Chapter 16
Sixteen
CALLUM
I leave Evie with her mail and head to my little shack to unpack. She was quiet on the trip back. Didn’t say a word. My guess is what happened at Iris’s sunk in.
We crossed the fucking line.
After last night—well this morning, I guess—I need some time to organize my thoughts. To sort through what happened, and how it happened. I’ve been with women since my last serious relationship, but Evie was...
Fuck. Christ.
She pulled something out of me I had long forgotten about.
Something visceral and primal that’s been dormant.
It’s been years since I’ve been so messed up about a woman, and the only thing that can help is a little solitude at the fishing hut.
I feel bad running off after we?—
Nope .
I rip the zipper on the overnight bag open and toss in some supplies.
A few changes of clothes. A book. Flashlight and batteries.
The satellite phone I only use for emergencies.
Running a hand through my hair, I figure I better tell Evie where I’m going.
She should be okay for a few nights by herself.
Food is plenty, and we have more than enough stocked in the fridge and pantry.
It occurs to me as I zip up the bag that we haven’t spent a day apart since she arrived here.
Space.
This living in each other’s orbit is forcing something that shouldn’t exist.
That must be it.
I pluck up my cap and grab an extra jacket off the hook by the door before crossing the gravel path to the house. I knock on the door, but it swings open immediately.
“Evie, I?—”
She’s sitting at the table, her mail in front of her.
Unopened.
I adjust the bag strap on my shoulder, glancing between the woman and the white envelope. “’Fraid it’s gonna bite you, baby girl?”
Hell, I have to stop with the pet names. I’m not doing either of us any favors.
“Don’t be silly,” she huffs, but her throat works, and her eyes don’t leave the envelope. She doesn’t want me here when she opens it. Fair enough. I shuffle back to the door and slap the jamb. “I’ll be away for a few nights. Things on the south end of the island need a once-over. You be okay here?”
Like she can go anywhere else.
Her head snaps up, gaze piercing the window. “Sure.”
When she still doesn’t look at me, I nod and leave her to her mail. I can take a hint. Pretty sure the strained look scrawled all over her face is regret.
That’s something, at least. Maybe we can find a truce in a threadbare friendship. My gut slips, knowing I’m leaving her like this.
Who am I kidding? I’ve fucked everything.
I shut the door behind me and head for the forest tree line. It takes a solid thirty minutes of walking through the wild, dense forest before I come across the small but deep freshwater water hole. It’s been my place to wash up on these trips many times.
The cooler air under the canopy is a relief. The warmer days sometimes mean afternoon storms, and I’m hoping none roll in in the next few days. I need this.
Evie needs this, whether she realizes it or not.
My stride loosens, and in no time I’m deep into the forest. The quiet is the first thing I soak in.
The constant crashing waves near the shore are nice, but sometimes you need silence.
From here, they are muted to the point of disappearing.
I roll my shoulders, peering up into the canopy as I go.
I forgot how much I love this little slice of paradise.
With everything that’s been going on—the lighthouse in dire straits and Evie arriving—I’ve missed this.
I’ll need this again when she eventually leaves.
That seems to be the only recurring pattern in my life.
Find something great I want to hold on to.
Get attached. Lose said thing. Hide away on my island until the hurt fades.
Some hurts take longer than others.
The only other time I felt anything close to this was twenty years ago. When my life had just started to make sense. Of course, that’s when the rug was slipped out from under me, leaving me with the burn of an entire town hating me for how things went down.
I can’t blame them.
And I never will.
They deserved better from me.
She deserved better.
I won’t make that mistake twice.
So, the forest is where I need to be. Far enough away to think things through without interference. No matter how much I crave her. I won’t make a choice that has Evie end up worse for it.
I hear the waves rolling in before the tree line breaks and the old hut comes into view. Steadfast, even on this tiny strip of ocean island. It looks exactly as I left it nine months ago. It’s been too long.
The overhang of the roof at the front of the building shelters handmade wooden tables, the one and only place my old man ever worked his fish over.
His small collection of knives I haven’t touched in decades hangs on wires above it.
The windows are opaque, as if blasted by time and sand during the storms. The front door, with its weathered and warped boards, hangs on its hinges.
I vaguely remember making a note to bring tools after the last visit.
The door creaks open, revealing a sand-littered floor decked out with one single bunk, a small table, and a lopsided bookshelf lining the space.
A wood stove sits on the opposite side. It needs a good sweeping.
And the cobwebs hanging like drapes from the corners and tucked away in angles of the furniture have to go.
I set my bag on the table and take in the wear and tear.
As my gaze roves the small space, memories flood in.
The last day I spent here with my father.
Iris complaining the fish guts touched her as he flung them behind him, into the brush.
I remember the hearty chuckle that bellowed from his throat as my little sister dry heaved, dramatic as usual.
He had shaken his head, getting back to his task at hand.
One of the large bass I’d pulled up. My efforts at descaling and gutting already on the pan inside.
The memory of the aroma of frying fish with the potato dish Mom always sent with us hits me low in the gut, hard. Running a hand over my beard, I tug my cap from my head and toss it to the bed.
An hour later, with a sweat well and truly worked up, the little fishing hut looks much more respectable. Cobwebs gone, sand swept out, and some semblance of a small fire smoldering away in the now clean stove for later, I drop onto one of the rickety chairs at the table.
Remembering the kerosene lanterns and candles, I lean over to the bed and reach a hand under it.
My fingertips finally land on something wooden, and I hunt for the rope handle.
Curling my fingers around it, I slide the box out and flip the heavy lid open.
The fumes of kerosene and burnt wicks finds me.
Three burners and a hoard of candles of all shapes and sizes sit nestled into the base of the deep box, safe from the elements.
I pull the lanterns out carefully, mindful of the old gas-filled weathered glass bases. Dotting them around the space, I set out the candles next. When the last one is secure, I crack each window for ventilation. Guess all there is to do now is hunt for my food.
That thought splits my face with a grin.
The shallow rock pools along the eastern shoreline are a safe haven for crab and oysters, sometimes smaller fish who find their way in and can’t get back. Easy pickings.
I grab up a pot, a less-than-pristine knife from the wire hook, and the wooden spear Iris made our father carve for her when she was nine, just before...
The spear’s tip is metal. It’s been an age since anyone’s used this. The tip is not honed to a sharp, lethal point like it once was, but it will still crack a shell well enough. I grab it with my free hand and pull the hut door shut. The sun’s warmth tingles my face and neck. It’s nice.
But the small swell of clouds closing in from the east catch my attention. They weren’t there this morning when I left.
“Hmmm, stay where you are,” I tell the clouds, like I’m Zeus and can command the weather. I chuckle at my stupidity. One night without the churn in my gut, worrying about something or someone, is all I want.
Maybe Iris is right. I should relax. Take up meditation like she teases me about any chance she gets.
Like she would ever sit still long enough to meditate. Fucking hypocrite.
The sand gives way under my boots as I find the rocky patch to the east. An abundance of crab and small pickings waits for the taking.
This is going to be fun.
With a haul one man could never possibly eat in a single trip, I trudge back to the hut.
Those clouds to the east have grown with a ferocity that makes me nervous.
It’s not that I don’t think the hut can withstand it.
It’s still here after every storm that’s rolled through in the last three decades.
It’s the girl I left alone in the lighthouse that worry is gnawing my insides about.
She knows the drill. But it’s not the same when you’re by yourself.
And I have lived here for almost twenty years.
Evie hasn’t been here long. I pray she stays inside and hunkers down.
She knows where to go if she’s scared—the basement, into the generator room, the last resort space.
Nothing can break down that robust space.
The only downfall is the fumes if the generator is running, which it is at night.
“Dammit.”
I slam a hand onto the front door when I reach the hut, dumping my haul before the threshold. I should have stayed.
Nope. Give the girl more credit, asshole.
Not like she can’t look after herself. She’s smart and cautious.
Levelheaded. Evie will be fine. She’s probably more worried about me in the bundle-of-sticks hut, that the storm will try to huff and puff and blow my house down.
I can imagine her saying it, a ridiculous grin on her beautiful face.
That settles it, then. She will be fine.
She will be fine .
I take to prepping the spoils of my hunt.
With a pot on the stove boiling away, I decide crab will make a decent dinner.
Maybe followed by the handful of oysters I managed to scrape from the underside of the salty rocks.
And two small fish that flop helplessly in the bucket.
Their life force drains as their gaping mouths slow to a still.
Thunder rumbles, its menacing presence moving closer as the light starts to fade.
I’m settled in the chair reading by lantern light when the first pitter-patter of rain hits the tin roof.
I glance upward, as if greeting it with an eye roll will somehow make it go away.
If it rains the entire time I’m here, I may as well have stayed home.
But it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been out here in the weather.
Mud squelches through my clawed fingers. Rain pounds into me. Knees dug into the mushy earth as the air in my lungs burns its way from my body in racking assaults.
How could I let this happen?
The pouring rain drowns out the thundering beat of my heart. And it’s the first sliver of relief since I left the hospital three days ago. Left without Ava. Without ? —
A feral scream rips through my throat. My forehead hits the mud. I claw at the ground.
The blaze consuming my chest doesn’t fade.
Nothing helps.
Things were fine. Everything was going to schedule, to plan. When I left, she wasn’t far along. Every letter she sent me, there was no reason for me to think she was in trouble. Why didn’t she tell me she was in pain all this time?
“Why, Ava?” The words echo off the trees that stand like ever-patient guardians all around me. The rain continues to slam into me. I don’t know if it’s a comfort or a blunt reminder I’m alive.
And my Ava is not.
I shake the memory from my mind and readjust my focus on the page. Twenty years, and it still burns like yesterday. Still chokes me up like it damn well should.
I should have been with her when she needed me.
She should have told me.
I stretch, glancing at the time on the satellite phone.
21:50
Hell, I must have fallen asleep.
Hunting and sunshine will do that to a man. The wind howls outside and the lanterns flicker wildly. I rise and shut the windows, all but the one on the western side. The howls turn desperate, rattling the little wooden hut where it’s planted in the sandy earth.
I swear I hear my name.
But it can’t be. It’s just memories tormenting me, like they’ve done since that day.
I ignore them and decide to rest my body on the bunk.
When the screaming wind doesn’t let up, I slide an arm over my face.
The mind plays tricks on a man when he’s down.
With my head all messed up over Evie and the memories this old hut brings, I try to ignore the way the wind sounds like the last moments of Ava’s life.
The vision that’s played through my head since the first inkling of feeling something deep for Evie, where my mind puts her in Ava’s place.
And I lose them both.