here when you want. Or we can employ more staff. Whatever, we’ll work it out.”
A sense of peace falls over me. It’s like I’m slotting a jigsaw piece into place. This is how it’s supposed to be. Dad requested me to stay here for six months to get to know my brother. This funny, lovely guy sitting with me.
I’ve always believed in fate. I don’t like to force things. I like drifting with the breeze.
I think that’s what my dad liked too, when he was sober. And here I am, drifting into a new life.
“I want you to be in this with me,” I tell him. “And I think that’s what dad would have wanted as well.”
He looks stupidly pleased at that. There’s a pinkness to his cheeks as he smiles.
“I’d like that,” he says.
I’ll have to ask Hudson to recommend a lawyer. But that’s for another day, we can make it official in time. As far as I’m concerned, from this moment on we’re going to be working together. And I like that.
“Is that it? Any more questions?” he teases.
“Not yet.” But I’m pretty sure I’ll have more. They don’t seem so urgent now. There’s a weird peace in my heart that I never thought I’d have. Especially last night, when it felt like my world was collapsing around me.
But there’s no urgent need to know everything anymore. I have enough information for now, and I know if I have more questions he’ll answer them. We look at each other again, and I try to see the resemblance between us. He has freckles like me, but that’s it.
It’s a start.
“I do have one more question actually,” I say, and he groans out loud. But this one isn’t about him or me.
It’s about the one thing that’s been bugging me since I arrived.
“What happened to Eileen and Mylene when they went to the mainland?” I ask him. “Is that also something everybody but me knows?”
He grins. “Nope. We’re all as in the dark as you. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
“Damn,” I say, because I’m desperate to know. “I guess some secrets aren’t supposed to be found out.”
* * *
HUDSON
I’m working on the business plan for the fishermen’s cottages when there’s a knock at my office door. I should be on the mainland with Ayda at our therapy session, but after taking one look at me after I came back from Skyler’s this morning, Autumn decided she’d take her instead.
Usually I’d put up a fight, but I was too tired and my muscles ached too much to deal with Autumn’s stubbornness, so I let her take my kid for an ‘Aunt and Niece’ day on the mainland and decided to hole up in my office and actually get some work done.
The knock repeats, so I push myself out of my leather chair, trying not to groan at the knots in my back muscles. I wrench the door open, waiting for the usual onslaught about a demanding customer wanting to speak to the owner, but instead I see Skyler standing there, looking uncharacteristically uncertain as she looks up at me.
“Hey.” I blink. She’s never willingly come to see me. Yes, I made her come in my office, but she was here for the party, not me. It’s weird how much I like that she’s actually come here of her own free will. “Come in.”
A smile ghosts across her lips. “Thanks.” She’s not wearing any makeup, and her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail. She’s wearing that denim dress that buttons from neck to hem and I get a flashback to how easy it is to unbutton and reveal her lush body.
“How did your talk with Jesse go?” I ask her.
“It went well,” she replies, softly closing the door behind her. “We talked a lot. He explained everything. We’re good.”
I smile softly at her. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“I want to add him as an owner to the bar.” She pulls her lip between her teeth. “I know that makes things more complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“At one point you wanted to buy it. You’re even less likely to be able to if there are two of us.”
I shake my head. “I don’t give a damn if I own it. I just wanted it to be…” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Right for the tone of the place. And it is. You’ve done that.” Buying the bar is so far from my mind it’s not funny. “It’s not complicated at all.”
Her expression radiates relief. “Okay, good. Because I have another favor to ask you.”
I lift a brow. She never asks for anything. I like that she’s willing to now. “Go ahead.”
“I need you to recommend a local lawyer. I want to do this thing right. Jesse’s my brother and I want him to know how much I care.”
“You can use mine,” I say. “I’ll speak to him. I have it covered.”
“You’re not paying for it,” she says, her eyes flashing.
The woman can read me like a book. “Of course I’ll pay.”
“No.” She shakes her head, her jaw jutting out like she’s already anticipated this. “You have to stop saving people, Hudson.”
“I’m not saving you. I know for a fact that you won’t have a whole lot of cash flow until the bar is up and running. And I also know that when you make a decision you want it to happen yesterday. I’m trying to help.”
“I know you are. But I don’t want you to.”
I don’t like that one bit. “So you’ll let me fuck you seven ways to Sunday – if it’s not in a damn bed – but you won’t let me help you sort out the bar?”
“When you put it like that…” she trails off, smiling at my annoyance. I swear she gets off on riling me up. She reaches out, touching my arm. “I appreciate all you do for me. Including the sex.” She pulls her lip between her teeth and I swear that’s all it takes to make me hard. “And last night.” She swallows. “You didn’t get into bed with me.”
“Because you’ve made it clear that you don’t want me in your bed.” I thought that was obvious. And I’m not an idiot enough to force it.
She tips her head to the side. There’s a strange emotion in her eyes I can’t quite place. “Isn’t a girl allowed to change her mind?” she whispers.
“About what?” I ask, confused.
She twists her fingers. “Maybe next time we sleep together, it should be somewhere that won’t cost you a fortune at the chiropractor,” she says, parroting my words from a few weeks ago. She runs the tip of her tongue along her lip. “Somewhere we can wake up together.”
If I thought I was hard before, now I’m almost painful. The things I could do to this woman if I had all night with her. She’d be the one needing a back specialist.
And I’d willingly pay for all the treatment.
“When?” I ask quickly.
She smiles at my eagerness.
“When you can get a babysitter, I guess.”
I start to work out the logistics in my mind. Not tonight, that’s for sure. Ayda is usually exhausted after therapy. And I’m also wary enough to know that Skyler probably still doesn’t want the whole island knowing that I’ve been having bedless sex with her every chance I can get.
“Next week? Wednesday. I have a business thing on the mainland so Autumn is keeping Ayda that night instead of Tuesday. Come with me.”
“Bed sex in a hotel?” Skyler murmurs, her eyes catching mine.
“All damn night. And then again in the morning,” I tell her. “You should probably bring some Tylenol.”
She laughs hard, her head tipping back. “Oh God, what am I letting myself in for?”
I lean forward, my lips brushing her ear. “The best damn night of your life.”